Prophetic Politics and Spiritual Power: An Ethno-Theological Study of Pentecostal-Charismatic Engagements with Politics in Kenya

Abstract

As a contribution to the study of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity and politics in Africa, this study offers an ethnographic and theological analysis of the ways in which Pentecostal-Charismatic churches in Kenya engage “the political”. The thesis presents case studies of three prominent leaders and their ministries, on the basis of which three distinct but interrelated narratives of political engagement are identified and used as the basis for reconstructing Pentecostal-Charismatic political theological thought in Kenya. These narratives are: holiness prophetic, spiritual-dominionist and prosperity-dominionist. The narratives have in common an emerging political theology of altars, which references biblical prophetic concepts of sacred sacrificial space, in which the nation is dedicated anew to God and made holy. The concept of altars is reconstructed as a political theology that draws on Kenyan Pentecostal-Charismatic and indigenous religious understandings of power. The central argument of the thesis is that, since the 1980s, in the contemporary Kenyan religio-political context, Pentecostal-Charismatic churches have not only directly engaged politics, many have also devised political theologies that are couched in the language and idioms of spiritual warfare. These narratives of spiritual warfare are presented as strategies to combat what is perceived to be a battle between God and the devil for the soul of individuals and the nation of Kenya. The narratives of political engagement are reconstructed on the basis of a detailed reading of the ethnographic data collected during eight months of fieldwork in Kenya. The ethnographic approach enabled me to investigate and analyse Pentecostal-Charismatic political engagements and theology from below. I argue that in order to understand the political engagements and the underlying theologies in Kenyan Pentecostal-Charismatic political thought, attention needs to be paid to their prophecies, sermons, and prayers because these are political expressions carried out through a theological rhetoric of spiritual encounter. In contrast to the social scientific and the general African theological literature on Pentecostal-Charismatic political engagements, this study offers a more nuanced understanding of what constitutes the political but also offers an ethnographically informed theological analysis of the politics of spiritual warfare from the point of view of my Pentecostal-Charismatic interlocutors in Kenya