The thesis is an ethnographic study of the way that people in Calabar, southern
Nigeria, participated in Efik religious institutions and several different Christian
denominations. The thesis is based upon eighteen months fieldwork in Calabar
between 1993 and 1995. Further fieldwork was also completed in Scotland
between 1992 and 1995. In Calabar, religious participation is approached as part
of the negotiation of the multiple social identities that occurs in post-colonial
urban centres in West Africa. The thesis focuses upon the debates that were
occurring between people belonging to the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria,
Duke Town Parish, and people who attended Pentecostal ministries founded in
the 1990s.The thesis opens with a discussion of contemporary social, religious and
political institutions in Calabar. The Presbyterian Church of Nigeria is
contextualised through an examination of the culture of the Scottish
Presbyterian Mission that was established in the city in 1846. I discuss how
Scottish missionaries and indigenous leaders interacted within the colonial
context. I then turn to look at the way this mission history is perceived and
represented by contemporary Presbyterians and Pentecostalists. I also examine
the impact that the Pentecostal movement has exerted beyond the boundaries of
the ministries. The Duke Town Presbyterian Church has incorporated several
aspects of Pentecostal worship since 1990, a decision that has precipitated
debates among the congregation between traditional and born-again
Presbyterians.The social and economic concerns of participants in selected Pentecostal
ministries are described. I show how the ministries provided people with
meeting places and social networks outside family or work domains. The
ministries also addressed the widespread concern among participants with
deliverance from the spirits of the indigenous cosmology. The case studies
illustrate the way that people attributed power to different ministries to provide
deliverance from spiritual attack. The ministries provided protective social and
spiritual arenas for people who feel vulnerable within the urban environment. I
show how this sense of vulnerability was particularly evident among younger,
educated men and women, middle-aged married women and recent migrants to
the city of Calabar. People in the Pentecostal ministries have increasingly
entered public debates on the economy and political institutions of Calabar
during the 1990s.The thesis finds that in the early 1990s, religious organisations were social
arenas within which many people living in Calabar debated wider social,
economic and political concerns. The Pentecostal movement emphasised
differences between Christian denominations and strongly opposed traditional
religious practices. The early 1990s can be seen as a period during which the
religious tolerance described by several observers in the 1980s appears to have
declined
