Pentecostal Theology, Identity Politics, and Racialized Xenophobia: Claiming A New Social Order

Applying the methodological lens of ethnographic theology, the article argues that grounded Pentecostal theologies participate in reimagining a new social order, particularly in relation to racialized xenophobia. This argument is made in the specific context of two Pentecostal churches in Johannesburg, South Africa, both led and frequented by people who have come to Johannesburg from other parts of the African continent. The argument is outlined by unpacking three theological themes prominent in the collected ethnographic data: positive confession, Word-centred ecclesiology, and Christlike lifestyle. Taken together, these themes highlight a social conscience that other societal actors would do well to take seriously when considering combatting xenophobia. Overall, the article challenges the scholarly emphasis on Pentecostal theologies as uninterested in life-affirming structural change, building on Nimi Wariboko’s formulation of blackness, chosenness, and Nigerian Pentecostalism ‘that reads against the existing social order’ within the particular context of xenophobia in urban South Africa.

Does the Christian worldview provide a place for the law of attraction? (Part 2): An apologetic evaluation of the way the Bible is used in promoting this idea

This article investigates the biblical motivation that is given for the secular idea of the so-called spiritual law of attraction to become part of Christian doctrine. In 2010 Pastor At Boshoff of the Christian Revival Church (CRC) preached two sermons on the law of attraction in which he claimed it as a powerful principle in the Word of God. According to him this biblical �law� provides human beings with physical manifestations of their thoughts and words. The idea to create one�s own favourable future through the law of attraction flows from a New Age worldview and is similar to the positive confession doctrine taught by popular Word of Faith teachers. Boshoff�s claim regarding the law of attraction cannot be deduced from the key Scripture passages he uses, which reflects an unfounded use of Scripture to promote this idea.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The article challenges the secular infiltration of the Law of Attraction in the church. This is important since the so-called Law of Attraction was preached by Pastor A. Boshoff of the CRC. Many of his listeners embrace his teaching although it reflects a poor exposition and application of Scripture.

Does the Christian worldview provide a place for the law of attraction? (Part 1): An apologetic evaluation of the roots of this doctrine

This article investigates the roots of the so-called spiritual law of attraction that some Christian preachers today describe as an important biblical law. One of the proponents of this idea, Pastor At Boshoff of the Christian Revival Church (CRC), refers in his sermons to the law of attraction as a powerful principle derived from the Word of God. This idea bears striking similarities to the positive confession doctrine as taught by popular Word of Faith preachers. The basic claim of this spiritual �law� is that human beings create their own future through their thoughts and words. The article shows the idea of a spiritual law of attraction as a New Age doctrine that flows from a New Age worldview. Preaching prosperity through the law of attraction is not in accordance with orthodox, historical Christianity or the Christian worldview.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The article challenges the secular view that intangible thoughts and words can take on tangible reality. This is important since this secular idea is infiltrating the Christian church. It is already being preached as biblical although the roots thereof are clearly shown to originate from the New Age movement.

The Greening of the Gospel (and Black Body): Rev. Ike’s Gospel of Wealth and Post-Blackness Theology

The purpose of this essay is to explore Rev. Ike’s particular form of positive confession theology and self-representation in relationship to his own professed post-black identity. By fusing the conversionist elements of his Pentecostal roots with the Spiritualist teachings of metaphysics and New Thought philosophy, Rev. Ike offered African Americans a theological vision of attaining material wealth while effacing what he and many of his followers regarded as the multiple negative cultural markers that blackness signified. This was not simply a theology that was preached from the pulpit; it was packaged and presented within media frames. Therefore, this essay will equally unveil and demystify the multiple aesthetic representations and conspicuous displays deployed by Eikerenkoetter, which reflect well-worn strategies on the part of the oppressed that connect understandings of citizenship and freedom with hyperconsumption.

Grundtvig og Kingos salmer

Grundtvig and Kingo's Hymns. By Magnus Stevns When Grundtvig began writing hymns he definitely took Thomas Kingo, the greatest Danish hymn-writer of the 17th century, as his model. From childhood Grundtvig had loved “ Kingos Salmebog” (“ Kingo’s Hymn-book” , 1699) and the living interpretation of Bible history which its hymns contained. He was therefore in dire distress when as a clergyman he was obliged to use the new so-called “ Evangelisk christelig Psalmebog” (“ Evangelical Christian Hymnbook”, 1798), a book of extremely poor quality from both the Christian and the poetic point of view. Kingo’s hymns on the Passion, describing the sufferings and death of Jesus with intense feeling, and his genuinely Lutheran hymns about the battle against the Devil, the world and our flesh which the child of God has to fight, were replaced by insipid moral verses about the Christian virtues. Lifeless abstract terminology was universally substituted for the concrete, personal phraseology of the Bible, e. g., “evil” instead of “ the Evil one” or “ the Devil” , “ the Lord God” instead of the personal “ thy Saviour”. Grundtvig wished to renew Danish hymn-writing with the support of what was best in the past; but in spite of his love for Kingo’s hymns, with their historical stamp and evangelical imagery, he found it necessary, partly to shorten most of them, and partly to alter those things in them which did not agree with his own conception of Christianity. In Grundtvig’s adaptations of Kingo’s hymns one notices how he tones down or omits Kingo’s forceful descriptions of the humiliation and mocking of Jesus; while Kingo dwells chiefly on the sufferings of Good Friday, and pictures the agony of Jesus as He drank the cup of God’s anger to the dregs, for Grundtvig the central point is the victory over death which Jesus won for us, and His rising again to life for us. In Grundtvig’s opinion, Kingo’s hymns overstress the distance between God and man; Grundtvig stresses the view that in baptism the Christian comes into fellowship with God and thereby has received grace and has shared in the Atonement. Nor can Grundtvig share Kingo’s conception of the death of the body as a release which helps the soul out of the body’s wretched “worm-bag”. In Grundtvig’s view death is the last enemy which we shall overcome with God’s help, and therefore the Christian hope attaches itself first and foremost to the risen Saviour. In his revision of Kingo Grundtvig usually preserves his intonation and many words and images, but in other respects permits himself such extensive alterations that the poet Ingemann, with good reason, was obliged to say of i t : “ However closely akin to Kingo’s your spirit may be, I find that your strongly-marked characteristics will not blend together with his sufficiently to prevent me from hearing now the voice of one, now that of the other” . All the same Grundtvig often shows himself as the remodeller with a touch of genius, who not only remodels the hymn, but makes a new creation of it (this is the case with Grundtvig’s “ I Nasareth, i trange Kaar”, “ In Nasareth, in needy state” ). In many cases Grundtvig’s relation to Kingo’s hymns is one of reaction rather than of imitation, as may be seen from a comparison between Kingo’s “ Kommer, I som vil ledsage” (“Come, ye who will accompany. . . ” ) and Grundtvig’s “Tag det sorte Kors fra Graven!” (“ Take the black cross from the grave!” . . . ). Here Grundtvig “sings against” Kingo almost line by line. In one of his best known poems, “ Jeg kender et Land” (“ I know a land” — later rewritten as the hymn “ O Kristelighed”, “ O Christian faith!”), Grundtvig uses the metre which Kingo employed in his great hymn “ Far Verden Farvel” (“ Farewell to the world” ), but for Kingo’s renunciation of the life of the world Grundtvig substitutes his positive confession of faith in God’s kingdom of love. The relation between the two hymn-writers may be summed up thus: both constantly seek for union with the Deity through an imitation which — though feebly — makes the way of man resemble that of the Deity. But for Kingo the Deity Himself, Who is God and man, is most human (and therefore capable of being imitated) before Golgotha, and most divine (far removed from man) after the Resurrection, while the opposite is the case with Grundtvig, for whom the Risen One is “ flesh in heaven, spirit on earth”. For Grundtvig it would be unreasonable to believe that man’s powers were equal to imitating the Deity, “ Christ, Who died upon the cross”, before he could imitate the man, “ Jesus, Who rose from the grave”. Kingo reaches the following conclusion: “ Only when by death I truly bid the world farewell, then only shall I be at home with God,” while Grundtvig arrives at another, namely: “ Only when God is at home in me, then only can I truly bid the world farewell.” When Kingo has first learnt to know the power of Jesus’ Passion, he will afterwards learn to know the community and fellowship of His Resurrection. But Grundtvig says, “The Lord wishes all who believe in Him to learn to know the power of His Resurrection before they feel themselves called to the community and fellowship of His sufferings.” (Cp. Philipp, ch. 3, v. 10.) Therefore it is the first task of Grundtvig’s hymns to renew the song of praise to the risen Saviour, who through the Holy Spirit is present in the Church; in Grundtvig’s hymns it is Whitsun before it is Easter. But Grundtvig (as he himself stresses) has not “ concealed the fact that Our Lord Jesus Christ in His Passion and death must stand for us both as our Saviour and as our example”. In Grundtvig’s poetic activity this gives rise to “a song of the secret chamber”, which sounds more subdued, but in purity & depth of tone excels both the festal hymns of “ Sangværket” (“The Hymn-Book” ) and Kingo’s “ trumpet songs” .