Kelekele

Pentecostalism in Ghana was not an American phenomenon, but rather part of a global move of God carried by the presence of the Holy Spirit whenever human hearts were open and ready for fro a new spiritual experience. Global Pentecostalism has widely been traced to events at the run down Episcopal Methodist Church on Azusa Street in 1906, an event that has come to be known as a revival, led by William Seymour. William Seymour led twelve-hour church session each day for about three and half years. The main occurrence at this revival was the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which according to them was accompanied by the initial evidence of speaking in tongues. This outpouring is what they believed was the restoration of the gift of tongues for the ‘speedy and effective preaching of the gospel to the nations’.¹⁰⁸ Charles F. Parham developed this new idea of linking tongues speaking to the baptism of the Spirit further from the radical evangelicals position. At the time the leaders

108Allan Anderson, To the Ends of the Earth: Pentecostalism and the Transformation of World Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 37-40.; Allan Anderson, “The Origins of Pentecostalism and Its Global Spread in the Early Twentieth Century,” Transformation 22, no. 3 (2005): 175.

were persuaded that the ‘experience of Spirit baptism was a fire that would spread to other nations of the world’. One of these individuals who later became very instrumental in the history of Pentecostal mission was John G. Lake.¹⁰⁹ Building upon the belief that it was a revival that was meant to affect the world, Seymour launched a periodical that carried news and occurrences of the ‘move of God’ from the revival site, with the aim of spreading the fire.

At the peak of its production and circulation the periodical, The Apostolic Faith, reached about 50,000 copies around the world in 1908.¹¹⁰ However it was another periodical named The Sword of the Spirit produced by Faith Tabernacle of Philadelphia in the United States headed by Pastor Clark. This was a splinter group from Alexander Dowie’s Zion City, which influenced certain individuals who in turn became pioneers of Pentecostal missions in Africa.

Notable amongst them around this time was Apostle Peter Anim the founding member of the Apostolic Church, from which the Church of Pentecost, Ghana’s largest Pentecostal church evolved, and the present day Christ Apostolic Church in Ghana, is said to have been greatly influenced by the teachings of this periodical after reading it in 1917.¹¹¹ However the main influence in the beliefs and practices of Anim came from the Apostolic Church, Bradford after Anim and other affiliates from Nigeria seceded from the Faith Tabernacle in Philadelphia. This led to his association with James McKeown, a missionary from Bradford.¹¹² The spread of Pentecostalism around the world has been assisted by the involvement of local evangelists and pastors who through contextualisation have helped establish it as a tradition. As such it has not been established solely through the efforts of

109 Anderson, “The Origins of Pentecostalism,” 175.

110 Anderson, “The Origins of Pentecostalism,” 179.

111Robert Wyllie, “Pioneers of Ghanaian Pentecostalism: Peter Anim and James McKeown,” Journal of Religion in Africa 6, 2 (1974): 110-112.

112Larbi, Pentecostalism: The Eddies of Ghanaian Christianity, 106-109.

western missionaries.¹¹³ These gallant men and women some of whom have been voiceless and mere ‘unsung Pentecostal labourers’ need to be recognised and given their place in history recognising their contributions.¹¹⁴

Supporting Anderson’s assertion that ‘experience of Spirit baptism from Azusa Street was a fire that would spread to other nations of the world’, within the first two years of the inception of the revival at Azusa Street, missionaries from the site had covered a whopping twenty-five nations which included nations such as Egypt, China, India, Japan, Liberia, Angola and South Africa.¹¹⁵ This substantial spread of missionary activity was by no means the ‘only connections’ to the spread of the fire.¹¹⁶ The history of the movement in Ghana begins a bit later with influences from sub-Saharan Africa, namely Wade Harris, and locals such as John Swatson, Samson Oppong and Grace Tani who had their own expression of Pentecostalism and are all considered a significant part of the emergence of the movement in Ghana.¹¹⁷ This meant that Pentecostalism in Ghana was not an American phenomenon, but rather part of a global move of God carried by the presence of the Holy Spirit wherever human hearts were open and ready for a new spiritual experience. There could have been Pentecostal revivals resulting in the establishment of Pentecostal churches in other parts of the world and even in Ghana before the events at Azusa Street in 1906. Anderson notes that there were a lot more Pentecostal centres such as Pyongyang in Korea, Pune in India, and Wakkerstroom in South Africa, among others that,

113Brian Stanley, “Twentieth Century World Christianity: A Perspective from the History of Missions,” in Donald M. Lewis, Christianity Reborn. (Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans, 2004), 52-83.

114Allan Anderson, Spreading the Fires: The Missionary Nature of early Pentecostalism. (London: SCM, 2007), 5-9.

115D.William Faupel, The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 213-222.

116Anderson, To the Ends of the Earth, pp. 37-40.

117Larbi, Pentecostalism: The Eddies of Ghanaian Christianity, pp. 32- 37.

Pyongyang, Korea, from which revival in 1907 Presbyterian minister Kim Ik Du and others spread out throughout the country with a revivalist healing message; Pune, India, from Pandita Ramabai's Mukti Mission, where a Pentecostal revival beginning in 1905 resulted in scores of young women forming evangelistic teams; Wakkerstroom, South Africa -where the first African Spirit churches in South Africa under Daniel Nkonyane and others were formed; Lagos, Nigeria, from where the first Aladura (healing) movement began in the 1918 influenza epidemic; Valparaiso, Chile, where the revival in the Methodist church under Willis Hoover, beginning in 1909, was the start of the Methodist Pentecostal Church, the largest Protestant church in Chile; Belem, Brazil, where Swedish missionaries Vingren and Berg began the largest Pentecostal denomination in the world; Oslo, Norway, where Methodist pastor Thomas Barratt began Pentecostalism in Europe in 1907; and Sunderland, England, where Anglican vicar Alexander Boddy led the commencement of Pentecostalism. These were some among many other centres.

Pentecostalism has many varieties very different from the North American 'classical Pentecostal' kind.¹¹⁸

This serves to emphasise that Pentecostalism may not be a made-in-the USA product, suggesting that factors associated with the context of these movements outside of the USA, or the West in general, may have meant that they remained unknown to the global fraternity, unlike the Azusa Street events. It might be that the distortion of historical facts has been intentional on the part of some researchers who have sympathies towards the American version of events, running the risk of over-simplifying the history of the origins of the phenomenon.¹¹⁹ Considering the spread of the movement in Ghana, for instance, there were local factors and actors that aided this process of the emergence, spread and establishment of Pentecostalism. Many churches with similar beliefs and practices in Africa and Ghana at the time were considered ‘sumsum sore’ and it is therefore possible these churches were not looked into because they were new within their contexts.

Over the years, Pentecostalism has made great headway in the Pacific Rim, China, Latin America, Eastern Europe (particularly Romania) and Ukraine, which has the biggest                                                                                                                          

118Anderson, “The Origins of Pentecostalism,” 182.

119 Anderson, “The Origins of Pentecostalism,” 181.

Pentecostal church in Europe.¹²⁰ Significant to the recent Ukraine story is that a Nigerian migrant, who moved to the Eastern block for the purpose of education, leads this largest congregation. This in itself expresses the shared identity of the Pentecostal movement; the fact that a Nigerian Pentecostal can set up a Pentecostal church and attract predominantly the indigenes of the country. However this maybe an isolated success story when compared to many African-led churches that solely attract Africans. Pentecostal believers everywhere have a sense that they belong to an international community, although the local church may be known or unknown to them. It is an international community because there are shared values and tenets of faith as well as ethos. For instance, Zimbabwean Pentecostals have developed their own understanding of the prosperity message which helps them act as agents of rapid social change. The same can be said of the Ghanaian context, where born-again believers seek to become ‘autonomous through making a complete break with tradition by means of exorcism’ as a means of accessing good fortune. Although it is on the same platform of tradition embedded in the indigenous religions that the churches have succeeded to reach out to their communities.¹²¹ In spite of the universal acceptance of the local Pentecostal churches to Pentecostal believers elsewhere, there are distinctive nuances and variations resulting from the locality of the church. The reason for this distinct identity is the influence of culture and indigenous cosmology. And even within the same locality or region, differences can be identified. At the regional level, Nigerian Pentecostal beliefs and practices, irrespective of their influence on Pentecostal formation and thought in the Ghanaian context through their video and media outlet, can never be the same as the beliefs and praxis within the Ghanaian

120J. K. Asamoah-Gyadu, “Unwanted Sectarians': Spirit, Migration and Mission in an African-Led Mega-Size Church in Eastern Europe,” Evangelical Review of Theology 34, no. 1 (2010): 72.

121David Maxwell, “Editorial,” Journal of Religion in Africa 28, no. 3 (1998): 255-257.

context.¹²² Even within the same context there are differences, as in the case of Ghanaian Pentecostals holding differing views on certain practices, with a section of them holding onto practices which can be clearly identified as having been influenced by the Akan indigenous cosmology.¹²³ It is nonetheless important to acknowledge that in spite of the distinct identity that these Pentecostals bear within their context, they are to a large extent by praxis connected to the wider community of Pentecostals around the globe.