“To God be the glory”: Hallelujah movies and the constructions of popular Pentecostal morality in Nigerian cinema

From its emergence in 1992, Nollywood—the cinema of Nigeria—has burgeoned into a dominant form of cultural production in Africa and its films offer a most powerful, enduring, and intelligible expression of Nigerian popular culture today. These films have continued to influence and be influenced by conceptions and practices of popular religion in Nigeria. No expression better captures this interplay between Nollywood and popular religion in Nigeria than the “to God be the glory” doxology that often precedes credit rolls in many Nollywood films and reemphasizes a dénouement of the authority of the Christian God over Satan and the power of darkness. Using critical discourse analysis and drawing from two Nollywood films, Billionaires’ Kingdom and Church Business , this article interrogates Nollywood’s deployment of films to present a unique African perspective of engaging popular religion in Nigeria. It begins by delineating the theoretical framework and the context for its analysis, employing the Divine Command Theory. Then, this article explores Nollywood’s constructions of a social moral compass with the Pentecostal-charismatic Christian endings of its films. Afterwards, it examines the specific engagement of “alleluia movies” and the proselytization history it bears for Nigeria’s Pentecostal-charismatic churches. Finally, it highlights the interplay between Nollywood and popular religion and argues that Nollywood films demonstrate how their representations of popular religion in the particular context of southern Nigeria have not only shaped that society but have equally been influenced and transformed by religion’s engagement of film.