Disrupting or Dwelling?

This paper moves beyond the center of the theocratic class of the Nigerian Pentecostal circle to explore a marginal Onitsha-based prophet named Chukwuemeka Ohanaemere Odumeje, who claimed the spotlight of Pentecostal theatrics in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and seems to have sustained it by centering himself in popular imagination. I combine a textual analysis of many snippets of media (which are now part of popular culture) and a semiotic analysis of signs and signifiers within both specialized literature in Nigerian Pentecostalism and African popular culture—to examine this imbrication of Pentecostal performativity and popular imagination. I highlight disrupting and dwelling to index resistance or alignment within established Pentecostal performativity and its imbrication with popular culture. Specifically, I use Abimbola Adelakun’s idea of Pentecostal performativity to argue that Odumeje both disrupts and dwells within established Pentecostal performative practices, deploys digital media and popular culture referents in ways that place him in popular imagination, where his sacred spectacle mixes with the quotidian on social media to make him an “incredible pastor.” Together, I show that not only does social media complicate and create room for debating Pentecostal theology, as Adelakun aptly argued, but that by turning our gaze away from politics and Pentecostalism and toward Pentecostal performativity and popular culture, we can extend and recast the field of religion and cultural studies.