Pentecostal and Charismatic Reshaping of the African Religious Landscape in the 1990s

In this arcticle, Nigerian Ogbu Kalu utilizes two broad models that emphasize how religion reinvents daily life and culture, and how it does so by utilizing signals of transcendence in the sphere of human existence. Kalu argues that religion needs to be examined as a central category of cultural practice in which lived lives embody an evolving religious understanding of the ultimate meaning of life. Sociologists of religion may miss the driving force of religious power in religious movements by paying too much attention to functions of such movements in social structures. In all these, culture is the contested space. Kalu develops his argument by highlighting seven areas to illustrate the salience of the Penteocstal movement in reshaping cultures and religious landscapes: re-invention of self and life journey, daily life in the domestic domain, arts and aesthetics, communication, the individual and community at the social domain, religious life and public space.