From Face-to-Face to Online: Changing Spaces and Voices in African Pentecostalism

This chapter outlines my journey over twenty years of studying African Pentecostal churches in South Africa. For me, these years have been marked by three phases in the study of Pentecostalism in Africa. The first, during the 1990s and 2000s, being the rise of mega Pentecostal Charismatic Christian (PCC) churches and the emergence of thick ethnographic research by anthropologists and sociologists of religion. The second, during the 2010s, is the emergence of Prophetic Pentecostal Churches (PPC) and the emergence of in-depth theological scholarship on African Pentecostal churches in Africa by African theologians. The third is the emergence of mediated religion in South African Pentecostalism in particular via various forms of social media, which began before COVID-19 but took off during COVID-19. Mediated Pentecostalism has been around for some time in Nigeria and Ghana via radio, television and Nollywood movies and to a much less extent in South Africa via radio and television. During COVID-19 churches were transformed as they went online and some churches, post-COVID, continue to only function online. In this chapter, I explore how I think the study of Pentecostalism in Africa has changed in South Africa, the key issues in African Pentecostalism and the critical areas that need further attention.