One way to understand the relationship between religious faith and democracy in Africa is to interrogate how adherents, agents and devotees of religion contest for or seek recognition and support within modern democracies. The study looks at the development of religious pilgrimage as the frontier at which Christianity and Islam scramble for state and public support within modern democracies. In this quest, Christian communities now seek to institutionalize the religious practice of pilgrimage that although recognized for its spiritual value, has not been an “official” part of the requirements of faith. Christians go on pilgrimage in the desire to deepen personal understanding and spiritual renewal and not as a biblical obligation. Religion and Politics have continued to dominate public discourses in Africa for many years and pilgrimage, which is a religious activity is now also a political issue. Christian religious innovation led by the Pentecostal/charismatic streams of the faith in particular have led to tensions and emulative actions from Muslims. Thus it is not uncommon for Muslim clerics to buy air time and host discussion programs on Islam in a manner similar to Pentecostal/charismatic televangelism. In other words, televangelism is now no longer just a Christian activity, it is Islamic too. There is even now a video clip of an Islamic cleric engaged of a sort of Pentecostal style “healing and deliverance” ministry in Ghana. In the development of pilgrimage as an institutional practice, we see that the responses to the public face of religion within Africa have not been one-sided. In Ghana and Nigeria Christians are demanding that governments sponsor pilgrimages to Jerusalem in the same manner that Muslims are supported financially to travel to Mecca. In these countries, political support for religious activity is usually a vote winner and the Christian request has generated a vigorous media debate that sounds very intriguing. This has moved the relationship between religion and politics unto another level. Unlike Islam, Christianity is not a religion of “pillars” and Jerusalem, unlike Mecca, is not a theologically privileged geographical center of the faith. What this means is that the Christian front, unlike that of Islam remains disunited in the push from some quarters for religious equalization through the sponsorship of pilgrimages. This presentation looks at the developing discourse on the importance of pilgrimages to Jerusalem in contemporary African Christianity. It reveals much about the relationship between Christianity and Islam on the one hand and their relationship with the new political order on the other. This I propose is one way in which to appreciate the growing public discourse on faith and freedom issues in contemporary African societies.
J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu PhD (Birmingham, UK, 2000) is Baëta-Grau Professor of Contemporary African Christianity and Pentecostal Theology and Vice President of the Trinity Theological Seminary, Accra, Ghana. He has served as visiting scholar to Harvard University (2004); Luther Seminary, Minnesota (2007); Senior Resident Scholar at the Overseas Ministries Study Center, (2012); visiting professor at Asbury Theological Seminary, Kentucky, USA (2015) and Yonsei International University in Songdo, South Korea (2016). Prof. Asamoah-Gyadu is a member of the Lausanne Theology Working Group and is author of African Charismatics (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2005); Contemporary Pentecostal Christianity (Oxford: Regnum Books, 2013); Sighs and Signs of the Spirit (Oxford: Regnum Books, 2015); co-editor with Kenneth Ross and Todd Johnson, Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017); and co-editor with Frieder Ludwig of African Christian Presence in the West (Trenton, NJ: AWP, 2011). He is lead editor of Between Babel and Pentecost: Migrant Readings from Africa, Europe and Asia (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2013). Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu has many articles in international journals relating to Christianity as a non-Western religion. He is married to Theodora and they have three children: Theophil, Griselda and Emmanuel.