Godmentality : Pentecostalism as performance in Nigeria

This dissertation employs the concept of “Godmentality” as a framework for capturing the embodied performances of faith actors in the Nigerian Pentecostal movement. From Africa to Asia to Latin America, and North America, Pentecostalism is a huge global phenomenon that not only imbues places and spaces with the breath of the Holy Spirit, it also inscribes time and space with its distinct flavor of worship. In Africa, the Pentecostal movement is sweeping through the urban spaces and covering the spatial and cultural landscape with its activities and promises of redemption. In Nigeria, as people perform their Pentecostal faith and make Pentecostalism a cultural performance, God and faith have become a mentality. The band of believers who form the army of God marching through times and space are continuously configured through various disciplinary techniques. Those subjectivation techniques turn them to subjects whose bodies have been reshaped such that the performance of their faith is a “natural” activity. Godmentality explores the subjectivity of Pentecostal Christians and the modes by which they acquire it, how their performative actions shape the social and cultural ecology of Nigeria, and how Pentecostals assert their human agency within the nexus of the various rituals of worship that revise their consciousness. This study builds on existing scholarship on global Pentecostal studies to interrogate the disciplinary techniques of Pentecostal faith, the creativity of faith actors, and the knowledge they create through their embodied behavior. Through ethnographic methods, oral interviews in physical and virtual formats, archival materials, documents and church publications, close readings of church activities, and historical analysis, I interrogate the dramatic nature of Pentecostal worship. From the spectacular performance of miracles, dramatic and intense corporeal worship, prosperity gospel, their domination of the traditional and the New media, apocalyptic vision, and the ways they try to monopolize the public space, I demonstrate the making of the Pentecostal subjectivity, how Pentecostals make their environment to be more amenable for their faith performances, and the ways Pentecostalism has shaped the ways Nigerians understand ourselves as subjects of God