Introduction

This chapter is an introduction to pastoral interventions during coronavirus (COVID-19) and the subsequent lockdown in a South African experience from Pentecostal perspectives. It is submitted here that the pastoral challenges during COVID-19 called for specific interventions that engaged directly with the ecclesiological, missiological, communicative, social, and economic contexts. In this chapter, the editors provide a theoretical framework for pastoral ministry during the pandemic, outline the different perspectives within the volume and provide a summary of the aims and objectives of each chapter in the book. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

The Use of Social Media by Churches During the COVID-19 Pandemic in South Africa

This chapter discusses the use of social media by some classical South African Pentecostal churches to minister to their members during the government-imposed lockdown to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Christ's promise to abide with the church until the end of the age (Matt 28:20b) is used to appreciate the availability of social media in a time that threatened the church's existence. Instead of resisting the use of social media, classical South African Pentecostal churches must welcome it as God's providence to help the church to overcome COVID-19. Content analysis is used as the method of data collection and data analysis. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Virtual Ecclesiology on the Rise: Considering the Challenges Posed by COVID-19 in South Africa

Times of trouble provide opportunities for innovation within religion. The current pandemic opens opportunities to create a new, global, inclusive ecclesiology by connecting Christians from all over the world and all walks of life, with the sole purpose of focusing on the Christian faith and mission of the church to the world. Although the term "virtual ecclesiology” can be attenuated to mean "not real”, it is also a strong, virtuous way of structuring the church in technology-driven societies. It can provide a new church model, and allows for open, inclusive, and diverse technology-based options to communicate God's love both inside the global church and to the world. The African Pentecostalisation process serves as an example of a possible first step towards developing a virtual ecclesiology. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

The use of anointed products during Covid-19 lockdown: An African Pentecostal spirituality experience

The use of anointed products such as anointing oil and anointing water within the broader Pentecostal movement in world Christianity has been documented in previous studies. Traditionally, the demand for these products is based on the quest to receive healing and deliverance from sicknesses, barrenness, witchcraft, and so forth. The products are also used to access job placement, promotion, a house, a car, and other material possessions. This paper worked within African Pentecostal spirituality of experience to explore the use of anointed products during Covid-19 lockdown. Regardless of many perceptions and misconceptions about the anointed products, they were used as a point of contact during the Covid-19 lockdown. The paper used Apostle Mohlala Ministries in Cape Town, South Africa as a case study to explore the use of these products during Covid-19 lockdown. The argument in this paper is that these products were used as a substitute for spiritual service during the Covid-19 lockdown. In other words, anointed products became a point of contact when members of these ministries could not meet physically during the Covid-19 lockdown. This changes how Pentecostal scholars study anointed products within the broader Pentecostal movement. Despite their challenges such as commercialization and other abuses, anointed products become a point of contact in Pentecostal spirituality of experience. For the believers that could not attend church during the Covid-19 lockdown, anointed products became a medium to connect spiritually. © 2023,Pharos Journal of Theologys. All Rights Reserved.

Transnationalisme pentecôtiste et précarité enchantée : le cas du Monte de Oración dans la périphérie suburbaine de Lima, Pérou

This article presents the study of a popular Pentecostal center, Monte de Oración (MO), located in the suburban outskirts of Lima, Peru. The MO, founded by an illiterate woman originally from Cuzco, self-proclaimed pastor, began its trajectory (1970s, 1980s) as a community site of Catholic popular piety, anchored in the Andean traditions of mountain worship until it became a family religious enterprise. The MO is connected with some forty independent churches in Lima which organize retreats there and is, as well, in the process of being integrated into the networks of North American missionary denominations. The MO maintains a connection with transnational Pentecostal currents that make sense, locally, through similarity and affinity (Foucault, Han). At MO, are adopted and adapted, with creativity, issues and rites, among others, spiritual warfare, Israelophilia / Zionism, gender complementarity, refusal of vaccines against COVID. © The Author(s) 2023.

Immigrant pentecostalism in the emergence of the COVID-19 crisis: reactions and responses from the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in Berlin.

This article seeks to analyze the reactions and responses of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) in Berlin to the global COVID-19 crisis. Although the UCKG has been the subject of multiple international types of research regarding the spread of the COVID-19 virus, this article shows that the UCKG's global network of local churches must be differentiated in their responses and reactions to the global pandemic. This article traces and analyzes how the local UCKG in Berlin responded to the pandemic in its respective conditions and differed from the global network in the emergence of a pandemic in its rhetoric and discourse, using the concept of the Third Space. For this purpose, the services and sermons of local pastors were recorded to analyze how the discourse toward the COVID-19 crisis changed during the period of occurrence and awareness of a global pandemic. The results show how the church has adapted to the local restriction and regulations and reflect the international literature on how the UCKG's mother church in Brazil acted in comparison. The church and its pastors in Germany responded to the global pandemic in three primary ways: they assigned to authorities' guidelines, provided sermons with undertones of spiritual warfare, and rejected the interpretation of interdependencies between demons and health issues.

Victory in the Time of c ovi n Defying a Pandemic at an Indian Megachurch

The global COvID-19 pandemic of 2020-2021 required significant ritual adjustment in churches worldwide, particularly the larger ones. It has also provoked theological reflection on the origins on the virus, as well as on what God's Word had to say in response. This article investigates the adjustments and reflections at one Indian megachurch, Bangalore's Full Gospel Assembly of God (FGAG), with special reference to its utilization of a victory-oriented and defiant gospel of divine care, protection, and health. The question that animates this investigation is: Can a gospel of victory and health survive a global pandemic? The answer, somewhat counterintuitively (but in another sense - for those familiar with prosperity theology - not at all) is that it not only survives, but thrives. The article attempts to account for this thriving with reference to two distinctive characteristics of the soft version of the prosperity gospel that are manifest in FGAG's victory gospel, both of which are inculcated through ritual repetition and performance: 1) Its paradoxically simultaneous insistence that the faithful are, by God, already victorious, and that miraculous reversals await those who aren't, and 2) its boldly defiant response to evidence that all is not well..

Mission as Withness

Spiral mobility or flow is a good metaphor for contemporary global experience. Today's life is precariously shaped by incessant cyclical movement from apocalypse to 'post-apocalypse' and from one post-apocalypse to another. There is no indication of what may be expected of the future. The future is in chaos. It appears that we are living through chaotic end times rather than experiencing mere gestures of the end times. A perpetual apocalypse seems the best way to describe the current reality. Therefore, Covid-19 seems to have been nothing but a mere reminder that we are on a sinking lifeboat. This article argues that in such an ever-wounded God's world, African Pentecostalism has to shift the gear from mission as witness to mission as withness. The withness missiology can help in the process of re-discovering the theological and missiological meaning of life in an ever-wounded world and alternative ways of intercarnating into one another for the sake of common basic good of flourishing. It concludes that God's Church is pneumatologically intended toward God's world.

Nimi Wariboko’s The Pentecostal Hypothesis and African Pentecostalism during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the world in significant ways just as it has opened new vistas of thought in both secular and religious circles. This article is situated within the frames of African Pentecostalism, which found itself in a gap during the lockdown in early 2020. This ‘gap’ is grounded on Nimi Wariboko’s The Pentecostal Hypothesis, which I use as a theoretical framework to interrogate how the African Pentecostal churches, which inadvertently found themselves in a ‘gap’ responded to the predictions that Africa would be the most hit by the pandemic, and how it also impacted on their teaching and praxis. The thrust of The Pentecostal Hypothesis is the creation of, and insertion into, a gap between sense and spirit, and how such a gap creates an opportunity for meaning-making: “It does not make sense, but it makes spirit.” That is, even though something may not make sense on the basis of scientific data and rational argument, there is a sense in which appealing to spiritual data, it will still be meaningful. In order to achieve this, the author adopted interpretive method, a qualitative method that helps to engage Wariboko’s socialtheological worlds of the Pentecostals within the context of COVID-19. Through this method, we analyze the responses of African Pentecostals and attempt to validate them against The Pentecostal Hypothesis. It was thus observed that many Pentecostals’ theological explications of the COVID-19 pandemic cannot pass as absolute epistemology of the pandemic as some of them assumed. Consequently, it is concluded that there is the need for a constructive engagement so that sense and spirit can be utilized for human flourishing in a pandemic or crisis situation. © 2022 Open Access/Author/s - Online @ http//: www.pharosjot.com

Demonology, eschatology and vaccinology in African independent Pentecostalism

Public discourses on the reliability of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines in dealing with the upsurge of virus cases and deaths are developing and ongoing in many different contexts, as countries around the world are doing their best to build high and lasting immunity. This article worked within the framework of Pentecostal faith and outlined the Pentecostal perspectives on COVID-19 vaccines. The article is a literature analysis on the eschatological view and the demonising of COVID-19 vaccines. In addition, the article analysed the social media utterances of Pentecostal pastors on COVID-19 vaccines. These utterances were obtained from different social media networks, including YouTube. Pentecostal faith has caused some independent Pentecostals in Africa to demonise COVID-19 vaccines and others to perceive them as signs of the end times. While these perceptions appeared as signs of faith in dealing with pandemics such as COVID-19, they have proven fruitless in some instances. Some Pentecostals in Africa have lost their lives due to their insistence on faith, instead of vaccinating against the virus and observing regulations and restrictions. This calls for scholars to revisit a Pentecostal faith in health issues by bringing the balance between works and faith. Contribution: This article is an interdisciplinary study on demonology, eschatology, and vaccinology within African Independent Pentecostalism. The article problematised the demonisation of vaccines and perception of vaccines as signs of end times. The article proposes a Pentecostal faith that balances people’s beliefs and the role of medicine in the provision of healing.

Pentecostal spirituality in the context of faith and hope gospel (prosperity preaching): African Pentecostal response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Covid-19 has challenged humanity in several ways and has created the opportunity for reflection on our spirituality and the hope for divine healing of the world, while scientific communities do their best to find solutions to the pandemic from their perspective. In light of this, the article seeks to address issues of spirituality in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and how the Pentecostal community is responding to this challenge through the preaching of faith and hope messages. The article addresses the issue of "prosperity preaching" from the perspective of the concept of faith and hope gospel. The article argues that the faith and hope messages of the Pentecostals are not only proclaimed as means of the spiritual sustainability of members but also for psychological/emotional stability. It also argues that although Pentecostals are doing their best in their religious and spiritual response to the pandemic, they should accommodate the application of the theology of the sovereignty of God in every situation and encourage their members to seek medical attention where applicable.

Evangelical moral economies and Bolsonaro government in pandemic times

The paper focuses on some speeches by Brazilian evangelical leaders regar freedom and public health. It sought to identify some elements of re and some moral values that are shared by several evangelical groups that combine with the power strategies of the government of President Jair Messi the power strategies of the leaders of the largest Pentecostal churches. In times of Covid 19 pandemic, it becomes even more evident that so are mobilized in favor of opportunism and irresponsibility

Fluid Theologies: Shifts and Changes of African Pentecostalism

The claim of 'being led by the Holy Spirit' has caused African Pentecostals to develop weak fluid theologies. The problem is exacerbated by the deepening of economic inequalities, unstable politics, and poverty. Qualitatively, this article used the response of African Pentecostals to Covid-19 in Zimbabwe as a case study to explore how African Pentecostal theologies lack systematic interpretations. The article concludes that the failure of African Pentecostals to speak coherently about Covid-19 shows the deep-rooted fluid nature of Pentecostalism as believers respond to the 'moves of the Spirit', resulting in shifting and changing theologies.

Pandemic Religion in Brazil—Temptation and Responsibility

Religious incidence in Brazilian public space is a widespread fact that has been gaining new visibility in pandemic times. Responsibility in liminal situations represents specific theological hermeneutics, as well as what matters for the respective religious agents. Thus, based on a bibli-ographical review connected to an analysis of websites, this article aims to reflect on the current Brazilian context, the challenges to doing theology in Brazil today and points to some possible responses. “Pandemic religion”, as we call it, is the synthesis of theologies and religious practices that legitimise irresponsible approaches to life, vulnerabilising the other instead of assuming care-based ethics. Firstly, we briefly describe current theological trends, followed by an analysis of the Brazilian scenario by way of three representative scenes of public religious incidence that reflect a lack of responsibility in view of the pandemic challenges caused by COVID-19. Subsequently, we look back into history for alternative responses to public health crises that required theological positioning. In a Brazilian perspective of a public theology, we finally reflect on a responsible ethics that may help respond to the current challenges, particularly for pandemic religion. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Faith, Fortune and the Future: Christianity and Enterprise in Human Development

Insufficient attention has been paid to the interface between religion, business and development, allowing assumptions and stereotypes to abound. This paper takes a broadly conceptual and sociological approach to the development potential of the Evangelical Pentecostal Charismatic Movement (EPCM). Taking their cue from Weber, three questions are addressed, and three corresponding suggestions are made that are important to understanding this potential. Using the notion of ‘calling’ as an example, the first suggestion is that the cognitive, behavioural and social characteristics of the EPCM that are significant for development relate closely to personal and corporate purpose. Secondly, in contrast to what Weberian and secular perspectives tend to assume, the EPCM and its associated virtues will not necessarily decline as economies grow. Thirdly, while alternatives (such as Confucianism) are possible, the EPCM demonstrates considerable potential in terms of practical development impact. None of this challenges existing evidence that the movement is influenced by the ‘prosperity gospel’;by world-denying pietism and supernaturalism;and by socio-economic factors often described as ‘neo-liberal’—influences that have received much scholarly attention. It does indicate, however, that a more nuanced understanding of the movement and of its causal relationships is needed, given the complexity of the religion–business–development nexus.