A lecture by Ebenezer Obadare (University of Kansas).
This presentation focuses on four women in their individual confrontations with four influential Nigerian pastors. Against the backdrop of the rise of the Pentecostal pastor as a cultural juggernaut across Africa, the performances of these women in varying contexts demonstrate that resistance to the power of the pastor can come from the most unexpected places, unleashing social dramas that amplify the contours and contradictions of the milieu in which pastoral power has become ascendant. Dr. Obadare argues that the way the respective encounters were resolved is a reminder of the power of the pastor and the durability of the structures that underpin and enable it. Second, it is a warning against the common tendency to flatten women’s agency by disregarding real and consequential class differences among them. While they often face similar political and cultural challenges, the way in which women combat or push back against such challenges- and therefore their success or failure in doing so- may vary depending on their education, social – and marital- status, shrewdness with the media, and other personal properties. Notwithstanding, women’s resistance provides an opportunity to juxtapose the antinomic character of women’s agency with the vulnerabilities of an impregnable-seeming pastoral hypermasculinity.
This lecture is part of the Rethinking Public Religion in Africa and South Asia project at IRCPL (in collaboration with the Institute for African Studies and the South Asia Institute). The project is funded by the Henry Luce Foundation.
Ebenezer Obadare is professor of sociology at the University of Kansas and Fellow at the Research Institute for Theology and Religion, University of South Africa. His research interests are in religion and politics, and civil society and the state in Africa. His most recent book is Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria. His next book on Pentecostal pastors, politics, and sexuality in Nigeria will be published by University of Notre Dame Press. He is co-editor of Journal of Modern African Studies.