Ritual as a Site of Struggle and Becoming: Gender, Power, and Identity in African Pentecostal Christianity
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: African Pentecostal ritual is more than the preservation of religious tradition. It is a dynamic social and theological process through which gender, power, and identity are negotiated, reproduced, and sometimes transformed. This article examines Pentecostal ritual as an embodied and performative space in which continuity and transformation coexist. The study adopts a qualitative interdisciplinary approach drawing on ritual theory, African feminist theology, gender performativity, and perspectives on relational power. Methodologically, it is a secondary-source study based on a purposively selected body of scholarly literature on African Pentecostal worship, healing, prophecy, gender, and funeral practices. The literature was subjected to thematic and hermeneutic analysis. Particular attention is given to communal liturgical practices, healing and prophetic rituals, and funeral rites. The examination reveals that ritual may reproduce validated gender and institutional hierarchies while at the same time establishing possibilities for women and other participants to exercise spiritual and charismatic authority. The article moreover contends that ritual is central to Pentecostal identity development because it brings Christian theological obligations into engagement with African cultural memory, communal belonging, and is expressed through religious experience. Instead of regarding ritual as fixing religious recurrence, the article conceptualises it as a site of negotiation, contestation, and becoming. The study contributes to African theological discussions by highlighting embodied and communal forms of knowledge while acknowledging the limitations of a study based exclusively on secondary sources.
Source: Genealogy
Institution: University of Venda
Language: English
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Gender equality
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,689
OpenAlex ID: W7222568299