Re-Visioning African Pentecostal-Charismatic Ecclesiology in the Public Sphere

Christian Tsekpoe and Lord Elorm-Donkor, eds., Re-Visioning African Pentecostal-Charismatic Ecclesiology in the Public Sphere: The James McKeown Memorial Lectures (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2024), 207 pages.

Over the past several decades, African Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity has attracted considerable scholarly attention, much of it focused on revival, spiritual experience, prosperity teaching, healing practices, or explosive ecclesial growth. By contrast, ecclesiology has often remained underdeveloped, frequently assumed rather than systematically explored. Re-Visioning African Pentecostal-Charismatic Ecclesiology in the Public Sphere: The James McKeown Memorial Lectures is therefore a welcome and timely contribution. More than a collection of essays on Pentecostal participation in society, the volume represents a sustained attempt to develop an African Pentecostal-Charismatic public theology through renewed reflection on the church’s identity and vocation within contemporary public life.

One of the volume’s principal strengths lies in its recognition that public engagement is ultimately an ecclesiological question. The contributors repeatedly return to the conviction that social transformation, political responsibility, ethical leadership, and national development cannot be detached from deeper theological reflections on the nature of the church itself. In this sense, the book signals a noteworthy maturation within African Pentecostal theology, one in which ecclesiology increasingly functions as the bridge between spiritual vitality and public responsibility.

The editors, Christian Tsekpoe and Lord Elorm-Donkor, deserve commendation for bringing together a remarkably coherent volume. Edited collections often struggle to move beyond thematic proximity, yet the essays gathered here exhibit a discernible conceptual unity. The contributors are clearly engaged in a common conversation about the relationship between ecclesial identity and public witness. This coherence allows the book to function not merely as a collection of independent studies but as a constructive intervention within contemporary African Pentecostal scholarship.

The volume’s origin in the James McKeown Memorial Lectures is more than a historical detail. McKeown’s influence continues to loom large within the Church of Pentecost and, more broadly, within African Pentecostalism. The contributors repeatedly return to themes associated with his legacy—mission, discipleship, holiness, communal formation, and public witness—suggesting that contemporary reflections on Pentecostal engagement in the public sphere are deeply indebted to earlier ecclesial visions rather than simply responses to present social pressures. The forewords by Kwabena Agyapong-Kodua, Eric Nyamekye, and Cecil M. Robeck Jr. further underscore the volume’s location at the intersection of scholarship, ecclesial leadership, and ecumenical reflection.

The collection is carefully structured around several interrelated themes. The opening chapters revisit foundational Pentecostal understandings of church identity, particularly within the tradition of the Church of Pentecost. Subsequent essays explore mission, social transformation, education, leadership formation, governance, and anti-corruption initiatives. Other contributions address questions of youth formation, public morality, and ecclesial responsibility within contemporary African societies. While the individual chapters vary in emphasis and methodology, they share a common concern: how Pentecostal-Charismatic communities might inhabit the public sphere faithfully without surrendering their theological distinctiveness.

Among the chapters, Opoku Onyinah’s discussion of James McKeown’s concept of Pentecostal ecclesiology is especially significant. As one of the foundational essays in the volume, it provides the theological framework within which many of the subsequent discussions may be read. Onyinah demonstrates that McKeown’s vision of the church cannot be reduced to institutional organization or evangelistic strategy. Rather, ecclesial life emerges as a Spirit-shaped reality grounded in discipleship, holiness, mission, and communal responsibility. Particularly illuminating is the way the chapter traces the enduring influence of McKeown’s ecclesiology upon contemporary Pentecostal public engagement. The Church of Pentecost’s now familiar language of national transformation and “Possessing the Nations” appears not as a pragmatic innovation but as the outworking of deeper ecclesiological convictions.

The chapter also raises a larger question that echoes throughout the volume: whether African Pentecostalism is undergoing a gradual transition from revival movement to public ecclesial tradition. While the contributors do not frame the issue in precisely these terms, the book repeatedly suggests that Pentecostal communities are increasingly being called to articulate not only what they believe or experience, but what kind of social body they understand themselves to be.

A second chapter deserving particular attention is Emmanuel Kwesi Anim’s treatment of Pentecostal mission and social transformation. Here the volume’s broader concerns come into sharper focus. Anim argues persuasively that mission cannot be restricted to evangelistic proclamation alone but must include active participation in processes of social renewal and communal flourishing. Importantly, however, social transformation is not presented as an alternative to spiritual mission. Rather, both are understood as dimensions of the church’s participation in the mission of God.

This chapter succeeds in avoiding a false dichotomy that continues to haunt many discussions of public theology. Pentecostal spirituality and social responsibility are not competitors but partners. The Spirit who empowers witness is also the Spirit who animates practices of justice, reconciliation, and service. In this respect, Anim offers an account of mission that remains deeply Pentecostal while simultaneously expanding the horizons of Pentecostal public engagement.

I found myself particularly drawn to these discussions because they intersect with concerns central to my own work in Pentecostal public theology and pneumatological ecclesiology. The chapter implicitly raises a question that recurs throughout the volume: What ecclesial forms are capable of sustaining meaningful public witness over time? Transformation, after all, is not simply the result of programs or strategies. It requires communities whose common life embodies the realities they seek to promote.

As an Eastern European theologian, I read these chapters with more than passing academic interest. The historical trajectories of African and Eastern European Pentecostalism are markedly different, yet both increasingly confront the challenge of articulating a credible public presence in rapidly changing societies. What makes this volume particularly valuable, therefore, is not simply its contribution to African Pentecostal scholarship but its capacity to stimulate wider conversations about ecclesial identity, public witness, and the work of the Spirit in contemporary social life.

These ecclesiological concerns become even more explicit in Dela Quampah’s chapter on church-state relations and corruption. Arguably one of the most publicly consequential essays in the collection, the chapter addresses one of the most persistent challenges facing many African societies. Quampah refuses simplistic moralism, recognizing that corruption is not merely an individual ethical failure but a deeply embedded social phenomenon requiring sustained institutional and cultural responses.

What makes this chapter particularly valuable is its insistence that the church’s response to corruption must begin with its own internal formation. Public credibility cannot be separated from ecclesial integrity. In this respect, Quampah moves beyond conventional appeals for political engagement and directs attention toward the church’s responsibility to cultivate morally formed citizens capable of contributing to public life. The argument resonates strongly with broader traditions of public theology that understand the church’s social significance to arise not primarily from its political influence but from the distinctive quality of its communal life.

Throughout the volume, one senses a growing awareness that Pentecostal public witness depends upon a robust account of the church itself. Reading these essays through the lens of pneumatological ecclesiology, one is repeatedly reminded that the church contributes to the common good not simply because it possesses moral convictions or social influence, but because it embodies a Spirit-constituted form of communal life whose witness is inherently public. Put differently, the public significance of the church arises not first from what it does, but from what, by the Spirit’s grace, it is becoming. The language of social transformation, so prominent within contemporary African Pentecostal discourse, gains theological depth when rooted in this richer ecclesiological vision.

The book is not without limitations. At times, the enthusiasm for transformation language risks outpacing more sustained theological reflection on the nature of ecclesial communion itself. Some readers may also wish for greater engagement with broader ecumenical conversations in public theology and ecclesiology. Yet these observations should be understood less as criticisms than as indications of fertile avenues for future research.

The significance of Re-Visioning African Pentecostal-Charismatic Ecclesiology in the Public Sphere ultimately lies in its recognition that the future of Pentecostal public engagement depends upon the future of Pentecostal ecclesiology. If earlier generations of Pentecostal scholarship were preoccupied with questions of origins, experience, and growth, this volume suggests that African Pentecostal theology is increasingly asking ecclesiological questions: What is the church? What kind of public community is it called to become? How does the Spirit shape its presence within society? The essays gathered here do not answer these questions exhaustively, but they demonstrate convincingly that they can no longer be avoided.

For scholars of African Christianity, Pentecostal theology, public theology, and ecclesiology, this volume offers a rich and stimulating conversation partner. More importantly, it provides a valuable glimpse into a broader theological development in which African Pentecostalism is increasingly reflecting not only on the power of the Spirit, but also on the form of life the Spirit creates. The essays gathered here suggest that questions of public witness ultimately lead back to questions of ecclesial identity. Such questions extend far beyond the African continent, and the conversation this volume advances deserves careful attention from Pentecostal scholars everywhere.

Reviewed by Ciprian Gheorghe-Luca

 

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