Pentecostals, Conflict, and Peace in Africa

Yacob-Haliso and Iyanda explore the question of the location, role, and dynamics of Pentecostalism in the complicated context of postcolonial Africa’s many conflicts and peace initiatives. This chapter pulls together the international forces that shape conflict in postcolonial Africa, proposing a schema for organizing the data. Based on two case studies, from Uganda and South Africa, it analyzes the national context for Pentecostal involvement in causing and prolonging conflict, as well as how the national context intersects with individual factors in shaping Pentecostal involvement in peace initiatives. In the chapter, Yacob-Haliso and Iyanda deploy an approach that is multiplex, simultaneously fetching movements located at global, international, regional, national, and individual levels of analysis to paint a holistic picture of the paths and possibilities of Pentecostal engagement in matters of peace and conflict.