Two main issues inform this chapter. The first is the political relationship between governments and senior religious figures in Africa. The second is the political connotations of “popular” Christianity – notably Pentecostal churches – and “popular” Islam, including, Sufi, Wahhabist and transnational Islamic militant groups. The overall aim is to examine and assess how, if at all, “religion” and “politics” interact in contemporary Africa, in the context of recent attempts at democratization.

The main argument is that many African governments seek to use religion as a key source of influence and power in order to build the hegemony of their regimes. They do this by incorporating selected religious institutions and their leaders into the state framework. “Popular” religious vehicles, however, strive to remain outside the state framework, a course of action that can pose threats to the achievement of state hegemony. Generically, popular religions are religious vehicles that are not legitimized by a close relationship between their leaders and those of the state, but instead are linked to bottom up structures rooted in grassroots concerns.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Africa's “second liberation” or “second independence” involved a series of widespread political upheavals, following what had occurred three decades earlier. In the 1950s and 1960s the issue was freedom from colonial rule. Coalitions of associational groups challenged imperial governments. Professional, student and labour groups led popular protests; the goal was “Self- Rule, Now!” Partly as a result of nationalist agitations, colonial administrations throughout Africa were swept away. Senior Christian leaders were rarely involved in anti-colonial agitations. This was because senior Christian figures were nearly always Europeans at this time, men who supported (or at least tolerated) colonial rule – not only because they shared racial bonds with colonial administrators, who supplied a framework for the rule of law and the development of “civilization,” but also because they were members of the same socio-economic elite with a stake in the continuity of the status quo. In short, there were class, racial and institutional bonds linking senior Christians to colonial regimes (Livingstone 1917; Fields 1985).