Introduction

The most striking aspect of religious revitalization in West Africa over the last two decades has been the rise of evangelical Pentecostalism along the coastal and southern parts of the region, and of reformist Islam in the hinterlands. At first glance, these represent two almost diametrically opposed religious movements. Pentecostalism is marked by a return to mysticism and to practices of possession over the intellectualist worship of mainline Christian churches, while Islamism attacks Sufi mysticism and calls for a return to a legalistic, rationalist Islam. Pentecostals preach prosperity and parade the accumulation of wealth as a sign of God's blessing, as Islamist leaders criticize the materialism of Sufi elites. Pentecostalism links African Christians to a worldwide congregation of born-again believers and a set of doctrines and bodily practices, derived from southern American televangelists. Reformist Islam is part of the thoroughgoing reform of West African Islam through the increased penetration of Islamic beliefs and procedures from the wider Muslim world, most especially Saudi Arabia. Both are, of course, fiercely outspoken religions; enmity between them runs deep, and the consequence has been that disagreements and mutual suspicion have often degenerated into violent conflict.

At second glance, however, both movements share a great deal of common ground and, while disagreeing strongly on doctrine, overlap strikingly in the procedures by which they have come to prominence, the practices on which they depend, and the social processes they set in motion. Indeed, in the wake of the reconfiguration of African states and the progressive disembedding of the African economies from the formal world market, both Pentecostalism and Islamism can be seen as two new kinds of social imaginaries which thrive on religion's ability to render meaningful the unstable and often depressing flux of life in Africa. They do this through a conversion process that marks a deep transformation and reconstitution of the person by redefining established forms of religious practice such as prayer, and by transforming intimate relations of dress and deportment, commensality and social interaction. In this way, Pentecostalism and Islamism offer new ways for people to imagine both collective life and their position as individuals in contemporary Africa.