Asonzeh Ukah
Biographic Data
| ID | 209324 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Asonzeh Ukah |
| GIVEN NAMES | Asonzeh |
| FAMILY NAME | Ukah |
| SIGNATURE | UKAH A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cape Town |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2873-2257 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 60 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Theoretical Schizophrenia or Theoretical Rescue? Re-Reading Thomas Luckmann’s Invisible Religion from an African Perspective
Thomas Luckmann’s The Invisible Religion (1967) represents a seminal intervention in the sociology of religion, challenging ecclesiastical-centred conceptions of religious practice in Western societies. While the theory has generated considerable scholarly engagement in Euro-American contexts, its reception within African universities – particularly in departments of religious studies and sociology – remains underexamined and uncertain. This arti…
Kwasi Wiredu: Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Religion (1998)
Nigeria’s Election: Six Dangers of Mixing Religion with Politics (2023)
John Mbiti: African Religions and Philosophy (1969)
Nigeria Election: Dangers of Being Religious in a Religious Nation (2022)
Nigerian Lawyer Drags Emir of Ilorin To Court For Blocking Ifa Festival In Muslim-Dominated Domain (2023)
Omirhobo Sues Emir of Ilorin for Allegedly Banning Isese Festival (2023)
before a Kwara State High Court, Ilorin for allegedly banning the celebration of Isese festival in the state.In the suit marked KWS/161/23, the lawyer is praying the court to hold that the respondent's prohibition of Isese festival in Ilorin Kwara State, which made it impossible for the applicant to commune, felicitate, celebrate, merry, bond and worship with the community of African Traditionalists/Olokun worshippers, is a violation of his funda…
Nigeria’s Federalism, Religion and Secularism (2020)
Introduction
a system, acting to pull the various elements towards the system's centre, while a centrifugal force acts outwards, separating and scattering such elements
Secularizing the Eschaton: Pentecostal Miracle Cities as Afrotopias
While the secularization of Europe went hand-in-hand with anticlericalism, in Africa an opposite social process could be said to be in force: the socially visible public life and admiration as well as social force and authority of (religious) charismatic figures. This is particularly the case within the Pentecostal-Charismatic Christian subsector, where these figures have achieved social wealth and power, enabling many of them to construct and ma…
Apocalyptic Homophobia: Freedom of Religious Expression, Hate Speech, and the Pentecostal Discourse on Same-Sex Relations in Africa
In many African societies, gender roles and sexuality are intensely scrutinized, policed, and often enforced. Frequently, this situation results in perceived deviations being characterized in very strong terms. Many Africans across religious and denominational boundaries seem united in their opposition and criticism of same-sex relationships. In the twenty-first century, criminalization of same-sex relationships has witnessed an uptick across the…
Sacred Surplus and Pentecostal Too-Muchness: The Salvation Economy of African Megachurches
African megachurches may be roughly typlogised into four broad subsets: the prosperity, the Healing/Deliverance, the Personal Empowerment and Apostolic Teaching, and the Prophetic-Healing types. These types share two important features among themselves, the enchantment of popular imagination through the production and dissemination of miracles and the sacredness of, and obsession with, numbers. While African megachurches constitute powerful (poli…
Prosperity, Prophecy and the Covid-19 Pandemic: The Healing Economy of African Pentecostalism
One of the intractable problems of Africa is socioeconomic development. It is a "wicked problem" that has defied decades of tinkering and tweaking of economic policies and government interventions. Like many African governments that succeeded oppressive colonial governments, many religious organizations frequently promise their members the help of divine power to deliver development. African Pentecostalism, especially the prosperity variant, has …
Everything is Plastic: The Faith of Unity Movement and the Making of a Post-Catholic Religion in Uganda
One of David Chidester's long-term fascinations in the academic study of religion is his nuanced scrutiny of the sensorial features of contemporary religious life. Chidester uses an approach of multi-sensorial imagination of matter to investigate the plasticity and elasticity of religion to innovate and accommodate changing religious and spiritual desires and how such adaptions ensure the popularity of religious participation in a contemporary, t…
Emplacing god: The social worlds of miracle cities – perspectives from Nigeria and Uganda
This paper explores the complex, dynamic and multifaceted transformations in Africa’s religious field through a critical and comparative investigation of two high contrast prayer camps (Miracle Cities), their histories, functions and activities and ownership. The study is based on the ethnography of Prayer Camps in two African cities, Lagos (Nigeria) and Kampala (Uganda), one Pentecostal in orientation, the other, neo-traditionalist in character.…
Pentecostal Apocalypticism: Hate speech, contested citizenship, and religious discourses on same-sex relations in Nigeria
A key issue confronting African Christianity in the 21st century is the way to negotiate the discourses and practices surrounding same-sex relationships against the context of increased advocacy for the rights to sexual expression. Same-sex relationships have found their most scathing criticisms and opposition from within African Protestant communities, particularly Anglican and Pentecostal organisations, where prominent religious leaders have vo…
Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy, and Theorizing the African Religious Context
When The Sacred Canopy was published fifty years ago, the author hardly envisaged that what he framed as “the final sociological consequence [of] an understanding of religion as a historical product” (Berger 1967, vi) was only a few bricks in the foundation of a vibrant debate about the future of religion and pathways to understanding and studying socio-religious transformation in contemporary society. From its publication until the 1980s—that is…
Bourdieu in Africa: Exploring the Dynamics of Religious Fields
Bourdieu in Africa: Exploring the Dynamics of Religious Fields offers a view of religions as social games played by interested actors. Analyzing practices as strategic moves, this critical approach conceptualizes the religious field as relations of exchange and competition between experts and laity, and explores how the actors’ habitus, including religious beliefs, serve to misrecognize and thus legitimize relations of power within the religious …
The Cambridge History of Religions in Latin America
The Cambridge History of Religions in Latin America covers religious history in Latin America from pre-Conquest times until the present. This publication is important; first, because of the historical and contemporary centrality of religion in the life of Latin America; second, for the rapid process of religious change which the region is undergoing; and third, for the region's religious distinctiveness in global comparative terms, which contribu…
Holy hustlers, schism, and prophecy: Apostolic reformation in Botswana
2016). Holy hustlers, schism, and prophecy: apostolic reformation in Botswana. Anthropology Southern Africa: Vol. 39, No. 2, pp. 163-165
Building God's City: The Political Economy of Prayer Camps in Nigeria
The proliferation of religious spaces is a relatively recent development in Nigeria. Nowadays there are more than a hundred religious camps belonging to different religious groups in the country. The most popular of these camps, the Redemption Camp of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, is located 42 kilometres outside of Lagos and measures several thousand acres. Although initially not designed as such, developments in and around Lagos have co…
Religion on the Move! New Dynamics of Religious Expansion in a Globalizing World, written by Afe Adogame and Shobana Shankar
Prophets for Profit: Pentecostal Authority and Fiscal Accountability among Nigerian Churches in South Africa
God Unlimited: Economic Transformations of Contemporary Nigerian Pentecostalism
The last three decades of the 20th century was a period of momentous social, economic, political and religious turmoil in many African societies. Nigeria is a prime example. Although the economic transformations of this period were perhaps bigger than other kinds of change, religious shifts probably had more remarkable social effects. One particularly noticeable development was the emergence of a new strand of Pentecostalism that serves as a sour…
Banishing Miracles: Politics and Policies of Religious Broadcasting in Nigeria
Nigeria is home to a vibrant media marketplace. Excluding more than a hundred titles of daily tabloids and weekly newspapers, there is a densely saturated broadcast industry consisting of radio, television (terrestrial, satellite, pay per view and cable channels) and video-film in Nigeria. Since the deregulation of the broadcast industry in 1992 with the issuing of broadcast licences to individuals and groups, the country has witnessed a burgeoni…
Advertising God: Nigerian Christian Video-Films and the Power of Consumer Culture
Pentecostalism in Nigeria is increasingly altering the way that those who are attracted in large numbers by its practices and resources perceive their relationship with local culture and material goods. One of the practices of Pentecostalism that has captured popular imagination is the production of Christian video-films. This paper discusses how these popular narratives negotiate both the local worldview and the cultural marketplace. It argues t…
Building God's City: The Political Economy of Prayer Camps in Nigeria
The proliferation of religious spaces is a relatively recent development in Nigeria. Nowadays there are more than a hundred religious camps belonging to different religious groups in the country. The most popular of these camps, the Redemption Camp of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, is located 42 kilometres outside of Lagos and measures several thousand acres. Although initially not designed as such, developments in and around Lagos have co…
Prosperity, Prophecy and the Covid-19 Pandemic: The Healing Economy of African Pentecostalism
One of the intractable problems of Africa is socioeconomic development. It is a "wicked problem" that has defied decades of tinkering and tweaking of economic policies and government interventions. Like many African governments that succeeded oppressive colonial governments, many religious organizations frequently promise their members the help of divine power to deliver development. African Pentecostalism, especially the prosperity variant, has …
Emplacing god: The social worlds of miracle cities – perspectives from Nigeria and Uganda
This paper explores the complex, dynamic and multifaceted transformations in Africa’s religious field through a critical and comparative investigation of two high contrast prayer camps (Miracle Cities), their histories, functions and activities and ownership. The study is based on the ethnography of Prayer Camps in two African cities, Lagos (Nigeria) and Kampala (Uganda), one Pentecostal in orientation, the other, neo-traditionalist in character.…
Pentecostal Apocalypticism: Hate speech, contested citizenship, and religious discourses on same-sex relations in Nigeria
A key issue confronting African Christianity in the 21st century is the way to negotiate the discourses and practices surrounding same-sex relationships against the context of increased advocacy for the rights to sexual expression. Same-sex relationships have found their most scathing criticisms and opposition from within African Protestant communities, particularly Anglican and Pentecostal organisations, where prominent religious leaders have vo…
Secularizing the Eschaton: Pentecostal Miracle Cities as Afrotopias
While the secularization of Europe went hand-in-hand with anticlericalism, in Africa an opposite social process could be said to be in force: the socially visible public life and admiration as well as social force and authority of (religious) charismatic figures. This is particularly the case within the Pentecostal-Charismatic Christian subsector, where these figures have achieved social wealth and power, enabling many of them to construct and ma…
Everything is Plastic: The Faith of Unity Movement and the Making of a Post-Catholic Religion in Uganda
One of David Chidester's long-term fascinations in the academic study of religion is his nuanced scrutiny of the sensorial features of contemporary religious life. Chidester uses an approach of multi-sensorial imagination of matter to investigate the plasticity and elasticity of religion to innovate and accommodate changing religious and spiritual desires and how such adaptions ensure the popularity of religious participation in a contemporary, t…
Banishing Miracles: Politics and Policies of Religious Broadcasting in Nigeria
Nigeria is home to a vibrant media marketplace. Excluding more than a hundred titles of daily tabloids and weekly newspapers, there is a densely saturated broadcast industry consisting of radio, television (terrestrial, satellite, pay per view and cable channels) and video-film in Nigeria. Since the deregulation of the broadcast industry in 1992 with the issuing of broadcast licences to individuals and groups, the country has witnessed a burgeoni…
Advertising God: Nigerian Christian Video-Films and the Power of Consumer Culture
Pentecostalism in Nigeria is increasingly altering the way that those who are attracted in large numbers by its practices and resources perceive their relationship with local culture and material goods. One of the practices of Pentecostalism that has captured popular imagination is the production of Christian video-films. This paper discusses how these popular narratives negotiate both the local worldview and the cultural marketplace. It argues t…
Globalisation of Pentecostalism in Africa: Evidence from the Redeemed Christian church of God (Rccg), Nigeria
The préoccupation with the globalisation discourse in recent times has often over- looked events in Africa as marginal to broad processes of global transformations. Africa is seen as a continent with a ‘recipient culture’, with little to contribute to the rest of the world. The turmoil that gripped Africa in the last three decades of the twentieth century brought with it socio-cultural changes. One aspect of these changes for many societies of no…
Los expertos en religión y la producción de un conocimiento (religioso) translocal: El caso de la Iglesia Cristiana Redimida de Dios (RCCG), Nigeria
This article discusses how religion (religious ideas, knowledge and practices) is one of the most successful exportation products of contemporary Nigeria. This situation reflects some religious innovations that try to grapple with the social, cultural, economic and political realities of the times. In the last three decades of the twentieth century, there was an upsurge of religious consciousness and a proliferation of religious groups and worshi…
Piety and profit: Accounting for money in West African Pentecostalism (Part 1)
The study of mobilisation and organisation of money in churches is not new: it is actually a staple of Western Christianity where documentation is a routine practice and openness is accepted as a norm of existence for most religious bodies. The issue of resource mobilisation within Pentecostalism in Africa is however a blind spot. This article is a new empirical investigation of pentecostal mobilisation and the organisation of money in West Afric…
Yoruba in Diaspora: An African Church in London
Los pastores y la responsabilidad en el manejo de las finanzas en la iglesia pentecostal del África Occidental
En el Repositorio Institucional Séneca están depositados materiales en formato digital fruto de la producción científica o académica, de esta manera permite almacenar, difundir y preservar información de vital importancia
Reverse Mission or Asylum Christianity? A Nigerian Church in Europe
Africans and the Politics of Popular Culture
God Unlimited: Economic Transformations of Contemporary Nigerian Pentecostalism
The last three decades of the 20th century was a period of momentous social, economic, political and religious turmoil in many African societies. Nigeria is a prime example. Although the economic transformations of this period were perhaps bigger than other kinds of change, religious shifts probably had more remarkable social effects. One particularly noticeable development was the emergence of a new strand of Pentecostalism that serves as a sour…
Banishing Miracles: Politics and Policies of Religious Broadcasting in Nigeria
Nigeria is home to a vibrant media marketplace. Excluding more than a hundred titles of daily tabloids and weekly newspapers, there is a densely saturated broadcast industry consisting of radio, television (terrestrial, satellite, pay per view and cable channels) and video-film in Nigeria. Since the deregulation of the broadcast industry in 1992 with the issuing of broadcast licences to individuals and groups, the country has witnessed a burgeoni…
Prophets for Profit: Pentecostal Authority and Fiscal Accountability among Nigerian Churches in South Africa
Religion on the Move! New Dynamics of Religious Expansion in a Globalizing World, written by Afe Adogame and Shobana Shankar
Bourdieu in Africa: Exploring the Dynamics of Religious Fields
Bourdieu in Africa: Exploring the Dynamics of Religious Fields offers a view of religions as social games played by interested actors. Analyzing practices as strategic moves, this critical approach conceptualizes the religious field as relations of exchange and competition between experts and laity, and explores how the actors’ habitus, including religious beliefs, serve to misrecognize and thus legitimize relations of power within the religious …
The Cambridge History of Religions in Latin America
The Cambridge History of Religions in Latin America covers religious history in Latin America from pre-Conquest times until the present. This publication is important; first, because of the historical and contemporary centrality of religion in the life of Latin America; second, for the rapid process of religious change which the region is undergoing; and third, for the region's religious distinctiveness in global comparative terms, which contribu…
Holy hustlers, schism, and prophecy: Apostolic reformation in Botswana
2016). Holy hustlers, schism, and prophecy: apostolic reformation in Botswana. Anthropology Southern Africa: Vol. 39, No. 2, pp. 163-165
Building God's City: The Political Economy of Prayer Camps in Nigeria
The proliferation of religious spaces is a relatively recent development in Nigeria. Nowadays there are more than a hundred religious camps belonging to different religious groups in the country. The most popular of these camps, the Redemption Camp of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, is located 42 kilometres outside of Lagos and measures several thousand acres. Although initially not designed as such, developments in and around Lagos have co…
Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy, and Theorizing the African Religious Context
When The Sacred Canopy was published fifty years ago, the author hardly envisaged that what he framed as “the final sociological consequence [of] an understanding of religion as a historical product” (Berger 1967, vi) was only a few bricks in the foundation of a vibrant debate about the future of religion and pathways to understanding and studying socio-religious transformation in contemporary society. From its publication until the 1980s—that is…
Everything is Plastic: The Faith of Unity Movement and the Making of a Post-Catholic Religion in Uganda
One of David Chidester's long-term fascinations in the academic study of religion is his nuanced scrutiny of the sensorial features of contemporary religious life. Chidester uses an approach of multi-sensorial imagination of matter to investigate the plasticity and elasticity of religion to innovate and accommodate changing religious and spiritual desires and how such adaptions ensure the popularity of religious participation in a contemporary, t…
Emplacing god: The social worlds of miracle cities – perspectives from Nigeria and Uganda
This paper explores the complex, dynamic and multifaceted transformations in Africa’s religious field through a critical and comparative investigation of two high contrast prayer camps (Miracle Cities), their histories, functions and activities and ownership. The study is based on the ethnography of Prayer Camps in two African cities, Lagos (Nigeria) and Kampala (Uganda), one Pentecostal in orientation, the other, neo-traditionalist in character.…
Pentecostal Apocalypticism: Hate speech, contested citizenship, and religious discourses on same-sex relations in Nigeria
A key issue confronting African Christianity in the 21st century is the way to negotiate the discourses and practices surrounding same-sex relationships against the context of increased advocacy for the rights to sexual expression. Same-sex relationships have found their most scathing criticisms and opposition from within African Protestant communities, particularly Anglican and Pentecostal organisations, where prominent religious leaders have vo…
Sacred Surplus and Pentecostal Too-Muchness: The Salvation Economy of African Megachurches
African megachurches may be roughly typlogised into four broad subsets: the prosperity, the Healing/Deliverance, the Personal Empowerment and Apostolic Teaching, and the Prophetic-Healing types. These types share two important features among themselves, the enchantment of popular imagination through the production and dissemination of miracles and the sacredness of, and obsession with, numbers. While African megachurches constitute powerful (poli…
Prosperity, Prophecy and the Covid-19 Pandemic: The Healing Economy of African Pentecostalism
One of the intractable problems of Africa is socioeconomic development. It is a "wicked problem" that has defied decades of tinkering and tweaking of economic policies and government interventions. Like many African governments that succeeded oppressive colonial governments, many religious organizations frequently promise their members the help of divine power to deliver development. African Pentecostalism, especially the prosperity variant, has …
Apocalyptic Homophobia: Freedom of Religious Expression, Hate Speech, and the Pentecostal Discourse on Same-Sex Relations in Africa
In many African societies, gender roles and sexuality are intensely scrutinized, policed, and often enforced. Frequently, this situation results in perceived deviations being characterized in very strong terms. Many Africans across religious and denominational boundaries seem united in their opposition and criticism of same-sex relationships. In the twenty-first century, criminalization of same-sex relationships has witnessed an uptick across the…
Kwasi Wiredu: Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Religion (1998)
Nigeria’s Election: Six Dangers of Mixing Religion with Politics (2023)
Sociology (19 works) · Political science (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Religion, Society, and Development (16 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Politics (11 works) · Religious studies (11 works) · Religion and Sociopolitical Dynamics in Nigeria (10 works) · Theology (10 works) · History (8 works)