The West African Revival: Faith Tabernacle Congregation on the Guinea Coast, 1918-1929

by Adam Mohr

Overview

In eleven short years, from 1918 to 1929, Faith Tabernacle Congregation, a small divine healing church in Philadelphia, spread over the Guinea Coast, garnering over 250 branches and nearly 11,000 members without ever sending missionaries from the United States. Communications were made solely through the exchange of literature, letters, money, and the occasional radiogram across the Atlantic. This rapid expanse constituted a great revival: the West African Revival.

In The West African Revival, Adam Mohr compiles historical documents from Faith Tabernacle’s archive in Philadelphia as well as several other churches that branched from Faith Tabernacle in West Africa (mainly Ghana and Nigeria) and the United States such as the First-Century Gospel Church, the Apostolic Church, the Christ Apostolic Church, and the Church of Pentecost. Writing for an audience of scholars from the fields of African Christianity, Global Christianity, and African Studies, Mohr engages literature from the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919, African Traditional Religion (predominantly anti-witchcraft cults), the relationship of capitalism to Christianity, political and social conflict, and early Pentecostalism in West Africa.

Significantly, the West African Revival was the predecessor to Pentecostalism in West Africa— Ghana and Nigeria particularly. Mohr’s findings compel scholars to rethink the historical relationship of African indigenous churches to Pentecostalism in West Africa in addition to the historical relationship between South African Zionism and Nigerian Aladura.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781481318655
Publisher:	Baylor University Press
Publication date:	08/15/2023
Series:	Studies in World Christianity
Pages:	244
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.96(d)

About the Author

Adam Mohr is Senior Lecturer in the Critical Writing Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The West African Revival

1. Out of Zion, 1896-1918

2. The Spanish Flu

3. Anti-witchcraft

4. Christian Capitalism

5. Persecution

6. Pentecostalism, 1925-1953

7. Historical Connections

Conclusion: African Christianity in Philadelphia

What People are Saying About This

Emma Wild-Wood

West African Christianity today is powerful, public and, often, pentecostal. Mohr explains why in this fascinating account of a revival prompted by the flu pandemic of 1918-19. With verve and insight, he shows how transnational connections, economic strain, divine healing, and moral matters formed the Faith Tabernacle, the predecessor of many Pentecostal churches. His careful research reveals networks and connections that have previously been overlooked.

J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu

Adam Mohr very brilliantly fills an existing gap between Pentecostalism in West Africa and the important healing movement called the Faith Tabernacle Church. This is no ordinary tome of the roots of African Pentecostalism, but a well-researched critical piece which, historically speaking, simply had to be written.

Benjamin N. Lawrance

In a remarkably timely work, Adam Mohr recasts the early twentieth-century history of African religious revivals with a compelling narration of the Faith Tabernacle Congregation. Global pandemics and religious fervor have regularly progressed hand-in-glove. In his masterly The West African Revival, Mohr transforms our understanding of a regional, transatlantic, and transnational phenomenon, exploring faith healing, disease, modernist reform, witchcraft, and counter-colonial socio-political upheaval. Scholars of religion, health, tradition, and colonialism will relish the author’s provocative and authoritative perspective, subtly shaped by the experience of COVID19.