Homosexuality, Created Bodies and Queer Fantasies in a Nigerian Deliverance Church
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Authors
Publication Date
2020Journal Title
Journal of Religion in Africa
ISSN
0022-4200
Publisher
Brill Academic Publishers
Volume
50
Issue
3-4
Pages
249-277
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Richman, N. (2020). Homosexuality, Created Bodies and Queer Fantasies in a Nigerian Deliverance Church. Journal of Religion in Africa, 50 (3-4), 249-277. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700666-12340192
Abstract
In recent years the use of ‘gay cure’ therapies by religions has become a major public controversy in the West. Deliverance, or exorcism, is pointed to as an example of a Christian practice used to try and change a person’s sexuality. Pentecostal churches specialising in deliverance have become particularly popular on the African continent in the last few decades, where beliefs that homosexuality is immoral and un-African are also widespread. At the same time, public discourse about African Christian attitudes to sexuality in the West tends to misunderstand the way religion contributes to cultures of heteronormativity in Africa. This article analyses how African deliverance churches view same-sex relations by investigating a large Nigerian deliverance church publicly accused of practising conversion therapies. It argues that the church’s views on homosexuality derive from its theological understanding of human creation, and that there is more scope for queer expression than first appears.
Keywords
gay-conversion therapies, Africa, homophobia, gay rights, deliverance, Pentecostalism, spiritual warfare, African sexuality
Sponsorship
Wellcome Trust [Grant number 1033344/Z/13/Z]
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/15700666-12340192
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/330751
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