RT Article
T1 Homosexuality, Created Bodies, and Queer Fantasies in a Nigerian Deliverance Church
JF Journal of religion in Africa
VO 50
IS 3/4
SP 249
OP 277
A1 Richman, Naomi Irit ca. 20./21. Jh.
LA English
PB Brill
YR 2020
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1777581737
AB 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 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.
K1 African sexuality
K1 Spiritual warfare
K1 Pentecostalism
K1 Deliverance
K1 Gay rights
K1 Homophobia
K1 Africa
K1 gay-conversion therapies
DO 10.1163/15700666-12340192