Nathanael J. Homewood is a Yang Visiting Scholar in World Christianity at Harvard Divinity School for the 2023-24 academic year. His research focuses on Christianity in Africa, especially Ghanaian Pentecostalism, and the large-scale connections between Western and non-Western Christianity in America.
The Path to World Christianity
I grew up in a family whose legacy was rooted in missions. My grandmother grew up in China as a child of missionaries and Bible runners. My father grew up in India, also a child of missionaries. Although I have critiques of elements of missionization, Christianity in my household was always a global conversation rather than a Western one.
When I was an undergraduate, I spent five months in South Africa and Zimbabwe. And while I knew intellectually that the demographics of Christianity had shifted dramatically, it was here when I first witnessed the on-the-ground realities and simply became obsessed with how African Christianity could and should reshape how we think about Christianity.
This insight was nurtured and cultivated during my graduate work, both at Yale Divinity School and at Rice University. I was so fortunate to learn, study, and sit with some of the giants of the field: Lamin Sanneh, Jonathan Bonk, Andrew Walls, Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, and Elias Bongmba. While my interests often diverted from theirs, the work they did in literally constructing a field that continues to grow and evolve was something that I could see myself spending my life thinking about and contributing to.
Seductive Spirits
This month, my first book, Seductive Spirits: Deliverance, Demons, and Sexual Worldmaking in Ghanaian Pentecostalism, will be released by Stanford University Press.
This work is a result of my fascination with Pentecostalism in general and, perhaps more specifically, the creativity of Ghanaian Pentecostalism. I spent nearly a year doing ethnography in Accra, Ghana, and found Ghanaian Pentecostalism creating worlds thought impossible. Ghanaian Pentecostalism challenges how we should think—not just about Christianity, but thinking itself! It provides alternatives to traditional Western thought, including new forms of sociality and an emphasis on the senses and embodiment rather than propositional beliefs.
One of the ways this occurs is through the prominent ritual of deliverance or exorcism. This was the big surprise in doing the ethnography for the book. I never planned on spending any time thinking about demons, but by regularly encountering the centrality of demons in deliverance, I became really interested in the way that demons and people's beliefs, practices, and engagement with demons upset so many orders of thought that are often held sacred but that need to be challenged. In Pentecostal deliverance, I see demons as part of decolonial agitation and, in this book, challenging modern/colonial Christian constructs of sexuality.
The global influence of these rituals is also interesting. Although the book focuses on deliverance ministries in the greater Accra area, the beliefs and practices of this community—such as the demons and deliverance rituals—are very much global in West African diasporic populations and, perhaps more notably, significantly influencing and shaping Pentecostalism worldwide.
The Yang Scholars Program
I was drawn to the Yang Visiting Scholars in World Christianity program for so many reasons. First, I have enormous respect for so many scholars at HDS whose work—and not just scholars of world Christianity—has profoundly shaped my own. Second, the resources here are obviously incredible. Third, I am really excited about teaching in a divinity school context. I've always been interested in teaching in a classroom with varied perspectives, ideas, and goals, both in the classroom and in life goals. And that richness at a divinity school is really unparalleled.
As expected, teaching at HDS has been the gift I hoped it would be. I'm teaching a course called “The Medium and the Mission: Technology and Communication in Global Christianity.” There are about 15 of us in the class, and we're exploring the many diverse mediums, from the telegram to Zoom and TikTok, through which Christianity travels around the globe—to save and heal, to touch, prophesy, proselytize, and connect Christian communities in diverse places. It's just been an unbelievable gift.
And the students are a gift. I tell them this, probably annoyingly so, almost weekly. They bring their incredible life experiences, unbelievable analytical acumen, worldviews, and faith commitments to our conversations with the goal of a more just and better world. Every week is moving, thought-provoking, and has challenged me to consider not just theoretical questions but some of my own commitments to the material.
Part of the draw, and, admittedly a bit of a silly reason, was my desire to escape the Houston heat and experience all four seasons again!
Advice for Future Yang Scholars
Honestly, I have absolutely no advice for applicants, because I have no idea how I was so lucky to end up here. I have walked around worried that someone might approach me and say, “I'm so sorry. We got the wrong person.” I would say, however, that I have advice for future Yang Scholars. One is to delve into the resources as much as you can: the library, the communities, your colleagues, and the other Yang Scholars. I also think future Yang Scholars should tap into the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) in whatever ways they can because the worldwide focus of CSWR makes it perfect for studying world Christianity.
HDS is such an extraordinary place where the study of world Christianity does not need to remain in its historical instantiations, but can take those big theoretical risks and really demonstrate theoretical creativity, moving away from some of the arguments that have grown stale, and renewing and pushing the field in new and exciting directions. My advice to future Yang Scholars is to take advantage of all those things I mentioned that make Harvard the perfect place for their own work in stretching the boundaries of this still nascent field.
—Interview conducted and edited by Suan Sonna, HDS news correspondent
Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of three interviews with the 2023-24 Yang Visiting Scholars in World Christianity at Harvard Divinity School. Read an interview with Gina Zurlo here.