Modern African Pentecostal Discourse: A Textual Analysis of Prayer Texts of a Word of Life Church Senior Pastor

Abstract

As the rampant forces of global capitalism relentlessly turn the world into a global village where the socio-economically weak are mercilessly marginalised, Southern Africa experiences a return to spiritualism as a strategy to ensure a sense of security and prosperity despite a gloomy material prognosis. Modern African Pentecostalism flourishes in Lesotho thanks to a discourse that seeks to portray the spirit world as real, tangible and controllable by the ‘anointed’ human being. This paper looks at the prayer text of a Word of Life Church Senior Pastor and co-founder from a perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis. The paper finds that her text depends heavily on contextualisation through the use of indexical meanings to “naturalise” Modern African Pentecostal discourse.