Spiritual Authority and Intimate Control: Churches as Laboratories of Political Obedience

Abstract

This article examines African churches as micro-laboratories of political obedience that subtly train believers in the same dispositions demanded by authoritarian states. Moving beyond crude denunciations of “manipulative pastors,” I draw on participant observation, sermon transcripts and pastoral counselling notes from urban Congolese congregations to show how spiritual authority structures everyday affect.

Building on Scripts of Warfare (Nsiangani, 2022), I argue that many church environments reproduce the triad identified in his household analysis: sacrificial subject, charismatic abuser and complicit bystander. 

However, whereas Nsiangani focuses on family systems, I show how liturgical scripts, confessional practices and miracle narratives habituate believers to accept opaque decision-making, retroactive justification of harm and the redirection of anger away from leaders toward invisible enemies (demons, witches, “Jezebels”) or their own families when internalized bias is at play. 

I connect these dynamics to the long history of religious legitimation of empire described by Mawete (2022), tracing a line from Papal Bulls to prosperity-gospel covenants. The article concludes that churches can also become counter-laboratories of disobedience when they intentionally re-write liturgical and narrative scripts in the direction of mutual accountability and shared discernment, suggesting a research agenda on “de-imperial liturgies.”