Church C Revival in Kakata

So this past weekend I went to the last 3 days of a week-long revival put on by Church C in Kakata, a ‘city’ about 45 km north of Monrovia (although given the state of the roads, the need to change cars twice, and the traffic out of Monrovia, it takes a good 3 hours to get there in a share taxi). Rev. D has been going to Kakata for 10 years now, and he’s wildly popular because of his preaching on demons, witches, curses, etc, and because he is considered to be especially powerful in his deliverance. So, this revival was a big deal for Kakata. By day the Rev. and his praise team would go to small churches and deliver people for hours. By night the Rev. and his praise team, along with every Pentecostal-ish pastor, preacher, evangelist, etc in Kakata, would lead a 5 hour service.
The pastor had arranged for me to stay in a guest house across the street from the house where he would be staying. This meant that I spent nearly every waking hour with the Reverend, his assistant pastor, and the lovely Pentecostal woman who owned the house. They insisted that I eat no less than 5 meals a day. Liberian food is good. Its greasy, its spicy, always involves meat, and if rice isn’t involved its literally not considered ‘food’. However, you’re not always sure what exactly the meat is that you’re eating, especially when you are in more rural areas. Any meat that is not goat, cow, pig, chicken or fish is called ‘bush meat’ here- I’m going to refer to it as ‘mystery meat’ because when I think of bush meat I automatically picture a giant rat. (Which is quite possibly the mystery meat being eaten). Anyhow, I ate a ton of it quite willingly and never got sick at all. They also force-fed me juice. (You’re not allowed to refuse anything offered to you. If you refuse, then the person who has offered it to you will be very offended. In the Pentecostal circle, at least, the logic is that if you refuse something, then you might as well tell the person offering you the item in question that you do not want it because you think they are giving you an object possessed by demons, and that they are a agent of Satan. If you accept the object, they you are essentially saying, ‘Thank you for the blessing’; because the person has given you the blessing, then they will receive an even greater blessing in return, one day.) So they offered me juice, always, but when they offered me juice, it wasn’t just a glass of juice. They would get a 1-litre box, open it, and bring it to me with a glass. When I didn’t finish the box, they would ask what was the matter, and what were they going to do with an opened box of juice? (Because of lack of constant electricity, refrigerators are not very reliable) So, I drank a lot of juice, too.
In our spare time, we would watch DVDs of American Pentecostal conferences, revivals, crusades, etc, many from the early 90s. We also watched what I consider to be African Pentecostal pornography: one hour of gospel music sung by 6 attractive, conservatively dressed (but still highlighting their womanly figures), Jesus-loving Pentecostals at a massive Christian crusade. When this DVD was on (and it was playing on more than 6 separate occasions), every man in the room looked at the television in complete concentration. And this music is CRAP, I’m telling you, especially when you consider the incredible sounds and rhythms that West Africa creates.
So at the nightly revivals, I was treated as a VIP. I walked into the church (which held a good 500 people) behind the reverend, and took my seat in the VIP section at the front of the church, facing sideways, so that I literally the best view. I was introduced each night, and received a round of applause during which I had to stand up and wave. The services were pretty typical – sermons were about curses, witches, demons, the dangers of Islam, the usual. There was a period before every sermon where they sold merchandise – t-shirts (I bought one that says ‘Destroying the Destroyer of your Destiny, with a picture of an angel standing over a defeated Satan), stickers with Christian messages (ex. ‘Don’t let the devil see your tears’ or ‘I will have financial increase in Jesus’ name’), cassettes of past sermons, laminated cards with various phrases relating to Jesus and salvation, and the favourite item, handkerchiefs with a painted picture of Jesus in his crown of thorns with the words ‘My agony for you’ written on them. Everyone bought them; sometimes two or three. They were fantastic for waving around during songs, and then after 20 minutes of dancing in the hot-as-hell church you could use them to mop the sweat off your face.
On Sunday morning I went to a branch of Church B (part of a large American-based ministry) because the head pastor of that church was at the revival the previous nights and knew E (my research assistant). It was a relatively small church, maybe 50 people, and relatively poor. The service was pretty standard. I had an introduction, after which I was asked to go to the front to ‘say a few words about my relationship with the Lord’. Uhhh. I went to the front, got the microphone and said ‘Praise the Lord’; response: ‘Amen’, and starting mumbling and rambling about how I thank Jesus for the opportunity to come to Liberia and see what amazing things the Pentecostal churches are doing and how everyone has been so kind and welcoming, blah blah blah. It was all true, only I don’t really thank Jesus for that, I thank my massive Stafford Loans. Everyone applauded and I went back to my seat, thankful the attention was away from me for the rest of the service. Wrong. I was invited back to the front so the pastor could pray for me. I faced the front, he put his hand on me and prayed for a good 2 minutes about avoiding car accidents, robberies, demons of sickness and lonliness, etc. Then he spoke in tongues for 30 seconds or so while shaking my head a little bit. It took the power of God to keep me from laughing hysterically, out of sheer embarrassment and the situation generally. So after that I was definitely sure the attention was away from me. Even more wrong. After the sermon was offering time. We did the first offering, like normal. Then, there as a second offering for the guest preacher who had given the sermon. Normal. Then, the head pastor stood up and said, ‘now, we are going to take an offering for our sister Gwen. She is a student and she has come to Liberia to learn more about us. She is not making any money….’ Then I was asked to come to the front, face the congregation, and a song began during which every member of the congregation danced forward, smiling and threw money at my feet. Some people threw 20 LD (5LD is the smallest note; most people will give that in an offering; next is 10 LD – 20LD is about 33 US cents.) At this point, it took the power of God to keep me from crying and/or running out of the building. I have NEVER been so uncomfortable in my entire life. These people are POOR, but they really believe that if they give me money then they will get massive blessings in return. I ended up getting about $10US, which I could definitely not refuse, from people who can hardly feed their families. So, naturally, when they started doing a donation drive 5 minutes later for objects that the church needed, I ‘returned the blessing’ just like the theology suggests. $20 worth of cement and a promise to return to the church later with more, I left. With my stack of money. I think that situation was, paradoxically, both the high point and the low point of my entire life.