Gabon

Almost 75% of the 1.5 million population of the African country of Gabon are Christian, a legacy of the country's French colonial heritage. The remainder—largely immigrants—are Muslim or profess no faith. Christian practices are merged with traditional Bantu tribal beliefs and customs. At the turn of the 21st century, the country has been influenced by a dramatic rise of conversions to Pentecostal Protestant Christianity and by syncretic new religious movements.

The Gabonese Pentecost, like similar movements in other African countries, is characterized by a variety of conversion techniques. Evangelism is a requirement of its members. Signs are posted announcing Pentecostal recruitment activities, including crusades, international conferences, seminars, and Christian films shown in public places. New churches and prayer groups have been created, and some cinemas and nightclubs have been transformed into churches.

A chapel of the Assemblies of God of Gabon was installed on the site of a temple where a syncretic cult called Spiritual Science of the Heart of the Holy Spirit was formerly located (studied by Stanislaw Swiderski). Its founder, Michel Nez-Mba “the Cross,” born in 1914, established the movement after he claimed to have received several calls from God to serve others. He responded to a dream in which he saw Christ on a huge cross inclining toward him. Religious ceremonies (Ngozi) show the syncretic nature of the ritual. According to Swiderski, this cult was an example of various attempts to search for the true face of African spirituality, which was called into question by the colonial era. The movement was poised between the ancestral past and the Western Christian present, and it tried to guide people toward a “de-Westernized” Gabonese culture. The religiosity is fully expressed by the cult of the cross of Christ and the Blessed Virgin. It focuses on eschatology, the final trial, and the eternal life.

After the death of Michel Nez-Mba in 2001, the temple and its objects (the rituals elements) were still in place. But the Pentecostals, in a spirit of defiance, occupied the place. The Assemblies of God of Gabon set out their objectives in the Pastoral Gamba in May 2000, which they called “the quinquennium of the harvest.” Prior to that date, the number of members was in the tens of thousands. The quinquennium of the harvest proposed that the number of members should double by 2005 and that there would be three worship services every Sunday in all the assemblies. Following this plan, a missionary group went to survey the neighborhood at Lalala Libreville, and after they contacted the head of the district, the eldest son and heir of the estate of Michel Nez-Mba, the movement's quarters were given to them. The widow of Michel Nez-Mba, and priestess of the rite of Ombouiri, was opposed to the transfer of property and claimed that if the site was not protected, misfortune would fall on the village. During this confrontation, a member of the missionary team was seriously injured, and some of the family [Page 424]fell ill. But the Pentecostal mission was able to begin its activities on the site.

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