Revisiting Garrick Braide: Witchcraft, Revival, and the Future of African Pentecostalism

This article revisits the revivalist ministry of Garrick Sokari Braide (1882–1918) as a lens for critically engaging the development of contemporary African Pentecostalism. Braide’s campaigns against charms, moral corruption, and colonial domination constituted a transformative moment in the indigenization of Christianity, demonstrating African capacity to reinterpret the faith in culturally resonant ways. Employing a qualitative, historical-theological methodology, the study engages archival materials, secondary literature, and comparative analysis with present-day Pentecostal movements such as the Redeemed Christian Church of God, the Synagogue Church of All Nations, and Winners Chapel. The analysis traces continuities in themes of healing, prophecy, and mass mobilization, while also highlighting disjunctions such as the commercialization of miracles, celebrity pastoral culture, and heightened witchcraft discourse. By deploying George Orwell’s Animal Farm as a critical allegory, the article interrogates how a liberative project can drift toward reinforcing fear and inequality when its moral vision is silently revised. The study concludes by proposing a recalibration of Pentecostal ethics, calling for a recovery of Braide’s holistic integration of Spirit empowerment, moral accountability, and social justice as a pathway for the renewal of African Pentecostalism in the twenty-first century.