A Decolonial Perspective on the Practice of Unveiling Tombstones in Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches in South Africa
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)
I was happy with the initial draft, and this draft has improved to factor in the comments from other reviewers.
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
The author has revised the article as requested. It just needs some proofreading for language clarity.
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
I did not see the first reviewers' comments and hence could not compare whether their comments on the first submission were met adequately. However, as it is now, the article seems to me to be an original contribution to the discourse and consists of a coherent and cogent argument. I suggest that it can be published although some editing is still required.
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The author needs to problematize the idea of ancestral worship. many African theologians have rejected this approach to ancestral veneration (John Mbiti, John Pobee, Gabriel Setiloane, Kwame Bediako, Charles Nyamiti, Laurent Magesa, Mercy Oduyoye, Tinyiko Maluleke). Bediako's idea of desacralisation of ancestors might strengthen the argument for commemoration and overcome the dichotomy the author has created - between veneration and commemoration. It should be located in the original debate on whether Africans worship ancestors or venerate them. generally, most African theologians, especially Setiloane (see The Image of God Among the Sotho-Tswana. By Gabriel M. Setiloane. Rotterdam: A. A. Balkema, 1976), argue that ancestors do not become what they were not before death. They are humans and remain human in the afterlife. Therefore, they cannot be worshipped. The paper will benefit by locating it in the debate on whether ancestors are worshipped or not. This debate was strong in the first two decades of African Theology
As someone coming from a Pentecostal tradition, Assemblies of God for that matter, I am not convinced that this paper is adequately developed to evolve an ancestral commemoration theology which is distinctively pentecostal. The paper makes a general argument that I suspect will not be accepted even among mainline Protestants and Catholics. There are too many issues hanging and need translation (Sanneh and Bediako), inculturation (Magesa), reconstruction (Mugambi) and African women's theology to assist to resolve the impasse the author has created of “ancestral worship or commemoration”.
I have left many comments within the text.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
1. I have made several comments within the texts.
1. The article addresses an important issue that often stirs great controversy among Christians and divides many families. Thus the subject is pertinent today. I recommend that the article be published.
2. However, there are some aspects that I think the article misses and I think footnoting may assist to balance the article's argument:
2.1. While coloniality is a factor towards a negative Christian view towards tombstone unveiling, a balanced account must consider that there are Christians even in White Western contexts that are opposed to memorial services because they feel it is against the Bible. This view has nothing to do with colonialism. This is similar to many Christians who are opposed to saying 'ashes to ashes' in burial ceremonies.
2.2. Although the article has highlighted the colonial perspectives towards tombstone unveiling in Africa, it has not dealt with the cosmology of the neo-Pentecostals - for example, the issue of generational curses - if, according to neo-Pentecostals. our ancestors are the sources of bloodline curses, can we erect tombstones to keep their memory in our lives? Some of the strong opposition to tombstone unveiling has not come from white missionaries - but from modern neo-Pentecostals who want a new life totally separated from their past.
2.3. The article has not adequately considered the ATR perspective of memorial ceremonies that guides and informs African Christians' attitude towards tombstone unveiling, There is a danger of isolating the unveiling of the tombstone from traditional ceremonial processes for which the act of unveiling is only a small part. Many Christians opposed to tombstone unveiling are aware that there are a range of traditional processes and ceremonies that involve some form of consulting/interacting with the dead that take place before the pastors arrive and after they have left.
2.4. Furthermore, many Christians know that it is a futile attempt to limit the unveiling of the tombstone to Christian activities - because death and the grave do not only involve the Christians but the wider family members some of whom they may not be Christian and will want it approached from an ATR perspective. A helpful theological critique of tombstone unveiling must first interpret it from an ATR perspective.
2.5. Sometimes the article makes unnecessary in-between remarks that end up distracting the focus on tombstone unveiling. For example in section 6 Unveiling tombstones in Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches, the discussion on who coined classical Pentecostalism and Fourth Wave, does not add value to the subject of tombstone unveiling. I suggest that focus strictly centre on tombstone unveiling.
3. I suggest that these concerns be addressed in footnotes, instead of making major structural revisions of the article.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The article aims to explore the unveiling of tombstones in South Africa from a decolonial perspective. By doing so, the article encourages a revision of African Pentecostal and Charismatic churches’ approach in their prohibition of this practice. It argues that African Pentecostal prohibition of this practice is the result of a ‘colonised mind’ and a different exegesis would seek to reconcile Biblical accounts with the cultural importance of commemoration of the ancestors in this context. The article seeks to ‘undemonise’ Pentecostal views on African traditional practices, and this is what the author suggests is the work of decolonisation.
Although a focus on decolonisation is worthwhile, the essay contains several weaknesses. Frist, there seems to be some basic contradictions in the line of argumentation. The author suggests that the unveiling of tombstones was a practice copied from White Christians in South Africa (line 79 and 80) and even mission churches held this practice (83). Therefore, the unveiling of tombstones is not necessarily African per se, it suggests that it has colonial origins although it has been embraced by many people in South Africa.
The article assumes that the African Pentecostal and Charismatic condemnation of the practice is the product of a colonised mind, of wanting to separate themselves from an African past. However, it clearly suggests that the practice has colonial origins. Therefore, what is colonial and what is not? The only evidence suggested to make this claim is a MA thesis that suggests that Western influence in the AFM was at the origin of AFM condemnation of this practice. There is no additional context or evidence provided to support and analyse this claim. However, the author later suggests that even historical Pentecostal missionary churches, such as the AoG, seem to have contradictory opinions. There seems to be no consensus about the practice among African Pentecostal and Charismatic practices.
Second, the article seeks to unveil the colonial origins of the prohibition and to discern the distinction between ancestral worship and ancestral commemoration. However, the main methodology used is literary analysis, and the sources provided do not really seem to say much about the issues that the author seeks to unpick. Moreover, the discussion of the sources used needs more rigour. There are several inaccuracies in how the author interprets other authors’ arguments. For example, line 377 when the author attributes to Meyer (1998) that local cultures in Africa ‘need to be rescued from westernization’.
The author also highlights that there is a distinction between erecting and unveiling a tombstone as an ancestral worships and as ancestral commemoration, however the distinction is not made clear in the essay. There isn’t enough evidence to illustrate the differences. The author suggests that what makes it ‘worship’ is when people pray to the ancestors. However, we need more explicit ethnographic details. It seems to me that there is a very fine line between the two, and the argument seems to fall flat.
Given that the idea of decolonisation is at the heart of it, the article needs a more substantial discussion of the literature on decolonisation and how it applies to this context. It would be important to include long-standing debates in the work of decolonisation from other regions, in particular, the work of Walter Mignolo, Maldonado Torres and An Yountae. Although these authors speak from the Latin American context, these voices have been key in shaping debates of decolonisation.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I am not satisfied with the author's revisions.
“some of the strong opposition to tombstone unveiling has not come from white missionaries, but African Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians who, influenced by their cosmology, desire discontinuity from the African religious and cultural past” (p3). This sentence does not make sense. Who’s cosmology? African Pentecostalism feeds on African cosmology. The author needs to familiarise themselves with the literature on African Pentecostalism.
“Most recently, Kgatle (2019 cf 2020, p.6) has also coined a name for what he calls the fourth wave of South African Pentecostalism, New Prophetic Churches” (p5). You cannot a ascribe concept that was coined by someone else to another author just because they are writing in another context. This is intellectual theft.
Second, there are those who are encouraging participation without proper discernment, only to later discover that they have become syncretistic in the praxis of their faith (p8). The author should define what they mean by syncretism. Other scholars such as Andrew Walls argue that syncretism is a source of African creativity.
Third, the unveiling of tombstones within the African culture and traditional practice 386 is not innocent – it often goes beyond commemoration to become worship (p8). Contradicts the literature review and the argument that ancestors are not worshipped because they remain human beings after death.
The author’s four proposals under the subtheme, “African Christian practice in decoloniality,” are making no new development or contribution to the scholarly debate on ancestors and Christianity in Africa.
“First, we need to resolve a hermeneutic problem that was created by the first Christian missionaries.” This has been proposed and many have tried to resolve it in African theology. The author should demonstrate how to resolve this problem within Pentecostalism rather than re-proposing it.
“Second, it is a praxis matter. Matters of dis/continuity in the encounter between Christianity and African traditional religious practices and culture were never dealt with in a more satisfactory way.” Read Allan Anderson, Spirit-filled world: religious dis/continuity in African Pentecostalism, New York, Macmillan, 2018. And how is the author defining the concept of praxis?
“Thirdly, unfaithfulness and an inability to apply a hermeneutic of discernment by converts to Christianity today.” The author needs to substantiate this point.
“Fourth, among African people there is often a misunderstanding of salvation and disconnection with a powerless faith, especially in dealing with evil and misfortunes in their daily lives.” The author needs to substantiate this point.
The author needs to develop a decolonial theology that can effectively respond to “the practice of unveiling tombstones in Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches in South Africa” rather than make some unsubstantiated proposals.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
Not satisfied with the author's responses. I don't see any original contribution to the knowledge on the subject of ancestral commemoration in African Pentecostalism.
Author Response
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