Paper short abstract:

Based on fieldwork in Lagos, I explore the framing of the past and the handling of tradition among Nigerian Pentecostals. Using the vector of the museum, I explore the aspirations and tensions among those safeguarding traditional objects and how they locate a problematic past in the present.

Paper long abstract:

Based on fieldwork in Lagos, my research explores the framing of the past and the handling of tradition among Nigerian Pentecostals. I investigate the often fraught relationship between visions of Christianity, modernity and tradition, by studying those working in close proximity with traditional religious and ancestral objects in ethnographic museums and heritage-focused institutions. Since Pentecostals explicitly condemn many past beliefs and their objects as facilitating idolatry, my research draws out the tensions at play and the specific biblical terminology used, the rhetoric employed, and the moral stances adopted by these Christian publics in order to frame its socio-political and cultural effects. I do so by analysing the ethical commitments made in sermons and circulated among members through broadcast and via widely-read literature and how this plays out in the workplace. And I consider how Pentecostal doctrine can affect heritage-making by shaping perceptions of ancestral objects as 'fetish', 'evil' or 'demonic' artefacts but, simultaneously, give utility to those same objects through processes of de-sacralisation, historicisation or aestheticisation within museum spaces. I explore this dynamic among heritage-makers, academics, contemporary curators and artists, as well as private art collectors - all of whom seek to find a place for the past in their lived present and imagined future.