"Everything is double-double". A study of charismatic faith practice in Kampala, Uganda

Master's thesis submitted at Department of Social Anthropology, spring 2014.

By: Unni Espenes Kiwanuka
Supervisor: Professor Annelin Eriksen


This thesis describes the growth of charismatic churches in Kampala, Uganda, as the city continues to be on the frontier of modernity in the region.

After years of political instability, the 1986 shift of government led to an increasing participation and affiliation with the international community. Pentecostalism came to shape the initial changes in the religious landscape in a country during the 1980s at a time when a great majority of people practices their faith in the Catholic and Protestant church. Since then the charismatic approach have come to be increasingly important as the churches expand in numbers of attendances and diversity of expression .Through their emphasis on the close and intimate relations between God and Man, these churches have come to be a dynamic element moving between cultural logics and the aspirations and access to modernity.

In this thesis I describe critical points in which the expressions of charismatic practices comes to be informed by both.