Dr. Abimbola Adelakun
Abimbola Adunni Adelakun teaches in the African and African Diaspora Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin. She researches Pentecostalism, performance, and the politics of spirituality. Adelakun earned a PhD in Performance as Public Practice in the Theatre and Dance Department of the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of the novel, Under the Brown Rusted Roofs (Kraft Books) and writes a weekly column, Thursdays with Abimbola Adelakun, for PUNCH Newspapers. She has (co-)authored several journal articles.
Her forthcoming book, Performing the Times: Power, Identity, and Nigerian Pentecostalism will be published in 2022.
Supported Project:
Dr. Abimbola Adelakun, “Sexual Abuse: The Role of Pentecostal Pastors in Healing Traumatized Victims”
This project will shed critical light on the role pastors of the Pentecostal church denomination play in the healing and rehabilitation of young sexual abuse victims who want to move past traumatic experiences but lack the necessary resources. While these pastors are not formally trained for such duties, the moral weight they bring to such interventions helps to fill the vacancies left by formal institutions in Nigeria. These pastors themselves are not unaware of the impact of their roles in helping people through their distress. This project will therefore engage some of the Pentecostal pastors, sexual abuse survivors who have gone through the gamut of therapy carried out by pastors, and trained therapists/counselors in academic/ medical institutions. We will look at the unorthodox ways that issues of sexual abuses are brought to the fore, and the innovative ways they have tried to help people heal. Working with all these people, we will highlight the important gap they fill, and also discover the discrepancies in their discrete performances of healing for the sexually abused. We will also propose a reconciliation in the activities of these discrete spheres so that the services provided by pastors will be more formalized.
