The Christian Century

For many African churches, the all-night vigil is a centerpiece of devotion and is not limited to any particular season. The event commonly begins at 9 or 10 p.m., usually on a Friday, and runs until four or five the following morning. Particularly among the independent or African-instituted churches, prayer is accompanied by acts of healing and exorcism. These services commonly draw thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of people. Night vigils also flourish among the booming evangelical and Pentecostal churches of South Korea, where hundreds of thousands pass their Friday nights in prayer and praise. In terms of timing, endurance and mass appeal, the closest Western parallels to these Christian celebrations would be found in dance clubs and rave parties in major cities.

As part of the astonishing cinema boom known as Nollywood, some 300 Nigerian producers churn out around 2,000 films each year. Their market of almost 150 million people makes this the world’s third-largest film industry, after Hollywood and the Indian Bollywood. The films go straight to DVD or VCD and sell hundreds of thousands of copies in Nigeria alone, not to mention circulation among the Nigerian disapora in North America and Western Europe. Because videos are passed on from hand to hand, actual viewership is impossible to determine. Explicitly Christian videos make up a large part of the output, which is not surprising when we realize that perhaps 45 percent of Nigerians follow this faith.