Religious Men in Zambian Public Life: Representations of Pentecostal Pastors in the Media

Using the example of religious men in public life in Zambia, this chapter explores how Pentecostal pastors represented their identity in the media in order to show how the media was a platform for the analysis of the performance of masculinities. It draws on narrative research which was informed by content analysis of the self-representations of religious men in the public media from a Pentecostal masculinity perspective. It shows that the representations of religious men in the media were characterised by multiple identities as pastors, husbands, actors, musicians, radio and TV presenters and aspirants for political leadership. Given that the interaction between Pentecostal religious leaders and the media was dominated by discourses of evangelism and that the representation of the identities of the Pentecostal pastors was closely related to discourses of Pentecostal masculinities, the chapter argues that the media was also a space for communicating what it meant to be not only a Pentecostal man but also a pastor in contemporary times.