• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
  • HOME
  • ABOUT CHINA
    • NEWS
    • TESTIMONIES
    • OP-EDS
    • FEATURED
    • GLOSSARY
    • CHINA PERSECUTION MAP
  • FROM THE WORLD
    • NEWS GLOBAL
    • TESTIMONIES GLOBAL
    • OP-EDS GLOBAL
    • FEATURED GLOBAL
  • INTERVIEWS
  • DOCUMENTS AND TRANSLATIONS
    • DOCUMENTS
    • THE TAI JI MEN CASE
    • TRANSLATIONS
    • EVENTS
  • ABOUT
  • EDITORIAL BOARD
  • TOPICS

Bitter Winter

A magazine on religious liberty and human rights

three friends of winter
Home / From the World / Featured Global

Inside The Revelation Spiritual Home. 2. A Fast-Growing Spiritual Movement

02/14/2023Massimo Introvigne |

From humble beginnings, TRSH became an expansive spiritual international institution, advocating for the return to African indigenous spirituality.

by Massimo Introvigne

Article 2 of 4. Read article 1.

IMboni during a Tuesday healing service at The Revelation Spiritual Home. Photo by Massimo Introvigne.
IMboni during a Tuesday healing service. Photo by Massimo Introvigne.

At the address 14, Plein Street, Johannesburg, there is an office building with an underground garage. Descending to its lowest floor, we found a space that was once used as a rudimentary place of worship. These were the humble beginnings of The Revelation Spiritual Home (TRSH), founded by Dr. Samuel Radebe.

After the vision at the Vaal River, Radebe (whom I will call from now on IMboni, following his followers’ use) left the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG), the Brazilian Pentecostal movement he had joined at age 16. Several devotees, who had been attending the UCKG services not so much for the Brazilian group’s theology but for IMboni’s healing skills, left together with him and started gathering in the Plein Street garage. The year was 2009, and the success was immediate. Soon, the garage was clearly too small to welcome those who wanted to hear IMboni.

The garage in Plein Street were everything began. Photo by Massimo Introvigne.
The garage in Plein Street were everything began. Photo by Massimo Introvigne.

There are only a few scholars who have paid some attention to the TRSH. Both in the chapter Bettina Malcomess and Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon contributed to the 2016 book “Routes and Rites to the City: Mobility, Diversity and Religious Space in Johannesburg” (London: Palgrave Macmillan), and in the article Wilhelm-Solomon wrote in 2013 for “Writing Invisibility: Conversations on the Hidden City” (Johannesburg: Mail & Guardian), the story is told of how IMboni and his followers rented what had been the Great Synagogue of Johannesburg in Wolmarans Street.

The story of the synagogue is extraordinary in itself, and is visually told at the South African Jewish Museum in Cape Town. In the 19th century, some 40,000 Jews emigrated from Russian-occupied Lithuania to South Africa. Most were poor, but some became millionaires, and the opening of the Byzantine-style synagogue in 1914, designed by the famous Swiss architect Theophile Schaerer (1874–1948), testified to their newly acquired affluence. 80 years later, in 1994, the dwindling number of Jews in Johannesburg and the rising crime rate in the area persuaded the Jews to leave. The synagogue became a venue for fashion shows and other events, until IMboni decided to rent it.

The former Great Synagogue of Johannesburg, now a TRSH home. Photo by Peter Zoehrer.
The former Great Synagogue of Johannesburg, now a TRSH home. Photo by Peter Zoehrer.

Although it is no longer the main center of TRSH, we visited the former synagogue during a Sunday service, and were duly impressed. TRSH should be commended for having restored the building with love, respecting its original Jewish flavor (they did the same, with respect to another Jewish place of worship, when they purchased a beautiful synagogue that was in a state of disrepair and now hosts the Empandeni branch of TRSH). Even more impressive was the fact that the ex-synagogue was literally packed. In front of it, a former Jewish school was adapted as an overflow place of worship. More devotees were accommodated in a nearby courtyard, protected from the sun by brightly-colored umbrellas.

The Empandeni branch (another former synagogue) with its local TRSH branch leader. Photos by Massimo Introvigne.

Even the former synagogue eventually became too small, and TRSH is now completing the construction of a large building in the Marshalltown district of Johannesburg, which is already in use and where it can sit some 5,000 devotees. It also plans to build a mega-indigenous spiritual institution in the Johannesburg neighborhood of Yeoville, where it purchased a ground and won a long legal battle to evict the squatters that had occupied it.

No single building, however, can contain those who want to attend the TRSH Sunday services and Tuesday healing services. We visited several branches, all crowded and in need of using overflow spaces, which in the large Soweto branch included a huge white tent. Overall, there are more than 70 branches in South Africa, Eswatini, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique, with an overseas branch in Newbridge, County Kildare, Ireland, and devotees in the United States who plan to open a place of worship in Atlanta. In the branches we visited, the Sunday service conducted by IMboni in the Marshalltown headquarters was shown on large screens via streaming.

The overflow tent of the Soweto branch… and those who needed to remain outside, as the tent was itself fully occupied. Photos by Massimo Introvigne.
The overflow tent of the Soweto branch… and those who needed to remain outside, as the tent was itself fully occupied. Photos by Massimo Introvigne.

What exactly attracts these crowds, which some have evaluated in the millions (although statistics for new spiritual movements are always both difficult and contentious)? TRSH was once called The Revelation Church of God, and had “churches” and “bishops.” It is now called The Revelation Spiritual Home, and it has “homes” and local “leaders.” The change of terminology attests to an emphasis on the difference between African spirituality and Christianity.

Although IMboni maintains friendly relations with several Christian leaders, he believes that Africans should return to African indigenous spirituality. Christianity, even in its “Africanized” forms, is regarded as a religion imposed on Africans by the white man and the colonial powers.

In fact, IMboni goes one step further. He distances himself not only from Christianity but from religion. IMboni believes that African spirituality cannot be reduced to the European notion of religion, and that serious problems were created when religion tried to replace spirituality in Africa. In traditional Africa, kings ruled by following the advice of spiritual guides. IMboni explains that, to subdue the kings, the colonizers had to get rid of the spiritual guides, and they replaced them with religious advisors.

“The foundation of Africans is African spirituality,” TRSH proclaims. A picture taken inside the former Great Synagogue of Johannesburg by Massimo Introvigne.
“The foundation of Africans is African spirituality,” TRSH proclaims. A picture taken inside the former Great Synagogue of Johannesburg by Massimo Introvigne.

Another misunderstanding, IMboni articulates, is to confuse African spirituality with African traditions. Often, traditions have spiritual roots but just as often these roots are forgotten. IMboni sees spirituality as something that is alive and is capable of changing and adapting, while tradition is just kept. Religion may have the same problems tradition does, and for this reason religious leaders should ideally be led themselves by spiritual leaders. The same is true for traditional healers, and in fact many of them seek the guidance of IMboni and occupy a special corner, with their very distinct spiritual garments, during the TRSH services.

Traditional healers at different TRSH Sunday services. Photos by Massimo Introvigne.
Traditional healers at different TRSH Sunday services. Photos by Massimo Introvigne.
Traditional healers at different TRSH Sunday services. Photos by Massimo Introvigne.
Traditional healers at different TRSH Sunday services. Photos by Massimo Introvigne.

IMboni insists that fighting religions or Christianity is not part of his calling (although his scholars read with interest texts “demythologizing” the traditional story of Jesus Christ as told by the mainline churches). However, as signs in the TRSH “homes” proclaim, “the foundation of Africans is African indigenous spirituality.” IMboni says he “specializes” in African indigenous spirituality, but spirituality is fundamentally the same everywhere. He assists people from all traditions, and sees the future of TRSH as not limited to Africans only.

Tagged With: South Africa, The Revelation Spiritual Home

Massimo Introvigne
Massimo Introvigne

Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio.  From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.

www.cesnur.org/

Related articles

  • Inside The Revelation Spiritual Home. 3. Walking on Two Legs, African Indigenous Spirituality and Economic Empowerment

    Inside The Revelation Spiritual Home. 3. Walking on Two Legs, African Indigenous Spirituality and Economic Empowerment

  • Rastafarians: South Africa “Private Marijuana” Bill Fails to Cover Religious Use

    Rastafarians: South Africa “Private Marijuana” Bill Fails to Cover Religious Use

  • Inside The Revelation Spiritual Home. 4. Opposition

    Inside The Revelation Spiritual Home. 4. Opposition

  • Inside The Revelation Spiritual Home. 1. The Path of IMboni

    Inside The Revelation Spiritual Home. 1. The Path of IMboni

Keep Reading

  • The Great Cult Scare in Argentina and the Buenos Aires Yoga School. 1. Raiding an Old Ladies’ Cafe
    The Great Cult Scare in Argentina and the Buenos Aires Yoga School. 1. Raiding an Old Ladies’ Cafe

    On August 12, 2022, fully armed SWAT team police raided a cafeteria and some fifty private homes of students of what they claimed was a criminal “cult.”

  • Argentina: How the Jesus Christians Defeated Pablo Salum and PROTEX
    Argentina: How the Jesus Christians Defeated Pablo Salum and PROTEX

    In 2022, the leading Argentinian anti-cultist and the controversial anti-trafficking prosecutorial office were told by a federal judge that their accusations against a “cult” were false.

  • Second-Generation Unification Church Believers Discriminated in Japan. 3. Media Slander Leads to Discrimination
    Second-Generation Unification Church Believers Discriminated in Japan. 3. Media Slander Leads to Discrimination

    Because of the media campaign after the Abe assassination, some young believers had their job offers cancelled, lost their jobs, and were divorced by their spouses.

  • Loup Blanc. 1. The Making of a (Jailed) Shaman
    Loup Blanc. 1. The Making of a (Jailed) Shaman

    French media have published dozens of articles on Cyrille Adam (Loup Blanc) after he was accused of sexual abuse and arrested in 2021. Who is he?

Primary Sidebar

Support Bitter Winter

Learn More

Follow us

Newsletter

Most Read

  • Sinicization of Christianity Comes to Hong Kong by Gladys Kwok
  • Is Netflix a Threat to Religious Liberty? by Massimo Introvigne
  • The Last Words of a Uyghur Father: A Son’s Memory by Abdurehim Gheni Uyghur
  • China: Theological Seminaries Inspected to Check How “Sinicized” They Are by Zhang Chunhua
  • France, Sonia Backès Caught Red-Handed Again: A “Religious Profiling” of Muslim Students in Schools by Massimo Introvigne
  • Yang Taoming: “China’s Tony Robbins” Detained by Zhao Zhangyong
  • Russia: Anti-Cultists Laughably Accuse Ukraine of Operating “Telephone Cults” by Massimo Introvigne

CHINA PERSECUTION MAP -SEARCH NEWS BY REGION

clickable geographical map of china, with regions

Footer

EDITORIAL BOARD

Editor-in-Chief

MASSIMO INTROVIGNE

Director-in-Charge

MARCO RESPINTI

ADDRESS

CESNUR

Via Confienza 19,

10121 Turin, Italy,

Phone: 39-011-541950

E-MAIL

We welcome submission of unpublished contributions, news, and photographs. Each submission implies the authorization for us to edit and publish texts and photographs. We reserve the right to decide which submissions are suitable for publication. Please, write to INFO@BITTERWINTER.ORG Thank you.

Newsletter

LINKS

orlir-logo hrwf-logo cesnur-logo

Copyright © 2023 · Bitter Winter · PRIVACY POLICY· COOKIE POLICY