Episode 7.12: A Philadelphia Church and the West African Revival, 1918–1929

Interviewer: JOSHUA ROSE.  Host JOSHUA ROSE speaks with Dr. ADAM MOHR, Senior Lecturer in Penn's Critical Writing Program, about his 2023 book The West African Revival: Faith Tabernacle Congregation on the Guinea Coast, 1918–1929. Mohr traces how a Philadelphia-based divine-healing church became an unlikely catalyst for a mass revival across West Africa in the aftermath of the 1918 influenza pandemic—when medical systems faltered and religious healing practices took on new urgency. Mohr follows the revival's long arc into the present, including the Pentecostal traditions it helped seed—and the striking ways those West African churches have since returned to Philadelphia through migration.