In 2019, South African pastor Alph Lukau found worldwide infamy with a viral video where he “resurrected” a clearly living man from the dead. The cartoonish stunt was the culmination of a prophetic arms race — a group of young preachers in the country had been incorporating increasingly extreme practices into their worship services to capitalize on the rage and hopelessness of a generation.

“Professor” Lesego Daniel claimed he had the gift of turning “petrol into pineapple,” encouraging his congregation to drink gas as a kind of communion. One of his protégés, Pastor Lethebo Rabalago, was nicknamed the “Prophet of Doom” for spraying churchgoers with a brand of insecticide to help cast out demons in the form of AIDS. Meanwhile, Prophet Penuel Mnguni would stomp on semi-naked congregants and have them eat live snakes as he delivered them from evil.

Outsiders might instinctively look for the poisoned Kool-Aid, but this is no doomsday cult. It is a uniquely modern, extreme, South African expression of Pentecostal Christianity — a faith that is, by conversions at least, the fastest growing religion on earth, with 600 million followers and counting.