#The Funda Thembi Trend: Social Media Sensibilities Towards Pentecostal Online Humour

Late in 2022, the #FundaThembi video trend went viral on social media. Video footage of a heated Pentecostal service won over the hearts of South African online users, agitating droves to reciprocate in humour. A Pentecostal preacher was captured on camera fervently reading scripture before his sermonic presentation. Thembi, a female congregant, obediently and energetically reads the biblical passage in isiZulu, captivatingly. The wholly dramatic, humorous, and theatrical were consummated in Thembi’s passionate read. Online Pentecostal-Christian audiences rejected the hilarious interpretation of #FundaThembi, arguing that it worked to debase the sacrosanct Christian impulse. Conversely, secular online audiences perceived #FundaThembi as amusing and refreshing. The goal of the paper is to elucidate the relationship between online humour and Pentecostal subjectivities and how this can speak to more pertinent issues about the little-explored scholarly reconciliation between humour and religion enacted on digital platforms. The methodological path employs the potency of critical discourse analysis to examine online audiences’ lexical choices for excavating positionalities ideologically loaded within the virtual platform of Facebook. By examining the #FundaThembi trend’s online displays in detail, the discussion underscores the paper’s main finding, which illustrates that Pentecostal online subjectivities have an ideological predilection for viewing church sprouted humour negatively: evil, unholy and morally atavistic. The study contributes to the impoverished body of scholarly literature reconciling humour and pentecostalism and attempts to critically comprehend Pentecostal sensibilities toward humour as enacted on social media plaforms. Keywords: #FundaThembi, Humour, Audiences, Pentecostalism, Social Media