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Page 1 of 9 Original Research
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Author:
Andreas Heuser1,2
Aliaons:
1Dean of Research
(Forschungsdekan),
Theologische Fakultät,
Universität Basel, Switzerland
2Department Science of
Religion and Missiology,
Faculty of Theology,
University of Pretoria,
South Africa
Project leader: N. Niemandt
Project number: 04317734
Descripon:
Prof. Dr Andreas Hauser is
Forschungsdekan (Dean of
research) and Professor für
Ausseuropäisches Christentum
(Professor for ‘Extra-European
Chrisanity with focus on
Africa’), Theologische Fakultät,
Universität Basel, Switzerland
and is part of the research
project, ‘Ecodomy’, directed by
Prof Dr. Nelus Niemandt,
Department Science of
Religion and Missiology,
Faculty of Theology, University
of Pretoria, South Africa
Corresponding author:
Andreas Heuser,
andreas.heuser@unibas.ch
Dates:
Received: 22 July 2016
Accepted: 18 Aug. 2016
Published: 2 Dec. 2016
How to cite this arcle:
Heuser, A., 2016, ‘Charng
African Prosperity Gospel
economies’, HTS Teologiese
Studies/Theological Studies
72(1), a3823. hp://dx.doi.
org/10.4102/hts.v72i1.3823
Copyright:
© 2016. The Authors.
Licensee: AOSIS. This work
is licensed under the
Creave Commons
Aribuon License.
Prosperity is not an ‘American gospel’. It will work in Africa, India, China, or anywhere else where God’s
people practice the truth of His Word. If it is not true in the poorest place on earth, it is not true at all!
(Kenneth E. Hagin 2000:200)
Introducon: Mapping African Prosperity Gospel
African Pentecostal theologising has captured centre-stage in present-day public spaces by a
disputed language of desire. Commonly termed as Gospel of Prosperity it has popularised
controversial claims of this-worldly success and material well-being as signs of divine grace. A
rather undefined concept in systematic theological terms, Prosperity Gospel centres on a complex
liaison of speech acts surrounding faith, wealth, health and victory, combined with ritual practices
around secondary evidences of divine blessings. An exemplary description comes from the
Lausanne Theology Working Group Statement on Prosperity Gospel published in 2010. As a
result of a two-year consultation the statement rejects the ‘unbiblical notion that spiritual welfare
can be measured in terms of material welfare’. Despite such harsh theological critique the
Lausanne Theology Working Group (2010) defines Prosperity Gospel as:
The teaching that believers have a right to the blessings of health and wealth and that they can obtain
these blessings through positive confessions of faith and the ‘sowing of seeds’ through the faithful
payments of tithes and offerings. (n.p.)
This broad description condenses several theological codes ingrained in Prosperity Gospel. The
appeal of such reductionist definition lies in its focus on generic themes which in other words
discloses the quality of prosperity theology as a transposable message. The epigraph - a quotation
from Kenneth Hagin (1917–2003) who is considered a pioneering figure in what came to known
as ‘Prosperity Gospel’ – reveals the inspirational potency of prosperity promises across geographic
and socio-cultural space. It encapsulates the global spread of prosperity theology and hints at
local expressions of a specific religious economy. Paraphrasing Thomas Csordas, Prosperity
Gospel – ‘travels well’. Csordas theorised the modalities of transnational religion and offered two
characteristic aspects of successful religious mobility. These he defined as the ‘transposability of
religious messages’, and the ‘the portability of religious practises’ (Csordas 2009:5). With
This article maps the vital debate on Prosperity Gospel in Africa and its relevance for
socioeconomic change. Prosperity Gospel centres mainly on speech acts surrounding faith,
wealth and victory, combined with ritual enactments around secondary evidences of divine
blessings. Claiming this-worldly success and material well-being as signs of grace it has
captured public spheres and has created African religio-scapes of prosperity. The survey on
the socioeconomics of African prosperity-oriented Pentecostalism firstly traces the historic
genealogy of Prosperity Gospel as transposable message. It appears as a generic formula in
paradigmatic reinventions of Pentecostalism in post-second and/or cold war America and in
its globalisation in postcolonial Africa. The double resignification of Pentecostal theology - a
rereading of ‘mammon’ alongside a new ethic of being in the world - relates to the question of
socioeconomic agency. Academic discourse connects Prosperity Gospel social capital with
interpretations of its ritual texture thriving around rituals of tithings and offerings. Prosperity
Gospel economies are profiled as forms of sacral consumption or sacrificial economy, or else as
Pentecostal kleptocracy. Contrarily Prosperity Gospel is portrayed as a variant and porter of
African social change. The contextualisation of Prosperity Gospel highlights diverse social
agency in different milieus. Rural and peri-urban theologies of survival differ from urban
progressive and metropolitan business management Prosperity Gospel. The findings defy
generalised views on Prosperity Gospel socioeconomics. African Prosperity Gospel indicates a
transformative potential in immediate social relationships, whereas claims of impacting
structural parameters of society remain, with a few exceptions, part of Pentecostal imagination.
Charng African Prosperity Gospel economies
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Prosperity Gospel we are mapping an ideal-type of a religious
complex comprising of the flows of theologies of hope within
transnational networks, and the local shaping of prosperity
promises and ritual practices.
According to some core statistical findings, an almost
canonised notion of Prosperity Gospel has spilled over from
Pentecostal milieus to other forms of African Christianity
within the last two decades. A 2010 survey on ‘Islam and
Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa’ highlights a number of
statistical trends. The data provided by the renowned Pew
Forum on Religion and Public Life (2010:2) show that ‘in
most countries, more than half of Christians believe in the
Prosperity Gospel – that God will grant wealth and good
health to people who have enough faith’. Even more
remarkably is the transmission of core Prosperity Gospel
formulae into the wider relief of African religions. As I
defined elsewhere Prosperity Gospel is a resourceful
‘theological locus with porous boundaries’ into non-
Christian terrains (Heuser 2015b:22). Recent observations
indicate such trans-religious osmosis of Prosperity Gospel
rhetoric, metaphors and practices into African folk-Islam as
well as into some layers of traditional African religion. This
new cartography of Prosperity Gospel in sub-Saharan
Africa highlights the Pentecostalisation of African religious
landscapes. Moreover, the emergences of trans-religious
beliefs and practices around concepts of material salvation
have created what I called ‘religio-scapes of Prosperity
Gospel’ in Africa (Heuser 2015a).
The genealogy of such a transposable message deserves some
explanation. But before doing so, it is essential to realise the
thoroughly decontextualised semantic offered by the
Lausanne Theology Working Group on Prosperity Gospel. Its
statement is emptied of any kind of social sensitivity and
carries no traces of a political reading of prosperity theology.
In contrast to Pentecostal systematic theologian Amos Yong
(2012:16) prosperity theology expresses a highly productive
‘religious economy’, an ‘irreducible mix of sociological,
economic, political, and historical factors’. It is precisely the
relation of Prosperity Gospel to scenarios of social change in
Africa which has attracted a significant interdisciplinary
attention. Prosperity Gospel has made a steep career in
academic discourse. Unparalleled in African postcolonial
history a single theological imagery evolved as a potential
motivational porter of social transformation.
The debate, however, on the acclaimed Prosperity Gospel
variant of African agency remains vital. It is activated by
uncertainties over the transformative character of African
Pentecostal social capital that traditionally kept distance
from worldly affairs. Therefore, in the following article I
suggest first a historic reading of generic Prosperity Gospel
themes which brings out profound resignifications within
Pentecostal theology at large – and these are indeed functional
in its societal effects today. Representing a contracted concept
of faith, African prosperity theology thrives around ritual
enactments of tithings and offerings. The ritual texture of
Prosperity Gospel has caused numerous interpretations of
the character of Pentecostal social agency. This intense debate
is followed up in a subsequent section. However, a generalised
statement on Prosperity Gospel as the frame of a Pentecostal
ethic of development cannot be supported; it needs to be
supplemented in a final paragraph by an effort to contextualise
the social praxis of prosperity-oriented churches in diverse
empirical milieus.
Genealogy of a transposable
message
The decisive historic point of reference is the post-war or cold
war Pentecostal re-invention in America. This crucial phase
in Pentecostal history ‘has gained comparatively little
academic attention so far’ (Heuser 2015b:17). In his study of
transnational Pentecostal networks, Moritz Fischer identifies
the 1950s as the context of intensified efforts to globalise
American versions of Pentecostalism. Following his analysis,
the American genealogy of Prosperity Gospel is part of an era
in which ‘the Pentecostal movement (…) was invented for
the second time’ (Fischer 2011:240).1 The 1940s and 1950s saw
the beginning of a movement across denominational lines.
Following the historical account by Kate Bowler (2013)
diverse theological strands ranging from Pentecostals,
Holiness Evangelicalism, American Methodism, African-
American Baptism or Dutch Reformed Calvinism melded
into American Prosperity Gospel. The idea to receive
‘blessings through positive confessions of faith’ refers to the
‘word-of-faith’ movement. In the 1940s and 1950s this so-
called faith gospel movement coined an explicit religious
rhetoric focused on mind power. Exemplified as positive
thinking in mainstream Protestantism of the day, and dubbed
‘positive confession’ in Pentecostal reception it reflected the
spoken ‘word’, the declaration of securing God’s blessing.
This ‘idea of a religious speech act that creates reality (Gn. 1;
Jn. 1) empowered a born-again to take directions in life’
(Heuser 2015ba:3). Innovative language of ‘naming and
claiming’ divine blessings merged ideas of faith-healing,
purity and protection with visions of prosperity for born-
again believers. Pentecostal confidence in faith, thus, signified
a double-blessed gospel of health and wealth. Theological
terminologies and confessions of faith demonstrated a
triumphant mode of belief or - seen more positively - calculate
the outcome of a successful life ‘making material reality the
measure of the success of immaterial faith’ (Bowler 2013:7).
In this erratic ‘health-and-wealth’ complex the prosperity
aspect merged with the concept of ‘seed faith’. The theological
construction of ‘sowing and reaping’ imaged an intimate link
between divine blessing and financial contributions to God
and the church; it quantifies blessings by preaching that the
more you sow the more you will reap. Elaborated rituals of
gift exchange with its postures on divine giving and tithing
characterised the new style of Pentecostal worship.
In systematic terms Prosperity Gospel deploys a contracted
bond of faith, which Kenneth Hagin referred to as the ‘law of
1.My translaon (A.H.). Allusion is made to the rst invenon of Pentecostalism at the
beginning of the tweneth century, with a global series of revivals from Wales to
India, and from America to Korea.
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faith’ (Bowler 2013:44–46). As one of the key terms in
prosperity theology the ‘law of faith’ involves a cause-and-
effect relationship between a believer and God. If Prosperity
Gospel might be rightly defined a ‘legal spiritual system’ in
theological perspective (Bowler 2013:46)2, it however stresses
the potency of faith, in other words the potentiality, vitality,
persistence and pragmatism of Christian hope. In its core,
Prosperity Gospel theologises on the interplay between faith
and action; it is practical theology, so to speak, with a strong
call to enactment. Such faith in action is experimental. Yet,
the experimental character of Prosperity Gospel cannot be
limited to ritual inventions; its economy of faith action
articulates in a quest of re-invention.
Prosperity Gospel indicates a decisive, if not paradigmatic
change in Pentecostal theologising. The paradigm consists of
two radical breaks in Pentecostal theology: the first is
connected to a reframing of being in the world; the second is
connected to the discovery of the spiritual value of material
substance and wealth. In short, the new ‘gospel message’
cultivated the classical ‘prospects of faith-healing and well-
being and counted on the self-motivation of a believer to act
against all desperate reality’ (Heuser 2015b:17) - and by
implication to refrain from the retreatist ethics dominant in
Pentecostal circles so far. In epic wording Kate Bowler
indicates the potential relevance of Prosperity Gospel in
American society. She praises its emergence in the post-war
period as ‘both a siren song and a battle cry’ for those at the
margins of society (Bowler 2013:54). In the past, Pentecostal
theology insisted on the retreat from ‘this world’, thereby
promoting an escapist motive to erect ‘counter-societies of
the saved-ones immunised against the vicious operations of
the devil in society’ (Heuser 2013b:57). But now and
specifically for African-American Pentecostals ‘locked out of
the boom years by segregated housing and a discriminatory
labour market, divine prosperity promised an end-run
around the political, economic, and social forces of
oppression’ (Bowler 2013:53). The second radical break from
classical domains of Pentecostal theology refers to the
characteristic material attributes of Prosperity Gospel.
Prosperity Gospel undertakes grand efforts to theologise
material richness, and to manifest and keep the spiritual
control over money. An early indication of the acceptance
and the handling of ‘dirty’, more precisely of demonic,
money is the foundation of the Full Gospel Business Men’s
Fellowship International (FGBMI) in 1952. As an association
of Pentecostal-minded businessmen, FGBMI can be
considered an ideo-financial centre to delineate prosperity
theology. FGBMI forms a strong actor in the global rise of the
Pentecostal movement and experiences a virtual explosion in
many parts of the African continent since around the 1980s
(Kalu 2008:125). The ingenuity of Pentecostal prosperity
theology is evident in the most striking resignification of
‘mammon’ into financial blessing. Otherwise speaking
Prosperity Gospel de-spiritualises poverty (Heuser 2013a). In
2.For concise theological criques of Prosperity Gospel see Werner Kahl (2015) in
biblical–hermeneucal perspecve, Rudolf von Sinner (2015) in systemac
theological perspecve and Michael Biehl (2015) in ecumenical perspecve. Wilfred
Agana (2015) presents a crique of Prosperity Gospel in Ghana from a Roman
Catholic viewpoint.
sum, Born-again prosperity theology claims material wealth
and breakthroughs of success in life by a double-binding
argument: it spiritualises richness and wealth (instead and in
opposition to a liberation theology ‘option for the poor’), and
it purifies money in seed faith and tithing policies. It is, I
argue, only by way of ritualising prosperity theology that
‘money’ becomes a dominant part of Pentecostal imagery
and a legitimate aspect in Pentecostal church structures.3 This
ritual component of a lived Pentecostalism might as well
prefigure any constructive vision of social agency.
The genealogy of prosperity theology in American immediate
post-war religious history coincided with still another
revolutionary concept in Pentecostal self-presentation and
social organisation. The basic formulae of what became
branded ‘Prosperity Gospel’ were popularised in the new
media of mass communication, such as radio programmes
and TV broadcasts. From the 1950s onwards the new modes
of communicating the gospel became characteristic features
in groupings of individual prosperity preachers. Newly
founded independent ministries formed alliances and spread
Prosperity Gospel messages through invitation policies in
exchange. The inspirational use of mass media climaxed in
the setting up of joint conferences and in representative
staging of mass-crusades. The establishment of independent,
single ministries was backed up by the emergence of how-to-
do manuals, authored by the new caste of prosperity
preachers, and the rise of bible schools and fellowships.
These networks enabled the interchange of persons and the
flow of ideas in North America. If mobility was already a key
to the national spread of Prosperity Gospel imagery, the ever-
expanding discursive networks helped to de-localise the
movement. Prosperity ministries were setting up global
network structures. From around the 1960s Prosperity
messages were made to travel internationally. Neither
confined to the institutional history of a single body of
(Pentecostal) churches nor restricted to influences from had a
single theological tradition, prosperity preaching had
experienced its breakthrough on international scale. The
messages of Prosperity Gospel de-localised from its American
background and re-localised in contexts of what is now
termed the Global South (Fischer 2011:219–41).
Classifying historical passages of prosperity theology in
Africa it turned up in the eminent transition into a post-
colony. In the first recognisable phase of prosperity preaching
from the 1970s to 1990s, single individuals of the stature of
Nigerian Benson Idahosa (1938–1998) or Ray McCauly
(b. 1949) in South Africa were recognised as representative
voices of this new kind of Christian theology. Almost all of
them had received their theological a few education in North
American Faith Gospel milieus. Within a few years only the
African recipients of American prosperity theology evolved
as prosperity megastars of their own, visible in the
international clusters of Prosperity Gospel conferences. And
they mentored numerous African prosperity theologians
3.The theological recoding of material abundance has taken some me in the African
Pentecostal movement. An example is given with internal shi in percepons of
nancial pracce in the Church of Pentecost in Ghana. Nowadays the church
perceives nancial wealth as generic in ecclesiological terms (Heuser 2013b).
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themselves and in their own theological seminars. With
regard to Bowler’s sketches of (inter-)national networks of
prosperity ministries (Bowler 2013:258–259), the ‘grown up’
African Prosperity Gospel celebrities were operating
independently of American networks from around 2000
onwards. They were forming increasing clusters of
international conferences, crusades and autonomous circuits
of their own. After half a century Prosperity Gospel had been
transposed into a diversity of globalised variants. The sub-
Saharan Prosperity Gospel narrative endorses its
transposability. As already mentioned the story unfolds
transnational and cross-cultural passages and claims trans-
religious reception, at least in parts.4
Debated ‘religious economy’
The historic review of paradigmatic transformations in
Pentecostal theology correlates Prosperity Gospel to
experiences of dispossession and disempowerment.
However, only tacit indications of Pentecostal social agency
are given thus far. If, as stated, Prosperity Gospel has found
entry in discourses of diverse fields in African Studies, the
answers to the question of how to identify Pentecostal
religious economy are multiple. They are framed by theories
of globalisation, or by modernisation and development
theories, while others provide close-up interpretations of
ritual dynamics in single African churches, or locate diverse
theologies of prosperity adapted to different socio-cultural
milieus.
A considerable strand positions the rise of Prosperity Gospel
within global neo-liberal market economies. For Jean and
John Comaroff (2004) Prosperity Gospel expresses the largely
irrational reaction to the invisible market forces of a
globalising economy described as ‘millennial capitalism’.
The invisible market forces would have manifest effects on
everyday life, yet are out of one’s personal control which
leads to a growing display of what they term ‘occult
economies’ (Comaroff & Comaroff 2004:35). Such an
economy, fuelled by promises of material well-being
interpreted as an outward sign of God’s favour, celebrates
consumption rather than production. To be more precise, the
expectation of prosperity praises the immediacy of desire.
The instant material gain becomes ‘synonymous with the
unmediated power of God’. The accumulation of wealth, the
Comaroffs conclude, represents an act of ‘sacral consumption’
(2004:37). Jean Comaroff has recently redirected the vector of
analysis from millennial capitalism to post-secular religio-
cultural traditionalism. By this, in my understanding, she
revisits the aspect of Pentecostal ‘sacral consumption’ as an
ideal-type component of a ‘politics of affect’ in Africa.
4.My understanding of Prosperity Gospel as transposable message tries to avoid
recurring deconstrucons of Prosperity Gospel as an ideological import to establish
a cultural hegemony of American-shaped fundamentalism, as Paul Giord (1990)
has it. The counter-reading employs the same instrumentalist usage of historic
genealogy, turned into Africanist posioning. Ogbu Kalu (2008:169) anchors the
overall explosion of Pentecostalism and by inclusion Prosperity theology in sub-
Saharan Africa unmistakably in an ‘African map of the universe’. See also Abraham
Kwakye (2015) who traces prosperity theology in African encounters with European
missionaries on the Gold Coast. Such a debate on the historical proprietorship of
Prosperity Gospel tends to cage a transposable message in Afro-centric gestures of
indigeneity and locality v alien impulse in a global project of American cultural and
ideological hegemony.
Pentecostalism, she states, shows a ‘totalising thrust’ to
include ‘ever more mundane facets of everyday life’;
Prosperity Gospel churches ‘offer menus of pragmatic
services, all day, every day’ (Comaroff 2015:227). For Jean
Comaroff this is a post-secular Pentecostal return to a
traditional African religious makeshift of life, which
Pentecostalism otherwise tries to fiercely combat. This
pragmatic vision of Prosperity Gospel culture, she claims,
‘represents an ironic, late-modern return to the kind of
pervasive religiosity, practically integrated with ordinary
life, as described in older anthropological accounts of African
traditional culture’ (Comaroff 2015:227).
Whereas the ‘occult economy’ analysis portrays the
Pentecostal movement as an epi-phenomenon, a reactive
answer to dynamics in global capitalism, Simon Coleman
(2011) offers a more multidimensional reading of how
Prosperity Gospel initiatives ‘articulate the connections
between “religious” and “economic” spheres of activity’
(Coleman 2011:33). Coleman too stresses the Pentecostal
agency of ritual action within experiences of marginalisation.
Instead of defining hierarchies of dependency or socio-
economic causality he accentuates an explanatory ‘model of
co-constitution’ (Coleman 2011:33). In this vein, Prosperity
Gospel should be seen as ‘a specific regime of practice, in and
through which particular moral and political subjects are
produced’ (Coleman 2011:33). Whereas the Comaroffs do
more or less refrain from examining the peculiar ritual praxis
in Prosperity Gospel related Christianity, Coleman insists on
ethnographic validity. He seeks to scrutinise the specific
Prosperity Gospel orthopraxis, its articulations of faith and
its prosperity concepts, and he looks at how these are
theologised by Pentecostal believers. He then singles out the
performative character of prosperity-oriented churches
revolving around a ‘sacrificial economy’ of offerings and
tithings.5
The productive factor of Prosperity Gospel may not be
reduced to acts of sacrificing. However, Coleman’s
categorisation helps to address the critical issues in the debate
on Pentecostal prosperity teachings. Some of these critical
issues relate to the Pentecostal theology of tithing. Prosperity
preaching identifies tithing as a central dimension in
Christian faith, and rituals of tithing occupy large and at
times spectacular sections of services. One could claim that
such investment in ‘tithing’ binds much of innovative energy
in prosperity-oriented churches. In the specific connection
with ‘seed-faith’ activity, tithing is a form of sacrificial giving.
But how to cope with frustrations over delayed gratification?
In the argument of the ‘law of faith’ the ‘sowing’ demands a
multiplied ‘reaping’ or return in material benefits. The
‘sacrificial economy’ therefore is not confined to one-way acts
of giving; its ritual composition contains a complementary
logic to make plausible the absence of immediate blessings in
all day life experiences of a faithful believer. Yvan Droz and
Yonatan Gez (2015) convincingly apply Marcel Mauss’ theory
of gift exchange in this connection. Mauss identified gift
5.Coleman relates to Susan Friend Harding’s study (2000:105–23) on the ‘sacricial
economics’ of American televangelist Jerry Falwell.
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exchange as a category to balance unequal social relations by
reciprocal bindings of giver and receiver of gifts. Droz and
Gez perceive gift exchange in the form of ‘tithing’ in
Prosperity Gospel milieus as a ritualised binding of both
believer and God. It helps explaining the loyalty of believers
to Prosperity Gospel promises even when experiencing loss
and failure instead of material wealth. In short: the rationale
of Pentecostal ‘sacrificial economy’ addresses a believer’s
troubled expectation of material signs of divine blessing
overwhelmed by a sense of continued marginality.
One could argue that such analysis of Pentecostal ‘sacrificial
economy’ is limited to the management of internal processes,
both within a believer and within a church. But it may engage
with the wider society. An example for the ‘co-constitutional’
drive of prosperity theology is set with experiences in
diasporic contexts. Jeanne Rey (2015) exemplifies the
adaptations in prosperity teachings in Pentecostal African
migrant milieus in Europe and North America. Here, the
Pentecostal metaphors of ‘seed-planting’ and ‘harvest’,
materialised in financial blessings and secure status, contrast
with constant constraints by immigration realpolitik. In such
precarious circumstances the existential plausibility of a
‘sacrificial economy’ once again comes under severe pressure.
Despite the absence of material outward signs of divine grace
the attraction of Prosperity Gospel stays intact due to a larger,
moral economy of blessings. Within migrant milieus,
subjective behavioural repositories of the self, attitudes and
norms of faith such as trust, prayer or patience gain
prominence and coexist with equal right alongside the lasting
hopes in material blessings.
African Pentecostal ‘sacrificial economy’ discloses its social
productivity in the shaping of pastoral careers. Karen
Lauterbach (2016) examines the access to hierarchies in small-
to medium-sized urban Pentecostal churches in Ghana. She
ascribes the making of young, (mostly) male Pentecostal
pastors to material investment in social relations. The
aspiring Pentecostal pastors accept relations of apprenticeship
and dependency for their clear ambition to ascend the ladder
of religious and social status. They allocate capital in order to
accumulate charismatic power, status and social mobility.
The substantial personal sacrifice of money marks the
beginning of pastoral careers. These religious entrepreneurs
invest in a wide range of activities, from investment in their
own higher education to self-organised church-planting
events or the setting up of own media activities. All these
sacrificial material engagements are part of a strategy to
secure spiritual legitimacy and a loyal church membership.
Moreover, they are deemed indispensable for ascending
church and social hierarchies simultaneously. Religious
entrepreneurship and social mobility both draw on local
categories of public recognition. Lauterbach (2016), concludes
that:
What is remarkable … is that young men and women are able to
‘become someone’ in society, achieve status and accumulate
wealth through the making of pastoral careers in a general context
where the possibilities for social rise are constrained. (p. 19)
Lauterbach frames the Pentecostal access to ministry as a
motivational form of religio-cultural entrepreneurship in
Africa. A much more sceptical intervention on the use and
management of Prosperity Gospel social capital comes from
Nigerian sociologist, Asonzeh Ukah. In his compact research
oeuvre on Nigerian megachurches, he recurrently detects a
‘sacred secrecy’ (Ukah 2005:272) surrounding finances.
According to Ukah, Nigerian megachurches have turned into
mere business empires led by ‘prophets for profit’ (Ukah
2013), business-minded religious entrepreneurs. The
‘prophets for profit’ adopt marketing strategies to mobilise
and organise funds; they would act as ‘economic missionaries’
with a prime interest in generating rent instead of supporting
spiritual aims (Ukah 2013:151). Church hierarchies are
dominated by founding leaders or their representatives. In
organisational terms they lack accountability and financial
transparency. Relating to incidences of fraud, Ukah deplores
the opaque handling of finances and dubious fiscal
accountability. He even locates the systemic structure of such
a financial ‘sacred secrecy’ in the global appearance of
Nigerian megachurches. As church organisation is highly
centralised, it leaves no space for local agency. Therefore,
‘locals do not have access to or influence over, how the church
finances are managed and expended’ (Ukah 2013:151). The
‘monetary turn’ of Nigerian Pentecostal churches results in
the thorough commoditisation of church life. In the final
analysis Asonzeh Ukah (2013:145) identifies an instrumental
usage of prosperity theology by founders of megachurches in
order to ‘transform them into economic, financial and
entrepreneurial empires which are completely controlled by
their families’. What he basically describes is a Pentecostal
kleptocracy.
Ukah’s verdict on Nigerian megachurches falls short of
explaining why, then, such churches excel as megaministries,
and what obviously would attract so many believers, even on
global levels. This question relates to Ilana van Wyk’s (2011)
research on the urban based Universal Church of the
Kingdom of God (UCKG). Edir Macedo founded Igreja
Universal do Reino de Deus 1977 in Brazil. It soon had an
enormous attraction in lusophone Africa and since its arrival
in 1993 South Africa developed into the most successful
region of expansion outside Brazil (Freston 2005). Van Wyk
considers UCKG an anomaly within African Christianity as it
negates any social dimension of Christian faith. The mega-
church offers an ultimate form of Prosperity Gospel, which
reduces prosperity theology to a limited set of spiritual
techniques and some canonised theological formulae of
meeting individual desires. The church encourages its
members to ‘engage in once-off contracts with God through
large monetary funds’ (Van Wyk 2011:189). UCKG theology
cultivates a utilitarian attitude to faith, strongly discouraging
community and socialising aspects in its ecclesiology. The
social cohesion of congregations rests on purely individual
contracts with God mediated through mass monetary
sacrifices, as it were, in church services. The dominant action
of members is exactly this sacrificial willingness to give
money in the church. ‘After sacrificing, members are
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encouraged to demand their blessings from God and not to
waste words on praising and worshipping’ (Van Wyk
2011:191, emphasis i.o.). Van Wyk summarises UCKG
Prosperity Gospel consequently as a way of ‘believing
practically and trusting socially’, however in a social anomaly
of a mass of monadic individuals. Being a member in this
church means to activate individual financial offerings in
order to keep one’s personal desires alive, and to concentrate
such action in a joint service of ‘strangers’ who remain
strangers to each other (Van Wyk 2016). The church does
even negate acts of community building and charity. All
empathic motives of a believer to address existential needs
and desires of fellow-believers, or more so of outsiders are
branded as strategic satanic weapons in subverting God’s
kingdom. The antagonistic perception of social outreach
programmes negates offerings to poorer church members
and strictly denies addressing poverty within society.
This is the central perception of prosperity theology offered
by Paul Gifford. Since his pioneering reading of Pentecostal
prosperity teachings around 1990, Gifford underlines their
limited take on societal and structural matters. Prosperity
doctrine would subvert any effort ‘to promote self-help,
self-reliance, self-esteem, self-determination, responsibility,
and autonomy’ (Gifford 1991:10). In his recent outline of
the Pentecostal movement’s general role in the socio-
economic transformation of African societies Gifford
(2015a:47–68) still remains sceptical. He scrutinises the
theology of Nigerian David Oyedepo. In Gifford’s view
Oyedopo ‘is prepared to take prosperity to its logical
conclusion’ (Gifford, P., 2013, 16 December, pg@soas.ac.
uk). In 1983, Oyedepo founded one of the most prominent
new churches on the African continent, Living Faith Church
Worldwide, better known as Winners’ Chapel. Gifford
observed the theological dynamics of Oyedepo’s Prosperity
Gospel over several decades. In Gifford’s long-term
analysis, Oyedepo’s prosperity theology has kept a
perspective strictly limited to individual prospects of
success, or internal church-related affairs. In his final
analysis of Oyedepo’s theology Gifford (2015b:97–98)
explicates a purist form of prosperity theology that bears
no traces of political theology. Neither would Oyedepo in
his writings engage in the wider world nor would he be
interested in changing social systems or challenging
poverty by alternative economies.
How can one summarise this debate on the characteristics of
Prosperity Gospel religious economy? Actual research on
African Prosperity Gospel variants seems unanimously
raising doubts over their social capacity. In the overall
picture, the socioeconomics of Prosperity Gospel-related
churches ranges somewhere between energising individual
believers and the cohesion of single churches, to outright
scepticism over and even denial of any church engagement
in society. Prosperity theology sometimes excludes social
programmes by definition and dismays long-term goals in
social change. In empirical perspective, however, these
findings deserve some corrections.
Transformaonal social agency
In empirical terms Prosperity Gospel social profiles are not
uniform but diversify according to social milieus and
contexts. In his study on Nigerian Pentecostalism, Musa
Gaiya (2015) categorises this vast spectrum of churches
according to their social impact and management of
resources. Gaiya offers a dual typology by differentiating
centripetal from centrifugal churches. Whereas centripetal
Pentecostalism is characterised by an inward-looking
ecclesiology, centrifugal churches discover a more outward-
looking praxis, employing resources for ‘practical social
improvement’ (Gaiya 2015:64). This strand of engaged
Pentecostalism is comparatively small but exerts some
growing impact in Nigerian society. Prosperity Gospel does
not explicitly feature as a parameter in Gaiya’s cataloguing of
Pentecostal churches. It is however remarkable to find strong
prosperity-oriented churches in both of his centrifugal and
centripetal sections.
Gaiya’s empirical base is restricted to metropolitan Lagos.
His local data on centrifugal churches match with an
emergent type of socially aware Pentecostalism on global
scale. In a first global survey of Pentecostal churches Donald
Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori have identified an urban
based ‘progressive’ Pentecostalism (Miller & Yamamori
2007).6 By this category they signify middle-class churches
that are located in metropolitan, urban and peri-urban areas,
emphasising active social ministries. Members are upwardly
mobile and rather well educated. They firmly heed to the
image of religious entrepreneur and raise enormous funds.
According to Miller and Yamamori (2007:2) a number of
these progressive Pentecostal churches are ‘addressing the
social needs of people in their community’.
A quantitative empirical study on South African churches,
conducted in 2007, relates such observations to ethical
formats. The findings, evaluated by Helga Dickow, are
mainly based on churches in Soweto. They evidence a
socially constructive, born-again consciousness of prosperity-
oriented Pentecostal churches. Church leaders as well as
members claim social responsibility in the new South Africa.
They show a high sensitivity on poverty alleviation. Members
‘consider the gap between rich and poor to be far wider than
any other difference in South African society including racial,
religious and ethnic ones’ (Dickow 2012:192).
Even in comparison with other churches the data on attitudes
are convincing. In a separate article that analyses specific
data from the empirical study (2007) Dickow and Valerie
Møller correlate the representative South African sample
with a focus group of members of the Sowetan-based Grace
Bible Church. Grace Bible Church members explicitly
consider education, skills training programmes and hard
work as imperative factors to address social misery (Dickow &
Møller 2008). Church representatives and ministers from
6.Miller and Yamamori represent a bird’s eye perspecve on the global Pentecostal
movement. They gained their insights from short-me travels for two months in
each year to at least three countries. Overall, they visited 20 dierent countries in
Asia, Africa, Lan America and Eastern Europe.
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Grace Bible Church claim to initiate concrete outreach
projects. These are mostly neighbourhood and charity-
oriented outreach projects ranging from food distribution to
the poor to literacy programmes, from the care for the elderly
to rehabilitation of ex-prisoners, from HIV-related projects to
the pastoral care of abused women and children (Mathole
2008). The variety of initiatives in centrifugal, progressive
Pentecostalism seems remarkable.
The correlation of Pentecostal prosperity theology with an
ethics of social responsibility has triggered a key debate
guided by ‘modernity’ assumptions. The urgency to define a
certain set of behavioural codes as markers of Pentecostal
socio-economic potential and mobilising social ambition
revitalises Weberian concepts of the protestant capitalist
ethic. Such positioning is strongly advocated by Peter. L.
Berger’s ‘simple but far-reaching, proposition’ made in a
public lecture at the University of the Witwatersrand on
‘Faith and Development’ in March 2008: ‘Pentecostalism
should be viewed as a positive resource for modern economic
development’ (Berger 2008:5). The confidence in view of the
transformational quality of Pentecostal prosperity theology
is great. In her influential contribution on ‘the Pentecostal
ethic and the spirit of development’ in Africa Dena Freeman
(2012) stated that the Pentecostal features of individual
transformation of believers would efficiently result in an
ethic of sustainable development. The background of her
research is Ethiopian rural highland Pentecostalism.
Pentecostal churches would be ‘more successful in bringing
about change that is effective, deep-rooted and long-lasting’
than historically established (orthodox and western mission
derived) Christianity or even secular non-govermental
organisations (NGOs) (Freeman 2012:24).
The debate on the connection between Pentecostal techniques
of personal transformation and empowerment for social
changes is still ongoing (Berger 2010; Drønen 2015; Hayward &
Kemmelmeier 2011). Its course shows that categorical
assumptions on Prosperity Gospel churches as legitimate
and effective change agents are implausible. Paul Gifford
voices a hermeneutics of suspicion over and against
Pentecostal assertions of discipline and hard work. He
suspects them to belong to a rhetorical set of Pentecostal self-
designs in globalising African economies (Gifford 2004:154).
Supported by empirical South African samples, the ethical
authenticity of Prosperity Gospel churches remains dubious.
Following some data on South African Pentecostal
Christianity presented by the Johannesburg-based Centre for
Development and Enterprise the dubious management of
financial resources is still disputed and even applies to
smaller Pentecostal churches as well. It is precisely this
Centre that had invited P.L. Berger for his lecture in March
2008. In view of South African urban and rural smaller
Pentecostal churches, the Centre for Development and
Enterprise (2012:72) considers the deficiency of organisational
control as their greatest challenge: ‘Perhaps the greatest
concern is that some of the entrepreneurial pastors in smaller
community churches are enriching themselves at the cost of
devout but naïve followers’. This sheds doubts on whether
the implementation of such social outreach projects
mentioned above is effective or not.
Generalising statements on Prosperity Gospel churches as
modern agents for socioeconomic transformation need to be
tested by comparative case-study approaches in different
social contexts. In insecure local environments, for instance,
the Pentecostal theology of prosperity bears the contours of a
more introverted message. For instance, in impoverished
townships or slums the social reach of Prosperity Gospel
messages is oriented to meet existential needs. In their social
praxis Pentecostal churches are almost copying the profile
and characteristic features of small African Instituted
Churches (AIC) that are much older components of township
Christianity than prosperity-oriented churches (Cross et al.
1992:21–27; Anderson & Otwang 1993:61). Like AIC small
Pentecostal churches form neighbourhood support groups
that are reactive rather than proactive in nature; they might
create small networks of solidarity such as funeral societies
or bursary funds for the education of their children,
however with little structural impact on society at large.
Harri Englund (2011:17) rightly observes that it is the ‘quest
for security rather than for prosperity’ that ‘animates the
Pentecostal imagination’. In a typology of prosperity-
oriented Pentecostalism in Africa the Prosperity Gospel in
small-scale, peri-urban (and possibly most rural) socio-
economic milieus articulates a ‘silent theology of survival’
(Heuser 2013a:163-164). This is far from proclaiming an
illustrious religious entrepreneurship in middle-class, urban
Pentecostalism, or from coining another ‘spirit of capitalism’
expressed by metropolitan megachurches.
Furthermore, the social capital expressed by urban,
progressive Pentecostalism remains ambiguous. Miller and
Yamamori (2007:127) qualify the kind of social praxis of
progressive Pentecostals as ‘heroic intensity’. Such puzzling
phrasing leaves an impression of activism rather than long-
term effects in handling social projects. Consequently,
Pentecostal social ministries might still lack professionalism.
Their inward-looking social cohesion may still be stronger
than social networking. This assumption, at least, can be
drawn out from South African surveys researched by Dickow
(2012). According to her empirical data the design of
Pentecostal grassroots projects does ‘not show a high level of
trust in their social environment’; even Pentecostals qualified
‘progressive’, ‘tend to feel closest to their co-religionists’ in
the church (Dickow 2012:193). The centrifugal evidence of
progressive Pentecostal effect on local contexts and social
cooperation seems doubtful.
Outlook: Pentecostal business
management ecumenism
So far, measurable proof of African Pentecostal agency to
improve social life is small. Some initiatives, however, direct
towards strategic implementation of entrepreneurial praxis.
They are characterised by long-term networking beyond the
range of the same church or church family. Such interaction is
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basically generated between African Progressive Pentecostals
and American churches of the evangelical left, that is churches
with a stronger socio-political profile. Back in 2001 Paul
Freston envisaged such cooperation triggered by an
‘increasingly “social” discourse of prosperity teachers’
(Freston 2001:315). Their common target is to impact society
by practical aspects of prosperity theology. For this reason
they engage in business education programmes, either in
bilateral cooperation between single churches, or in broader
‘ecumenical’ initiatives.
A loose enterprise of connecting local churches refers to the
so-called PEACE programme initiated by Rick Warren of
Saddleback Church in California in 2005. Warren is the author
of two bestsellers (‘The Purpose Driven Life’ and ‘The Purpose
Driven Church’) with which he aims at addressing the five
‘Global Goliaths’, the problems of ‘spiritual emptiness, selfish
leadership, poverty, disease and ignorance’ (quoted in
Gifford 2009:149). East Africa has been selected as a pilot area
to conduct a series of, as it were, ‘purpose driven’ conferences.
The conference programme seeks to familiarise African
churches with business management Christianity. These
seminars are open to any church. The acronym PEACE stands
for ‘plant a church or partner with an existing one’; ‘equip
local leaders’; ‘assist the poor’; ‘care for the sick’; ‘educate the
next generation’. This programme advocates ideas of modern
management studies and marketing strategies to be
implemented in Pentecostal church structures. It promotes
techniques of administration and investment, norms of
accounting, the handling of debts as elementary aspects of
church structures. Participants are encouraged to transfer
entrepreneurial skills into congregational life and use these
skills in the management of social projects run by churches
(Heuser 2013b:65–67). If this project intends to connect
representatives of diverse churches around the idea of
business management, other initiatives are geared towards a
viable institutional network of churches.
David Daniels III (2015) exemplifies one such joint venture
between African and African-American prosperity-oriented
megachurches. The interchanges between American
televangelist Bill Winston of Living Word Christian Centre
(Chicago) and Nigerian mega-church ministry of Samuel
Adeyemi of Daystar Christian Centre (Lagos) support
entrepreneurial ambitions by favouring business
educational projects. This includes the founding of
educational institutions with a priority on economics. Their
mission statements stress personal responsibility for
acquiring business skills and strategic business behaviour for
realising material wealth. In such intentional cooperation
between single African-American and West African
megaministries, Daniels observes the move from
consumption of wealth to entrepreneurship.
According to these recent observations the pragmatic revision
of Prosperity Gospel takes place when Prosperity Gospel
doctrines merge with business education. This still occupies
a smaller section of prosperity theology-oriented African
Pentecostalism. In general, the intense scholarly debate on
Prosperity Gospel and the connection between African
Pentecostalism and socio-economic change defies a
generalised view. Prosperity Gospel concepts relate to a
diversity of Pentecostal perspectives on society and disclose
a varied agency in socio-economic change. A township-based
ethics of survival is different from an urban and middle-class
‘progressive’ Pentecostalism; while business management
oriented churches have aspirations to transform society, the
socio-economic horizon of churches entertaining a strong
sacred secrecy around prosperity rather remains short-term
and confined to internal dynamics. However, the actual
impact of Prosperity Gospel messages in the broader
landscape of churches is growing. This goes along with a
general tendency to explore social outreach programs. At
least, as I argued elsewhere, ‘poverty alleviation has
meanwhile become an integral part of the self-perception of
the Pentecostal movement’ (Heuser 2013a:167, author’s
translation). At this stage, the Pentecostal narrative of social
awareness in most cases follows the Prosperity Gospel
semantics of success, transformation and visibility in society.
Despite all heterogeneity some key elements of African
Prosperity Gospel substantiate the Pentecostal ambition to
impact socio-economic life. Prosperity Gospel-oriented
churches are usually self-funded and focus on individual
transformation. Pentecostal techniques of the self encouraged
‘breaking with the past’ (rather than a post-secular revisit
of it). This may lead to transformations of immediate social
relationships, like opting out of family networks or
substituting expensive feasts and rites of passage (funerals,
weddings). I join in the argument pushed by David Maxwell
(1998) that
a ‘complete break with the past’ contributes to the creation of
free subjects able to embrace certain aspects of modernity. (…) As
well as becoming freer to accumulate, the new believer is smart
in appearance, trustworthy, hardworking and literate, and hence
employable. (p. 354)
Their strong sense of identity formation, at least, has
energising effects on a pro-capitalist or entrepreneurial ethos.
The Pentecostal spiritual economy of self-discipline cultivates
inner-worldly materialism and success orientation. The stress
on born-again personal transformation can obviously
mobilise social participation. In terms of life attitudes
members of Prosperity Gospel churches ‘feel less powerless,
are less afraid of the future, and are more willing to accept
change’ (Dickow 2012:193). Yet, the Pentecostal prosperity
theology impact on structural parameters of society is still in
need of closer empirical investigation - so far, it remains
visionary.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the sub-editors for inviting me to contribute
to this special collection.
Compeng interests
The author declares that he has no financial or personal
relationships which may have inappropriately influenced
him in writing this article.
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