Many Tongues, Many Economic Practices: Socio-Economic Opportunities and Challenges for African Pentecostal Christianity

Abstract

This article focuses on Pentecostalism and its real and possible contributions to socio-economic development in sub-Saharan Africa. First, we provide an overall historical and theological introduction to Pentecostalism in sub-Saharan Africa, especially as these relate to socio-economic wellbeing. The heart of our research is a review of the literature on African Pentecostalism focused on economic development. We conclude with an exploration of the challenges and opportunities the movement faces in contributing to development across the continent. The question we seek to pursue is as follows: what theological and missiological resources might pentecostal–charismatic communities contribute to improve the socio-economic circumstances of the people of sub-Saharan Africa?

1. Introduction

A document of the Commission for World Mission and Evangelism (CWME), Together towards Life calls attention to the work of the Holy Spirit in mission, evangelism, and development when it affirms the Holy Spirit as “the essence of mission, the core of why we do what we do and how we live our lives” (CWME 2012). Inspired in part by the explosion of pentecostal–charismatic Christianity around the world over the last century (§5), the focus is on the “Spirit of Pentecost” (§§80–100), but also, for our purposes, on how such a pentecostal spirituality might promote the divine economy, one “based on values of love and justice for all and that … resists idolatry in the free-market economy” (§108). These are challenging words, not least since pentecostal movements have long been known to facilitate participation in the free-market economy (e.g., Martin 2002). Therefore, we want to ask a theological question that has a practical application: how do pentecostal–charismatic churches in sub-Saharan Africa make a difference amid the various socio-economic circumstances within which they find themselves? Our tentative response is that the many tongues of pentecostal spirituality have the potential to generate as many socio-economic practices as are necessary for navigating late modern capitalism and its unpredictability across the sub-Saharan landscape.

The research followed a critical literature review. Jesson and Lacey (2006, p. 139) describe good critical literature reviews as telling a story and helping to advance our understanding of what is already known. Therefore, the research first provides a historical and theological introduction to African Pentecostalism. Second, we review the broad and growing literature on Pentecostalism in sub-Saharan Africa and focus especially on its relationship to socio-economic development. Finally, we summarize where we are at and anticipate the next steps for a diversity of pentecostal theological and missiological contributions—thematized by the slogan, “many tongues, many economic practices”—for furthering economic development in African contexts.1

2. A Historical and Theological Introduction to African Pentecostalism

Adapting Allan Anderson’s (2001) excellent overview through the end of the last century and extending it to the present, there are at least five mostly concurrent streams by now that, in our account, have flowed through and now shape contemporary pentecostal–charismatic Christian expressions across the different regions of sub-Saharan Africa. The first goes back to no later than the turn of the twentieth century when the African Independent/Initiated Churches (AICs)2 were initially formed as a reaction of African culture against the “uncontextualized” Christianity of the early missionaries (Nel 2020, p. 10). The second includes churches started during the first half of the twentieth century by Euro-American missionaries sent by pentecostal churches in the West. The third includes revivalists and student movements within the mainline Protestant churches in Africa influenced at least in part by the pneumatic spirituality of the AICs and the early pentecostal mission churches (e.g., Mugambi 2020, chp. 2). The fourth is neo-pentecostal churches started by Africans for Africans beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Last but not least, there are what some call progressive pentecostal churches (Myers 2019, p. 18; also Miller and Yamamori 2007), which are often independent megachurches that have arisen since the 1990s in urban contexts and are both more socially engaged and transnationally connected (thereby privileging the English medium in most contexts). These are not mutually exclusive (some churches or church groups might participate in or embrace more than one of these identified streams) but are portrayed thus, as they both illuminate the pluralism of pentecostal–charismatic Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa and foreshadow the diversity of pentecostal responses (real and potential) to economic development.

More can and should be said about the AICs that, arguably, developed their own “Holy Spirit” movements. One of the presuppositions of Pentecostalism is a prominence of the experience of the Spirit through the charismata. Moltmann (1992, p. 68) describes “Christian faith [as] the experience of the quickening Spirit—experience of the beginning of the new creation of the world”. It is the proclamation of this “new creation of the world”, a world where people do not experience the devastating consequences of poverty, that is appealing within the African context. The proclamation of creating a new world has long had a specific “evangelical” understanding within the AICs. Although some AICs may be viewed as pentecostal, and vice versa, not all AICs consider themselves pentecostal, even as many pentecostal churches might not include AICs within their ranks. Togarasei (2011, p. 338) makes a clear distinction between the AICs and especially the wave of pentecostal churches that started in the 1970s (what we have delineated above as the fourth stream). However, Oduro et al. (2008, p. 6) describe the AICs as “ranging from groups only one step removed from traditional African religious reality to Christ-centred, Spirit-led, biblical orientated communities of faith”. While this argument may be irresolvable, that there are shared phenomenological and other similarities cannot be denied:

… a personal encounter with God (being “born again”), long periods of individual and communal prayer, prayer for healing and for individualized problems like unemployment and poverty, deliverance from demons and “the occult” (this term often means traditional beliefs and witchcraft), and the use of spiritual gifts like speaking in tongues and (to a lesser extent) prophecy more or less characterize all these churches …

(Anderson 2002, p. 530).

African Pentecostalism in its five-stranded manifestation in sub-Saharan Africa is thus elusive since it means many things to many people (Garrard 2009, pp. 231–32). Given our more theological and missiological concerns vis-à-vis economic development, our own usage will be more ecclesially broad and more sociologically inclusive (cf. Asamoah-Gyadu et al. 2016; also Asamoah-Gyadu 2013). Our review of the literature covers research across the diversity of African Pentecostalism. Our questions attend to how pneumatic spirituality and experiences in sub-Saharan Africa might contribute toward socio-economic endeavors.

Before pressing into this question, it is important to sketch, even if briefly, some of the basic theological presuppositions at work across African pentecostal–charismatic Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa. Many of these churches are informed by early modern pentecostal–holiness emphases on Jesus as savior, healer, sanctifier, and the coming King (Anderson 2002, p. 524), known as the “full gospel”; later, a fifth element, Jesus as Spirit baptizer, was added, which was linked to speaking in tongues. For Anderson (2002, p. 530), “Salvation means a restoration of wholeness to human life, in which people have communion with God and enjoy the divine gifts”. God wants to bless his people holistically, and this includes both spiritual and physical blessing. From this perspective, a holistic understanding of salvation indicates a well-being demonstrated “in freedom from sickness, poverty, and misfortune, as well as deliverance from sin and evil” (Anderson 2002, p. 526). While most pentecostal churches do not believe these blessings function according to any biblical law of cause and effect, they hold that promises regarding prosperity are for the here and now (unlike the older missionary churches, including pentecostal-mission-founded ones we identified earlier within stream two, that are perceived to have focused too much on the “not yet” and are therefore not seen as addressing the present needs of Africans). In many pentecostal churches, “Salvation is now resolutely this-worldly, and evidence of new life has become as much a material as spiritual notion of transformation has been broadened to include the possibility of material change in everyday life” (Togarasei 2011, p. 340).

In the African context, then, this christological and soteriological vision has coalesced around beliefs and practices related to deliverance (salvation and healing) and prosperity (holiness/blessing and empowerment). It is not that the Word, the sacraments, and the discipline of the church are absent, but that the calling and the charismatically liberating and enabling work of the Holy Spirit is prioritized and elevated (Garrard 2009, pp. 234–35). In this regard, traditional Christian and classical pentecostal soteriology has more recently blended in with socio-economic uplift, “success”, and prosperity (Nel 2020, p. xiii). Yet these developments are also intimately related to the African worldview and African Traditional Religion, so the streams continue to interweave and overflow.

Different rural and urban contexts in Africa influence and may even determine the ministry in African Pentecostalism. While in the rural areas the focus might still be on communal relations with a focus on traditional practices, spirit possession, and even sorcery, in the urban areas the sermon tends to deal with work-related relations, moral life, and the misuse of alcohol (Daneel 1987, p. 133). Because many especially urban pentecostal Christians view the village as the place of traditional religion, angry ancestors, backwardness, and poverty, their new church communities have replaced the roles previously provided by the village clan (Myers 2019, p. 21). In South Africa, some of the African pentecostal churches are also known as the “bekeer” (conversion or born-again) churches. In many instances, the “urban” ministry is about the proof that people have converted their lives. Their new lifestyle, more in line with the global market economy and its symbols and values, are indicators of the religious conversion assumed to precede these socio-economic indicators of prosperity, not least when they stop smoking, drinking, or entertaining other habits—viewed as sin—still pervasive in rural communities (see Premawardhana 2018, esp. chp. 5).

The importance of “proving” salvation is so strong in some of these churches that many pentecostal believers, and some members of the AICs, reject the use of any form of medicine, either traditional or modern (Anderson 2002, p. 526). More recently, it has not been uncommon for pastors in some of the South African neo-pentecostal churches to spray their congregants with insecticide, give them petrol to drink, or expect them to eat snakes or rats all to prove the “power” of their faith and that nothing is impossible with God (Kgatle 2021). There are also reports of incidents where neo-pentecostal church congregants have been asked to masturbate and reach orgasms in church, so that their “holy” bodily fluid will “make the church floor as sacred as heaven”.

Less extremely and more generally, in most African pentecostal churches, conversion is evidenced spiritually, in “signs and wonders”, healing, prophecy, speaking in tongues, and a holy life. According to Garrard (2009, p. 232), “Holiness is often understood in terms of legalism and the keeping of rules and regulations imposed by any particular group”. Yet these manifestations are no less important in indigenous spiritualities. In particular, the two gifts of healing and prophecy closely correspond with emphases in African Traditional Religion (ATR) (Oduro et al. 2008, pp. 59, 73–79). Within the ATR worldview, healing and prophecy were always regarded as important and hence helped the focus on good relationships with the whole cosmos to keep the order and power in the universe. Mbiti (1991, pp. 40–43) describes different levels on which order is functioning in the African community: First, the laws of nature are found, safeguarding order in the world. Second, there is a moral order working amongst people believed to safeguard the individual as well as the community. Third is the religious order, where the universe is viewed in an all-encompassing way, therefore taboos are found in every aspect of life. Fourth, the universe is governed by a mystical order, which is clearly shown in the practice of traditional medicine, magic, witchcraft, and sorcery. It is on the mystical order level that African Pentecostalism, mostly in the rural areas, is tapping into the ministries of healing and prophecy, while in the urban areas it might be more on the religious order level with clear taboos, but certainly also on the mystical level. Nel (2020, p. 2) goes as far as to state that neo-pentecostal pastors have effectively become modern witchdoctors, offering spiritual protection and deliverance from all kinds of spiritual, social, economic, and physical problems. To be sure, pentecostal beliefs otherwise usually created a direct confrontation with ATR when they “were talking about allegiances to spirits and powers which were immediately understood by Africans to be diametrically opposed to those which were their own” (Garrard 2009, p. 233). In the end, however, while we may distinguish amongst the different levels of order and power in ATR, we may never fully separate them from the pentecostal nexus, as they are interdependent and interlinked (cf. Chitando 2021).

Both ATR and Pentecostalism are multifaceted movements. Thus, it is a generalization to say that all pentecostal Christians believe the coming of the Spirit makes “signs and wonders” possible, of which healing is one of the most prominent to authenticate Christ’s message of deliverance. The pentecostal understanding of the “full gospel” was that “signs and wonders” could, if not should, accompany the preaching of the Word. As such, healing became an inseparable part of pentecostal evangelism. Anderson (2002, p. 252) declares that “This emphasis on healing is so much part of pentecostal evangelism, especially in the third world, that large public campaigns and tent crusades preceded by great publicity are frequently used to reach as many ‘unevangelised’ people as possible”.

Nel (2020, p. 10) emphasizes that African pentecostal believers understand their lives to be in continuity with the biblical traditions, including Spirit-led practices of prophecy, healing, worship, glossolalia, and preaching. Since it is the prophet who prophesies, delivers, heals, and performs miracles, many of these churches are known as “prophetic” or “neo-prophetic” churches in (especially, but not only, southern) Africa. These churches revolve around the prophet through whom the charismata are displayed (Ramantswana 2019, p. 1). In continuity with the pentecostal movement, some of these “prophets” are practicing the controversial “Word of Faith” message, quite influential across the majority of the world, including, and especially, Africa. Also known as the “prosperity theology” or “health and wealth” gospel, its motif of success fits well with Africa’s traditional religious understanding of fertility, wealth, and wholeness (Nel 2020, p. 1). “It is also very common to see that the ‘founder-leader’ of such groups becomes the person with exclusive rights of interpretation of both the Bible and of what the Holy Spirit is saying” (Garrard 2009, p. 236).

When or if people do not receive what was prophesied or confessed, it is blamed on themselves because of their unbelief or because they have not attended to orders and powers in the universe as discussed previously (Anderson 2002, p. 529). Although “The prosperity gospel is considered another form of Pentecostalism” (Adamo 2021, p. 1), it is also important to note that many pentecostal churches have distanced themselves from this prosperity theme. Critics like Anderson have urged that in the prosperity churches, human faith supersedes the sovereignty and grace of God: “As faith becomes a condition for God’s action and the strength of faith is measured by the results” (Anderson 2002, p. 529). This might be comprehensible since, in the holistic African worldview, spirituality or faith is directly or indirectly linked to the believer’s socio-economic understanding.

With this short description of African pentecostal theology and spirituality, it is important to also take note of the work of African scholars like Turaki (2012). Without discussing in detail the argument of his book, The Trinity of Sin, Turaki’s analyses are applicable here. The first of the trinity is “Self-centeredness and Pride”, the second is “Greed and Lust”, and the third is “Anxiety and Fear”. In the context of this article’s concerns and inquiries, this give rise to the following questions: How does African pentecostal–charismatic Christianity (or the church in Africa) deal with these “sins”? What is the relation of the “trinity of sin” to the healing and prophetic ministry in Africa, which is in many instances directly related to the prosperity gospel? How might pentecostal theologians and missiologists reconsider the Christian faith in relationship to these “sins” and to the challenges of socio-economic development?

An initial response might be the traditional pentecostal mode of distanciation from African Traditional Religion. To the degree that pentecostal Christians associate poverty and suffering with what the devil wants for Africa (Myers 2019, p. 21), and to the degree that the latter is also then identified with ATR, angry ancestors, and demon possession, to that same degree liberation from poverty is found first and foremost in Christian repentance and in being forgiven of, and leaving completely, one’s past (see Meyer 1998). Deliverance from the powers of the devil includes liberation from the strongholds of ATR’s religion and spirituality. Being forgiven of these sins involves turning to Christ and the Holy Spirit. From this spiritual conversion flows a moral transformation: behaviors that diminish household income, like drinking, smoking, and womanizing, are left behind as part of the devil’s work, and the accompanying personal transformation is part of the new ecclesial and social “identity”. Myers (2019, p. 23) discusses the importance of “The simple fact that the Holy Spirit of God chooses to visit and revisit poor people through prayers, healings, deliverances and prophecies is itself an affirmation of the true identity of the poor as being more than hopeless, helpless and invisible”. When discovering a new identity in Christ, the poor move beyond passive fatalism and discover the fact that they have agency in their lives.

3. African Pentecostalism and Socio-Economic Development: A Review of the Literature

We now turn to a review of the especially recent literature of African Pentecostalism, wherein we focus especially on the relationship to socio-economic development, drawing from older research as it is relevant. We organize our thoughts under four categories: views regarding poverty and prosperity, personal socio-economic efforts, more collective ecclesial-based development initiatives, and a deeper consideration of contemporary prophetic churches. The following discussion will enable our larger objective: the resituating of the longstanding debate about whether pentecostal–charismatic spirituality is capable of having a socio-economic impact in sub-Saharan Africa, and the discernment of possible theological and missiological resources toward that end.

3.1. Views Regarding Poverty and Prosperity

Many Africans view poverty as a curse that needs to be addressed in a spiritual manner and needs to be overcome through faith (Anderson 2002, p. 529; Mburu 2019, pp. 53–55; Myers 2019, p. 21). However, when socio-economic matters and development in general are discussed in South Africa, the religious leaders or organizations are usually not included in these discussions; such an example is Agenda 2063 of the African Union. Myers (2019, p. 12) indicates that “there are no global poverty reduction proposals by Christians” compared to secular development economists. He also indicates that the secular development community is suspicious but curious about faith-based development (Myers 2019, p. 13). Similarly, when poverty is discussed, it is not related to spiritual matters in any way. For example, Knoetze points out that the World Bank views South Africa as one of the most unequal countries in the world and refers to the National Development Plan and Vision of the South African government to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality by 2030 without giving any consideration to an African worldview or the African religious or spiritual world. He continues to discuss how different “spiritual organisations” are contributing to development in South Africa through, for example, Early Childhood Development Centers, Home Base Care, Children’s Homes, and other forms of caring ministries. These organizations are attempting to invest in people from the margins by building social capital (Knoetze 2019, pp. 1–2). Mburu (2019, p. 53) confirms that suffering in Africa is (traditionally) understood through the lens of relationships with the spiritual world. When suffering occurs in a community, some relationship must have been broken and an intercessor is needed to determine what needs to be done to restore the relationship. This also refers to the relationship between the Creator and creation, including humanity.

Togarasei (2011, pp. 336–37) defines poverty in Africa as the lack of basic needs for survival, indicating the fertile ground for Pentecostalism in Africa when preaching the gospel of prosperity. He characterizes the pentecostal churches in the urban areas as “preaching a gospel of prosperity, spiritism and association with modernity’ (Togarasei 2011, p. 338). According to pentecostal Christians, poverty is assigned as the work of the devil, and material poverty is seen as a kind of disease from which Christians must be healed. Thus, “to move from poverty to prosperity one therefore needs deliverance from the spirit of poverty” (Togarasei 2011, p. 340). Mburu (2019, p. 55) confirms that it is all about the law of power within the African worldview. If a person suffers, someone or something caused it and he or she needs to consult a “stronger power” to be released. Interestingly, according to Togarasei (2011, p. 340), some pentecostal believers view traditional African rituals and activities as hampering development, but then they also view the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank as demonized agents of Satan causing hardship on the Africa continent. As such, prosperity is described in terms of health, and to be healed or become rich, members of some pentecostal churches are encouraged to “sow seeds” of prosperity in the form of giving money to the church. As a last resort and full of hope, many poor people contribute financially to create very large and rich pentecostal churches with wealthy pastors, some of which are even registered as private companies (Togarasei 2011, p. 341). Nel (2020, p. 3) describes how these prophets restructure the religious characteristics by “buying up large expanses of land and constructing a range of facilities, including auditoriums, schools, guest houses, dormitories, banks, hospitals, and petrol stations, that function as alternative cities”.

In Africa Reimagined, his book on human development as opposed to only socio-economic development, Biko urges that the focus needs to be on sustained national prosperity rather than individual optimism. Africa will gain the most through investing in its people, and yet the continent underperforms in investing in humans (Biko 2019, p. 240). Rather than investing in the development of people, many African countries attend to other means of social extraction to escape poverty and underdevelopment, such as “high crime rates, corruption, and uncontrolled emigration, [these] are the social costs of the inability to develop the talents of Africa’s citizens” (Biko 2019, p. 241). Yet, as we might guess, there is not one but many views regarding prosperity across pentecostal churches, even as there are just as many perspectives on how to move from poverty to prosperity by individual participants and members in these congregations and communities (e.g., Attanasi and Yong 2012). In the next few pages, we lay out some of these views and efforts to combat poverty and to achieve prosperity that exist across the spectrum of pentecostal–charismatic churches in sub-Saharan Africa.

3.2. Empowered Socio-Economic Witness: Personal Endeavors

We begin at the level of individual efforts. To be sure, the examples at this level are inconceivable apart from the pentecostal–charismatic message more broadly, including Spirit-led empowerment, divine promise, and salvation as deliverance, liberation, and blessing. Within these ecclesial communities, there is a widespread and consistent message advocating for the recovery of personal and cultural identities leading to engaging more broadly with political and other venues, including taking more responsibility for their own economic wellbeing (see Gitau 2018, chp. 5). Across the communities, then, human abilities, skills, and talents are reiterated as divinely given in order to empower personal agency.

Within the Zimbabwean pentecostal context, the notion of matarenda, or talents, calls attention to the possibilities of socio-economic advance from the perspective of divinely enabled self-reliance (Chingarande et al. 2021). The Zimbabwe Assemblies of God Africa (ZAOGA) School of Talents was established to equip members to work toward self-sustainability. These would begin even for those living at the subsistence level, where more informal economic entrepreneurship efforts deploying extant resources would be wedded to the social capital provided particularly by the ecclesial community. As family economic circumstances are stabilized, entry into more formal economic endeavors can then utilize innovative micro-financing, micro-credit, and other mechanisms, particularly as translated for church members from the business school programs of the denomination’s Ezekiel Guti University. Across and beyond the ZAOGA (see Mapuranga 2018), Zimbabwean Pentecostals, especially women (although often supported by spouses or other male family members), have engaged in various entrepreneurial ventures, including but not limited to border-crossing trading (more recently, particularly in electronics), salons, food stalls or eateries (developing later into restaurants), grocery/tuck shops, flea market stalls, clothes/shoes sales (including second-hand sales, and later engaging in some manufacturing activities), foreign currency exchange, money clubs (a parallel genre to pawn shops but involving investment groups), cooperatives, flower boutiques, tourism guides, and various small businesses (e.g., in cosmetics, jewelry, and house/kitchenwares). In all of these endeavors, the road is often challenging as there are many impediments, especially to women’s efforts.

As is evident, pentecostal believers are encouraged to work hard and engage in entrepreneurship, as members are motivated not to be employees but to become employers. From these encouragements, we observe entrepreneurial developments since “The word JOB (employment) is said to be an abbreviation of ‘Just Over (being) Broke’ or to be just one month away from poverty” (Togarasei 2011, p. 340).

On the one hand, it is important to take note of the influence of the informal business sector on the economy of sub-Saharan Africa and how it might even contribute to the lack of socio-economic development, since “40 to 50 percent of African GDP comes from an informal sector that by definition goes largely untaxed” (Biko 2019, p. 241). In this regard, to rebuild national economic and social capital, it is important to invest in a culture that develops professionalism and contributes to the common good. On the other hand, those transitioning from rural spaces, or those beginning from lower socio-economic rungs, have to start somewhere, and informal economic forays enable traction and grow confidence. For instance, farming endeavors among southern African pentecostal–charismatic believers are one example of how these projects have developed (Olsson and Lauterbach 2022).

Another example of upward socio-economic mobility comes from an earlier study by Frahm-Arp (2010), where she explored the emergence of professional women in South Africa, in part due to the church message of female empowerment by the Spirit, although this has not alleviated the discrimination they face related to gender, race, and age in their workplaces. Further, these forays into the professional world come at a price for single women as a threat to male identities and for married women who still must submit to male headship in the home (leading to some women leaving their churches). In an ecclesial context that continues to promote a more patriarchal domestic ethos and traditional family values, even when there are encouraging husbands (for those who are married), the mentality of the women who pursue such opportunities remains fraught with guilt in relationship, especially for their roles as mothers and wives. Single women pursuing professional vocations have to navigate the many negative stereotypes surrounding the question of why they are not married.

Across both the entrepreneurial and professional domains, however, indicators of socio-economic upward mobility are interpreted as signs of divine favor. Within the Zambian Copperbelt province (Haynes 2017), entrepreneurship supporting the mining industries in this region is motivated by demonstrations of attainment of divine blessings that involve material indexes, such as dress styles (the personal level; see Drønen 2015), the accumulation of furniture (vis-à-vis social status), or the flexibility of not working and hence having the time to exercise spiritual or other forms of leadership in the church or the wider community. Zambian pentecostal socio-economic life is thus dynamic, continually characterized by movement, including “breakthroughs” from the stagnation and gridlock of struggle into greater and greater levels of success (ministerial and professional, especially, for males) and abundance and prosperity (for women and families also). Pentecostal spiritual and religious practice thus reinforces a socio-axiological construction (regarding the good and the valuable), empowers economic–communal flourishing (within the congregations and their community networks), and spawns ecclesial and wider social cohesiveness, despite and even amidst the ever-present threats (of highly fluctuating late market capitalist economies).

To be clear, as one recent doctoral study (Dambula 2022) deploying social identity theory and focused on comparing pentecostal and non-pentecostal “successful” (sustained over six years) small-business start-ups in a city in Malawi confirms, there is significant ecclesial and spiritual influence shaping and transforming the identity attributes among pentecostal entrepreneurs, even as there is also comparatively negligible data in terms of factors leading to starting up small businesses. Nevertheless, various levels of small-business entrepreneurial praxis and professionalization have emerged from African Pentecostalism, especially in urban contexts where these churches are growing the fastest.

3.3. Collective, Ecclesial-Based, and Broader Development Initiatives

Beyond what individual pentecostal members are doing entrepreneurially or professionally, what about their churches? There has been a long history of Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant churches contributing to grassroots efforts in education, health services, and caring for the marginalized. As such, the “newness” may not be in the “what” of the ministry but rather in the “how”. Another dimension of this “newness” relates to scale, including, as already mentioned, churches engaged in their own “development” projects.

For instance, a study of the Full Gospel Mission (FGM) of Cameroon around the middle of the first decade of this century documented an evolution from the church’s earlier relatively asceticist commitments into a more prosperity-based mindset open to economic engagement and development (Akoko 2007). By that time, the FGM had begun more than a handful of schools (from preschool through college/university levels, e.g., Full Gospel Technical College), health centers, a printing press, multiple bookstores, a salon franchise (Frontliners Beauty Center), an incorporated Christian Communication Network, and commercial and co-op banks, including Zion Credit Financing (Akoko 2007, pp. 121–39). Similarly, at that time, growth of the Nigerian-based Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) had been fueled by and had also generated a range of development and economic initiatives (Ukah 2008, chp. 5). For instance, the RCCG headquarters and its campsite, Redemption City, are spread out over approximately ten square miles and include a maternity center, a for-profit economic think-tank Zion Needs Management Ltd., Redeemer’s Business Academy, International Bible Institute and Leadership Training School (that has business programs and courses), a parish mobilization arm called Jubilee Development Foundation, Jubilee Cooperative Society (a registered partner with Nigeria’s Federal Minister of Agriculture), partnerships with four community banks (Haggai, New Life, Ore-Ofe, and Sunrise), Mutual Assurances Ltd. insurance company, Covenant Guaranty Trucks, Sharon Consultancy & Research Management Organization, Dominion Guards & Prime Guards Nigeria Ltd. security firms, and other businesses. More recently, these camps/“cities” have been proliferating (Burgess 2020, p. 46), e.g., Deeper Life Bible Conference Center, Gospel Faith Mission International Gospel City, Foursquare Gospel Church Camp, and Mountain of Fire and Miracle Ministries’ Prayer City, to name only those along the 120 km long Lagos–Ibadan Expressway in Nigeria!

Beyond these more strictly ecclesial-based efforts, more and more partnerships between churches and other institutions and organizations for development purposes have been documented. We can backtrack to an earlier generation of pentecostal mission-based organizations and their efforts funded by state development programs. For instance, the Finnish Free Foreign Mission operating in Kenya received government funding and used it to expand their orphanage ministry and add initiatives in school/education, health/clinics, and other social services, including, but not only those related to, distributing material provisions like “clothes, blankets, sewing machines, tools, household supplies, first aid equipment and wheel chairs” (Lounela 2007, p. 135). Dana Freeman’s (2012) collection explores a range of church–NGO partnerships, including but not limited to those serving orphaned, displaced, and vulnerable children in Kenya, rural entrepreneurship in Ethiopia, refugee and warzone ministries in Uganda, and various women’s programs across the continent. These chapters document that pentecostal–charismatic churches are more effective economic change agents/agencies than NGOs that work at the levels of legal structures and political policies, but do not usually address the important issues pertinent to kin/family/community relations.

More recently, Burgess’s (2020) study of Nigeria illuminates not only church-based but broader faith-based organizational (FBO) endeavors that are making an impact developmentally and socio-economically. To be sure, there are the baseline entrepreneurial efforts, but more regularly featured now are those that address issues of capacity building in the economic domain. Beyond the strictly defined economic realm are related efforts of political engagement (including running for office, involvement in governance, embrace of electoral political efforts, etc.),3 education (at all levels including a handful of nationally and internationally—at least across Africa if not beyond—recognized pentecostal-founded, -led, and -affiliated universities), health/medical infrastructural development (earlier addressing pandemics like HIV/AIDS, and currently focusing on the ongoing needs of maternal and reproductive wellbeing, as well as disabilities and impairments), human rights promotion (addressing issues like street children, prostitution, and trafficking), and peacebuilding (taking up religious extremism, terrorism, and Muslim–Christian hostilities) initiatives. Burgess’s assessment of what is happening on the Nigerian pentecostal ground confirms what is unfolding across sub-Saharan Africa: that pentecostal–charismatic churches are increasingly providing African solutions and empowering the agency of Africans with their missional impact in the socio-economic and development arenas (see also Öhlmann et al. 2020).

One more set of comments is apropos that regards the marketization and digitization of pentecostal–charismatic ministries and churches. To be sure, churches—pentecostal, charismatic, and otherwise—have long advertised themselves in traditionalist and classic venues. However, the boom of the electronic and information age has provided new opportunities for such marketing and promotion, including the transformation of existing electronic endeavors into new socio-economic ventures. For instance, starting in the latter decades of the prior century, Pentecostal–Charismatics experimented with the deployment of the airwaves for missional purposes. Within the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Cinarc was a popular TV acting group with an explicitly Christian identity and a deeply pentecostal ethos and missional commitment to producing dramatic and fictional television serials—what Pype (2012) calls “melodrama” and what the Kinois, the local nomenclature for Kinshasan residents, call télédramatiques or mabokee—with proselytizing intent. Less for money-making and more for missional ventures, the emergence of such pentecostal serials follows from the profound pentecostalization and charismatization of Kinshasan Christianity and its ever-escalating pervasiveness and hegemony over the city’s public space. As this was happening on Congolese television, born-again (pentecostal–charismatic) Christians in West Africa were producing videos, films, and movies, sensationalizing—here, meaning revealing and making palpable to the senses what was otherwise invisible to the naked eye but otherwise no less really perceived by the faithful (see Meyer 2015)—the religious life and spiritual world, but doing so in ways that was resonating with the broader pentecostalizing and charismatizing public. If the earlier ventures were designed to translate spiritual truths into the vernacular and influence public morality, more recent efforts are even more sensationalistic, promoting the ministry, mission, and brand of the churches, or their apostles, prophets, or evangelists, against competitors.

In short, the digitization of pentecostal–charismatic aesthetics serving missional goals for an earlier generation has evolved into the commercialization of pentecostal–charismatic economics serving prosperity goals across the contemporary landscape and soundscape (De Witte 2008; Chitando 2021). In the present context, abuses are much more difficult to check and thereby more rampant (Kgatle et al. 2023). Unsurprisingly, the last decade has seen an influx of critical analyses of these developments, not only from mainline Protestant (e.g., Heuser 2015) and Roman Catholic (e.g., Agana 2016) perspectives but also from pentecostal vistas (e.g., Kgatle and Anderson 2020). Concerns have been raised about the inappropriate use of Scripture, occult or magical economical thinking, proliferation of witchcraft allegations (too often, especially among the masses, economy prosperity is spiritualized negatively as gained through illicit means of sorcery or witchcraft; see Blanes 2017), exploitation of parishioner generosity in response to an invitation to tithe or invest financially in the church, abuse of trust, flaunting of affluence, and a host of other problems. In transitioning to a more in-depth assessment, we will observe the interconnections between poverty and prosperity, and especially observe how the latter has emerged out of the matrix of the former.

3.4. From AICs to Contemporary Prophetic Churches: The Recent and Emerging Literature

While little historical appreciation of the dynamics of the emergence and development of prophetic churches exists (yet see Adamo 2021), some appreciation of the various factors spurring this phenomenon will, however loosely narrated and contestable, enable a greater appreciation of contemporary pentecostal interfaces with socio-economic developmental opportunities and challenges. According to Daneel (1987, p. 102), who has researched and accompanied independent Shona churches of southern Africa (especially in Zimbabwe) for decades, the main breeding ground for the AICs was the communal lands. He refers to “large church colonies” like Shembe, Lekhanyane, and Mutendi, known as the Mount Zions and Jordan Rivers, which play a significant role in these Spirit-type churches. Although he already refers to the urban areas as a major growth point for the independent churches—anticipating, for instance, the Cameroonian FGM and the RCCG’s Redemption City, both discussed above—he argues “in most prophetic mass movements it is rare for such urban development to outstrip growth in rural areas” (Daneel 1987, p. 103). While this has changed dramatically in the past few decades, these “large church colonies” reflect in many instances the old mission stations of the mainline missionary churches. As such, it is not totally new to the church, but is rather the same “principles” coming in a new format.

Daneel (1987, pp. 103–6) discusses four different types of church headquarters. The first is the large church colonies, which determine the entire village structure; second, the medium-sized headquarters which affect the village structure less dramatically; third, the small headquarters with almost no physical manifestation; and fourth, the floating type of church headquarters, where the home of the leader has little centralizing or consolidating impact. Historically, these sites have emerged and represented the village structure and contributed to sustainable development. To give an example, Daneel explains how Samuel Mutendi (1880–1976) with his large church colony, Zion City and Apostle Centre amongst the Shona churches in Zimbabwe, managed to develop a “homogenous religious pattern” under his personality as both the headman and religious leader. He managed to transform the whole village into a church headquarters. Villagers were inspired with a strong common drive, namely, creating their own “Jerusalem”. Focused on this common drive, villagers participated in different tasks in the “holy city”, like brickmaking, building and maintaining roads, cleaning the grounds, church administrative tasks such as admission of new patients, and interviews with visiting congregational leaders. A self-sustaining socio-economic system functions when “patients” and temporary residents were fed in return for working in the fields, resulting in a mutual aid system: in exchange for prophetic therapy and pastoral care, people helped in the fields or building projects (Daneel 1987, p. 105). Another benefit was a good communication system in Mutendi’s “Zion City”, keeping them in close contact with educational, religious, and politico-economic developments in the country. The result, well documented in Daneel’s work, exemplifies how AICs have both been attuned to the environment and adapted as prophetic churches to the encroaching late modern world (also Daneel 2001).

To be fair, this is not new within Christianity in Africa, since there was always competition between the different denominations in the mainline missionary churches for members, especially in the efforts of the missionaries to win over the headman or the king of a specific tribe. However, these church leaders, called prophets, view themselves as “different” from their congregants because they have special gifts, a higher status, and an unchallengeable authority (Nel 2020, p. 5). One aberrant result of these kind of ministries is that it is no longer about worshipping or serving God or working towards the kingdom of God. Authority resides less with Scripture or even the ecclesial community than with the leader himself, enforcing his will on his followers.4 As such, followers become associations or clients of a specific “prophet” or “big man of God” (see Kalu 2008, chp. 6) rather than members of a church. These church leaders and communities function in the same way as Daneel described Mutendi’s village, utilizing the “Big Man” or chief syndrome. This “Big Man” syndrome is also described as the curse of Africa, as it sometimes played out in a dictatorship. In light of this, it is found that many pentecostal leaders do not tolerate any insubordination (Garrard 2009, p. 237). In the early twenty-first century, some segments of the African pentecostal church, especially those in the more “prophetic” arena, displayed this same pattern. The lavish lifestyle of the so-called prophets in the urban areas contrasts with many of their followers’ struggles in the agony of poverty (Nel 2020, p. 12). The consumer environment in which we find ourselves fosters this prosperity and healing ministry.

An interesting observation is that the ministry and message of these “prosperity prophets” is mainly popular in countries with a dysfunctional political culture, where they can gather wealth and power at the expense of poor people (e.g., Chitando et al. 2013). As such, they never challenge the dysfunctional political culture to make a contribution to structural development. The current political climate in (South) Africa clearly shows a shift in the way that churches are viewed or branded when churches are named after prophets. In the past in (South) Africa, church denominations were the main brands, e.g., Catholic, Reformed, Protestant, Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, Episcopal, Zionist, Apostolic, Pentecostal, or Charismatic. The fact that missionaries represent different denominations was proof for Africans that different churches may exist. The AICs developed from this principle, showing that Africans do not need missionaries to have churches (Oduro et al. 2008, p. 7). With this development, the AICs and the newly found African Pentecostalism changed the church landscape to mainly independent, non-denominational, or transnationally loosely associated networks of churches. To adjust to this trend, even some of the congregations of mainline churches changed their names to no longer reflect the denomination. Additionally, some parachurch organizations prefer to function as ecumenical organizations to avoid denominational constraints. In the late modern capitalist environment where consumerism has made headway, local churches are branded with “prophets”, specific ministries, vision, and mission statements to set themselves apart. Thus, they are no longer distinguished according to different dogmas or beliefs. It is now not about what we believe but about what we need, and who is the prophet? Some perceive these pastors more negatively as “personality cults”, considering the tendency of their followers to unquestionably submit to them and hold them in high regard (Thumma and Travis 2007, p. 55; Kgatle 2021).

4. Discussion: Pentecostal Contributions to Socio-Economic Development—Possibilities and Challenges

This final section has two mutually informing objectives. First, we will resituate the longstanding debate about whether pentecostal–charismatic spirituality is capable of having a socio-economic impact in sub-Saharan Africa in light of the preceding discussion. Second, in dialogue with Nigerian pentecostal social ethicist Nimi Wariboko, we will sketch a pentecostal spirituality for the late modern world of global capitalism.

Scholars of African Pentecostalism in particular and African Christianity more generally will be familiar with Paul Gifford’s long-standing critique of pentecostal–charismatic spirituality as being too self-absorbed to make any kind of socio-economic impact, which is sorely needed not only for the church in Africa but for African societies more broadly. Part of Gifford’s appraisal going back decades is that despite the thesis about the Afrocentric roots of global Pentecostalism (e.g., Hollenweger 1997), the prosperity emphases across sub-Saharan Pentecostalism have been derived from the more affluent West, not only missionary carriers but across transnationalist, glocal, and migrational routes, to the detriment of the developmental needs of African societies (see Brouwer et al. 1996). Gifford’s more local studies in West and East African pentecostal contexts has ameliorated his critical posture, but only slightly. Under his gaze, Ghanaian Pentecostalism (Gifford 2004) has motivated the taking of personal responsibility for improving one’s life situation; however, its miraculous/magical worldview has remained a major impediment in subordinating economic realities and modalities to spiritual ones. Thus, working hard, saving (e.g., Weberian asceticism or deferral of gratification), entrepreneurship, and investment, when they happen, serve prosperity theological imaginations and aspirations. Similarly, Kenyan Pentecostalism, particularly that of the more middle to upper-middle class neo-pentecostal urban churches, has continued the prosperity emphases, thus prioritizing self-actualization and personal upward mobility among other quicker “get rich” strategies over those devoted to socio-structural change (Gifford 2009, pp. 146–61).

No doubt, scholars familiar with these debates will recognize that much of the research summarized in the preceding section has had to react, implicitly or explicitly, to Gifford’s claims. Nkem Osuigwe’s (2014) practical–theological study of three bapticostal/charismatic churches in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, was designed specifically to explore Gifford’s arguments and concludes that there is a complex and nuanced theological understanding that undergirds social responsibility and motivates political engagement among the rank-and-file and the leadership of these churches. In the context of this regional dependence on the oil economy, then, Osuigwe sketches, in the final chapter, a pentecostal theological praxis of social engagement in dialogue with liberation theological resources. This study is part of a growing trend of research that has documented African agency and initiative contrasting with the “exported from the West” thesis (e.g., Kalu 2008). However, the latter cannot be denied and has also had its African-based scholarly champions (e.g., Ngoy 2019). Regardless of how these matters continue to be disputed (and they should), there is no doubt that Gifford’s provocative thesis needs to be revisited in light of the extensive research of both insiders and academic researchers that has uncovered the many different ways in which pentecostal–charismatic beliefs and practices across the broad (five-streamed) spectrum of the movement have generated many modalities of more or less effective economic engagement.

Against this backdrop, we wish to introduce the work of Nimi Wariboko, a Nigerian pentecostal (RCCG) minister/missionary (see the brief account of his pastoral work by Gornik 2011, pp. 161–63) and social ethicist with experience on Wall Street, as he has emerged as an important social theorist whose ideas deserve some consideration. Although he trained at Princeton Seminary (where he earned his PhD) in continental philosophy—his dissertation was a philosophical theology of money (Wariboko 2008)— early on in his work as an economic philosopher and theologian he wedded these insights with his West African pentecostal experience to suggest the pentecostal principle (Wariboko 2011). Whereas the Protestant principle (of theologian Paul Tillich) insisted that human activity apart from divine initiative is ineffective (at best) and demonic (at worst), Wariboko’s pentecostal principle emphasized the Spirit-led capacity to always begin anew. As such, pentecostal spirituality at its best exhibited a playful character, one that for social ethical purposes was pluralistic, attending to the diversity of contexts, complexity of issues, and multiplicity of relevant responses. In the current global context in which late modern capitalism interfaces across sub-Saharan Africa less homogeneously but in a dizzying variety of ways related to the unevenness of the legacies of racialized colonialism and the endemic corruption of divergent national and state contexts, Wariboko’s pentecostal principle rightly highlights how pentecostal spirituality may be even better primed than we expect to be able to respond nimbly, adeptly, and pluralistically to the many economic challenges of our time.

Wariboko thus notes that there is now not just one kind of documentable pentecostal response to socio-economic realities and needs, but a multiplicity of emerging paradigmatic endeavors. Keeping in mind the overview that we provided in the preceding section, Wariboko’s own analysis (Wariboko 2014b, pp. 232–48) of the socio-economic ground leads him to posit at least the following: covenant theologies driven by both prosperity and excellence models; spiritualist approaches that emphasize the central role of prayer warfare and deliverance in economic initiatives; leadership models that may be more prevalent on pentecostal-founded and affiliated university syllabi that are designed to achieve socio-economic change negotiating with the standard economic theories and models; concrete, ecclesially generated development initiatives (e.g., the RCCG infrastructural building as summarized above); and even nationalistic postures, e.g., Nigeria as the seat of divine favor for the rebuilding of the continent in the twenty-first century. The reality is probably even more complicated now a decade later, but the point is that pentecostal–charismatic pneumaticism is proliferating responses to the socio-economic conditions and urgencies of the continent rather than inhibiting interfaces.

The unpredictability of the global market economy is an equally important consideration, and means that initiatives, programs, and strategies for socio-economic development need to be adaptable, mobile, and fluid, and thus able to respond to the chaotic perturbations that can cause wild economic fluctuations at any moment. Here is where the genius of Wariboko’s pentecostal principle seems essential to ongoing pentecostal–charismatic forays into socio-economic domains. Across Wariboko’s quickly growing oeuvre, most prominently on the economic register, is one of his recent books, The Split Economy (Wariboko 2020). Here, he invites us to consider that because we exist as split subjectivities in this liminal space of desire between work (capital) and leisure (finance/the future), we by definition navigate between scarcity/finitude and abundance as ideal economic horizons and thereby continuously inhabit a space of disruption/promise, never giving into either but recognizing that there is surplus that needs both communal sharing of finite resources and (trans-communal) redistribution of any surplus (also Wariboko 2014c, chp. 8). More phenomenologically, existentially, and practically, pentecostal “faith has a rate of return” (Wariboko 2014a, chp. 4), which, translated into neoclassical economic frames, works with its “market miracles” spirituality (Wariboko 2014b, chp. 6) less in relationship to how some neotraditional economists view religion vis-à-vis occult economies facilitated by witchcraft practices than in terms of enabling us to live anti-fragilistically—meaning with the need of hopefulness amid the vulnerabilities and volatilities of late modern capitalism—and liberatively, thus, within a horizon/trajectory informed by an open faith. All of this unfolds variously in opposition to neoliberal market capitalist conventions (thus, inspiring our capacity to “not-do!” rather than to continue to work, work, work and accumulate, for instance), adapting both within and from our liminalities (able to draw from or reappropriate and revise as needed from each side), and creatively resituating ourselves and our environments, thus always beginning again (Wariboko’s “pentecostal principle”) economically against the established orthodoxies of late modern finance capitalism. Simultaneously, the undomesticable vitality of African pentecostal–charismatic spirituality—what Wariboko calls the “pentecostal incredible” (Wariboko 2023, chp. 3)—in its private and public manifestations derives from its ongoing interfaces with African cultures, African traditional religions, modern liberal democracy in its ideals and realities, and authoritarianism in its stronger and weaker versions (reflected within Pentecostalism’s “big man” or charismatic leader), none of which might be neatly cordoned off from each other (see Wariboko 2023, pp. 181–85). In short, economic viability and sustainability both require seeing beyond the binarily imposed conditions of late modern finance capitalism and imagining as many other sustainable visions and practices as might be relevant amid our negotiating the very unstable sites of ongoing socio-economic turbulence. This is both the promise/potency and the challenge/dynamicity of the pentecostal principle.

Wariboko’s is a singular theoretical intervention into the nexus where pentecostal–charismatic Christianity navigates socio-economic realities by one who has probed deeply into the praxis and spirituality of the former and the finance capitalist mechanisms of the latter. Yet his is less a normative theological proposal than it is an invitation to contextually situated socio-ethical vigilance amid the disruptions of late modern capitalist life, an attentiveness that remains open on the one hand to the Spirit of Pentecost to enable abiding with the tensions that bind us together socially, economically, and politically, and on the other hand to what may continue to be divinely orchestrated in history. While not merely dismissing pentecostal “signs and wonders” (its incredibleness, for Wariboko), it is also imperative to hold onto the history of revelation: in history, God can be discerned in what is done and what has happened. These are not only historical facts but events that contain divine messages to those who have ears to hear and eyes to see (Van der Walt 2007, p. 27). Pentecostal, Christian, and African prosperity will involve the ongoing playful dance between born-agains, believers, and citizens with the divine wind, with all of the ups and downs such an interaction entails. In that respect, a Waribokon approach to socio-economic development and uplift embraces a vision for prosperity, but not the kind of prosperity theology that sees the atonement of Christ as the solution and ending of all suffering for all people and all times, as that is to confuse the final realization of salvation in the new age with the broken reality of this world due to sinfulness. Such an insistence on freedom from all suffering is a false message since it both diverts the focus from God and undercuts the believer’s (and the church’s) contextually faithful engagement with the complexities of our (socio-economic) world (Nel 2020, p. 8).

5. Conclusion: “Many Tongues, Many Economic Practices”

This article has attended to a short historical overview of the development of African pentecostal churches with a focus on their contribution to the development of the socio-economic context of Africa. It is clear that there is no one configuration of Pentecostalism within the African context, and we always need to be aware of these differences between its various contemporary streams and strands. However, it is clear that Pentecostal–Charismaticism is making deep in routes into African communities, no longer only in a spiritual way but also in a holistic way (e.g., Siyawamwaya 2019), spiritually and physically, especially but not only in the way that Myers (2019) describes progressive pentecostal churches from an African perspective. Contemporary African Pentecostalism has foregrounded in a heretofore unprecedented way the pneumatological dimension of the church’s mission alongside the prior eschatological orientation, and pentecostal theologians (including social ethicists and social theorists like Wariboko) are catching up and being inspired to imagine a pentecostal socio-economic posture and set of diverse practices that can sustain the churches amid social upheavals. Not surprisingly, development scholars are now also recognizing that socio-economic progress and transformation will necessarily involve religious communities that bring their various beliefs and plurality of practices into the public square for the common good (White 2020).

As pentecostal–charismatic churches and communities across Africa have given us a diversity of perspectives and enactments on what it means to herald the divine reign here and now in ways that have begun to make a socio-economic difference and meet the present needs of Africans, there is some hope that together with the broader ecumenical church, the continent will continue to benefit from the various spiritual gifts and socio-economic witnesses (practices and testimonies) of the people of God. We conclude with some previously authored words that remain pertinent to the arc of this article’s trajectory:

The Christian church knows that we will always have the poor with us (Jn 12: 8). However, this does not mean that poverty should be accepted and that nothing should be done about it. The calling of the church is a calling to the holistic ministry of diaconia to serve peoples’ spiritual and physical needs and to help them discover life in abundance within all circumstances. We find examples of the diaconia throughout the Bible for example, it is the core of Jesus’ own ministry (Lk 4) and His expectation of the church (Mt 25:31–46).

(Knoetze 2019, p. 2)