Charting African Prosperity Gospel economies

Description: Prof. Dr Andreas Hauser is Forschungsdekan (Dean of research) and Professor für Ausseuropäisches Christentum (Professor for ‘Extra-European Christianity 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

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). 1The 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 socalled 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 bornagain 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 translation (A.H.).Allusion is made to the first invention of Pentecostalism at the beginning of the twentieth century, with a global series of revivals from Wales to India, and from America to Korea.
faith' (Bowler 2013:44-46).As one of the key terms in prosperity theology the 'law of faith' involves a cause-andeffect 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 wellbeing 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) 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 everexpanding 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 postcolony.In the first recognisable phase of prosperity preaching from the 1970s to 1990s, single individuals of the stature of Nigerian Benson Idahosa  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 time in the African Pentecostal movement.An example is given with internal shift in perceptions of financial practice in the Church of Pentecost in Ghana.Nowadays the church perceives financial wealth as generic in ecclesiological terms (Heuser 2013b).
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 transreligious 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 religiocultural 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 deconstructions of Prosperity Gospel as an ideological import to establish a cultural hegemony of American-shaped fundamentalism, as Paul Gifford (1990) has it.The counter-reading employs the same instrumentalist usage of historic genealogy, turned into Africanist positioning.Ogbu Kalu (2008:169)  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 socioeconomic 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 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 smallto 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.(Gifford 1991:10).In his recent outline of the Pentecostal movement's general role in the socioeconomic 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.

Transformational 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 outwardlooking 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). 6By 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 prosperityoriented 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 perspective on the global Pentecostal movement.They gained their insights from short-time travels for two months in each year to at least three countries.Overall, they visited 20 different countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe.
Grace Bible Church claim to initiate concrete outreach projects.These are mostly neighbourhood and charityoriented 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.(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 selfdesigns in globalising African economies (Gifford 2004:154) (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 prosperityoriented Pentecostalism in Africa the Prosperity Gospel in small-scale, peri-urban (and possibly most rural) socioeconomic 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 longterm 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 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 .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.
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 inGifford 2009:149).East Africa has been selected as a pilot area to conduct a series of, as it were, 'purpose driven' conferences.