Abstract
The most existential task facing Africans is economic development. For Christians, this raises the urgent question: what are the African Pentecostal churches’ understandings and teachings on the continent’s economic predicament? This chapter examines aspects of the social teachings of African Pentecostal churches related to national economic prosperity. I have identified five basic theological paradigms that frame the discourse on Africa’s economic development among Pentecostal pastors. These are covenant, spiritualist, leadership, nationalist and developmental.
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Notes
See Mensa Otabil, Buy the Future: Learning to Negotiate a Future Better than Your Present (Lanham: Pnuemalife Publishing, 2002).
See Giorgio Agamben, The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans, trans. Patricia Dailey (Stanford: University of Stanford, 2005), 75–77; and Ruth Marshall, Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 66–67.
Nicholas Duncan-Williams, You are destined to Succeed (Accra: Action Faith, 1990), 139.
Asonzeh Ukah, A New Paradigm of Pentecostal Power: A Study of the Redeemed Christian Church of God in Nigeria (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2008), 324.
D. K. Olukoya, Pray your way to Breakthroughs, 3rd ed. (Lagos: Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries, 1996), Prayer no. 65, page 101.
David Martin, “Another Kind of Cultural Revolution?” in Roger Southall and Stephen Rule eds. Faith on the Move: Pentecostalism and its potential contribution to Development. Centre for Development and Enterprise Workshop Proceedings No. 2 (Johannesburg: CDE, August 2008), 8–19; quote on 12.
Matthew Ashimolowo, What is Wrong with Being Black: Celebrating our Heritage, Confronting our Challenges (Shippensburg, Penn.: Destiny Image Publishers, 2007).
David Oyedepo, Winning the War Against Poverty (Canaan Land, Nigeria: Dominion Publishing House, 2006), 7–14; quoted in Samuel Krinsky, “The Pan-African Church: Nation, Self, and Spirit in Winners’ Chapel, Nigeria,” in AfeAdogame and James V. Spickard eds., Religion Crossing Boundaries: Transnational Religious and Social Dynamics in Africa and the New Africa Diaspora (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 229–51, quote from 246.
David Oyedepo, Pillars of Destiny: Exploring the Secrets of an Ever-Winning Life (Canaan Land, Nigeria: Dominion Publishing House, 2008), 7.
David Oyedepo, Possessing your Possession (Canaan Land, Nigeria: Dominion Publishing House, 2006), 37, 50.
David Oyedepo, Understanding Financial Prosperity (Canaan Land, Nigeria: Dominion Publishing House, 2005), 36–37; italics added.
Emeka Nwankpa, Redeeming the Land (Achimota, Ghana: African Christian Publishers, 1995).
Ogbu Kalu, African Pentecostalism: An Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 200–201; see also 199, 202.
See Ruth Fratani-Marshall, “Mediating the Global and Local in Nigerian Pentecostalism,” Journal of Religion in Africa 28, no. 3 (1998): 278–315, esp. 3067; quoted in Kalu, African Pentecostalism, 216.
Paul Gifford, African Christianity: Its Public Role (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 72.
Robert K. Aboagye-Mensah, Mission and Democracy in Africa: The Role of Church (Accra: Asempa, 1994).
Damaris Seleina Parsitau and Philomena Njeri Mwaura, “Gospel without Borders: Gender Dynamics of Transnational Religious Movements in Kenya and the Kenyan Diaspora,” in Afe Adogame and James V. Spickard, eds., Religion Crossing Boundaries: Transnational Religious and Social Dynamics in Africa and the New Africa Diaspora (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 185–209; quote from 199.
James M. Gustafson, Protestant and Roman Catholic Ethics (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978), 138–40; italics orig.
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© 2012 Katherine Attanasi and Amos Yong
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Wariboko, N. (2012). Pentecostal Paradigms of National Economic Prosperity in Africa. In: Attanasi, K., Yong, A. (eds) Pentecostalism and Prosperity. Palgrave Macmillan’s Christianities of the World. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137011169_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137011169_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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