Prosperity gospel and social-economic challenges in Nigeria

Abstract

The concept of prosperity gospel is the theology of all-inclusive success. It is anchored in God’s full earthly blessings. It is understood as the Christian teaching that emphasises all-round physical well-being, such as good health, financial success, prestige, personal empowerment, long life, peace, and happiness. It is the gospel that showcases itself as an all-conquering arsenal against material crises, such as unemployment, poverty, failure, diseases, barrenness, and insecurity. Often, it is sought after by people who are seeking explanation to their meaning in life amidst their social economic challenges (Phillips, 2013, Ehioghae, & Olanrewaju, 2015 & Pickering, 2013).
A link between religion and development has long been established as shown in Weber’s Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism. Accordingly, religious institutions are part of the central elements of a good number of civil societies. In Africa, religious activity is one of the most associative instruments for social development. In recent times, there has been the emergence of a massive wave of the prosperity gospel ideology that is sweeping across the continent. This ideology views religion and material development as intertwined. It brings with it a new mechanism for achieving material success, by radically laying claims to divine intervention with great energy and passion. The prosperity gospel views material prosperity as the birth right of every born-again Christian, and poverty as something that should be cast out.
Prosperity gospel has brought its influence to bear on Nigerian Christianity since it emerged in 19th century. It has been able to penetrate the religious space with much audacity. However, in recent years, with the advent of prosperity gospel and its compelling force amidst the increase in social-economic challenges in Africa, scholars have started to investigate the claims of the prosperity gospel phenomenon. Despite the audacious and appealing claims or teachings of prosperity gospel, the contradiction is that social-economic challenges such as poverty, sickness, unemployment, and security, which prosperity gospel seeks to address, remain a grave concern in Nigeria. Unemployment is at an alarming rate of 18.7%, poverty rate is at 42.4%, life expectancy is 53/6 years (Nigeria National Bureau of Statistics, 2017). The pressing social and public question is: Why are the fortunes of people not changing despite the proliferation of prosperity gospel in Nigerian Churches? This has generated a lot of public reactions from social media, academics, and the Christian community.
Therefore, this thesis has two focal points. First, the investigation of the responses of prosperity gospel to social-economic problems in Nigeria. This will involve responding to questions like, what are the tools deployed by practitioners of prosperity gospel in fighting bad conditions? Or simply put, how does prosperity gospel seek to address social-economic crises? Second, the thesis explores the impacts of the responses of prosperity gospel to material crises. This entails assessing the phenomenon of prosperity gospel to establish whether it has been able to achieve its aims of fighting human challenges, or whether it is just a utopian package that gives false hope to adherents amidst the prevailing social-economic upheavals.
The findings of this thesis reveal that while prosperity gospel progenitors believe that prosperity gospel propels the drive for material prosperity, the responses of prosperity gospel place more stress on divine intervention, miracles, spiritual agencies, demons, wizards, and witchcrafts. Prosperity gospel spirituality nurture a religious attention that ignore functional elements that underscore social-economic advancement. The findings suggest that prosperity gospel progenitors, appropriate religious instruments, such rhematisation, pneumatic regeneration, soteriology, prophetism, provocative giving, die by fire, prayer water, oil, and handkerchief to solve contextual battles of life. They claim that these are divine armaments capable of solving every mitigating condition of humanity. Meanwhile, the findings further reveal that while these claims are alluring, they do not practically solve bad conditions of adherents. The finding demonstrates that the content of the prosperity preaching lacks basic reality that may trigger material development. The prosperity teaching is centred on divine entities rather than the structure and system that create human suffering. Therefore, instead of motivating people to face reality, it motivates adherents to be docile as they expect a conquering entity that will miraculously stop all human woes.
The findings suggest that the response of prosperity gospel to contextual challenges in Nigeria is delusional in that it lays undue emphasis on a ‘quick fix’ rather than on substantive cause and effects. The lack of an empirical approach, where delayed gratification is instead the watch word in solving social-economic challenges, poses a grave danger to any growing society. The contents of the prosperity preaching do not highlight the need to plant, water, prune and wait for harvest. It presents life as a bed of roses where one just need to claim and grab whatever he wants. It presents a theology that relies solely on divine alteration of nature for one's benefits. To this end, the study opines that prosperity gospel claims are only a pacifying instrument that throws the adherent into a euphoria of false hope, whilst bad conditions persist. Prosperity gospel is a summon of the adherent to a panoply of momentary relief, which fades away when faced with reality of life.