‘Come and receive your miracle today!’ Advertising and ‘Gullibility’ in Selected Pentecostal Churches in Harare, Zimbabwe (original) (raw)
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ANUJAT, 2019
Christianity in Ghana today appears to have taken on a business-like outlook. It is generally characterised by the sale and purchase of assortments of religious items and services between churches and religious consumers, abuses and financial extortion. This raises the question: why is it that a practice that the ancient prophets of Yahweh and Jesus Christ condemned continues to be perpetuated by pastors/prophets of God today? Thus, this study sets out to portray and question the continuous practice of commercialization of religion as reflected in Neo-Prophetic Pentecostal/Charismatic churches in Ghana.
Business of the Spirit: Ghanaian Broadcast Media and the Commercial Exploitation of Pentecostalism
This article takes a critical look at Ghana’s rapidly evolving broadcasting scene and in particular at the expansion and popularity of religious broadcasting. Sketching the developments of the Ghanaian media landscape, it analyses the changing politics of representing religion in this field. The much-celebrated processes of media deregulation and democratization, and the new opportunities for ownership, production, and participation they entail, have led to a dominance of Pentecostalism in the public sphere. While this development has been analysed from the perspective of churches and pastors, this article explores the intertwinement of commercial media and Pentecostalism from the perspective of a number of private media owners and producers in Accra. Whether these media entrepreneurs are themselves Pentecostal or not, they all have to deal with, and commercially exploit, the power and attraction of Pentecostalism. Their experience that commercial success is hardly possible without Pentecostalism makes clear that the influence of Pentecostalism in the Ghanaian public sphere reaches way beyond media-active pastors and born-again media practitioners, and invites us to rethink the relationship between media, business and religion.
Neo-Prophetic Pentecostal/Charismatic Christianity in Ghana has become business. It is typically characterised by the sale and purchase of assortments of religious items and services between churches and religious consumers. This practice is said to have experienced its exponential index in view of the utmost demand for miraculous mediation by desperate religious consumers to address their religio-psycho-social pickles. Irrespective of the abuses religious consumers are said to go through, coupled with the high cost the religious items and services are sold, one is curious to ascertain by what means the churches use to hook religious consumers to their offers. This paper thus, sets out to reveal and analyse some of the main strategies Neo-Prophetic Pentecostal/Charismatic churches in Ghana use to hook religious consumers onto their offers using Christian ethics as assessment criteria. The paper argues that the strategies the churches use are not in conformity with Christian ethics, thus, they are unethical. This is because it was revealed that the intentions that drive the strategies are mostly geared towards selfish, domineering and manipulative end.
In contemporary day's doom-trapped spirituality where illusory through exploitative means by façade prophets in Ghana is on ascendancy with its outrageous consequences, there is urgent need to evaluate the effects and the awareness of the Church, the academy and the general public through insightful, informative, and educative avenues which is grounded in the Word of God to expose Satan's manipulative agenda for desperate clients through merchandizing prophetic ministry in Ghana. This article evaluates the effects of merchandizing ministry in the context of prophetic ministry in Ghana. It explains ministry as a whole and prophetic ministry in the context of Christian theology, and further draws a clear dichotomy between false prophetic ministry that leads to slavery in satanic kingdom and true prophetic ministry that leads to emancipation in the Lord Jesus Christ. Few factors like cultural worldview of African spirituality and illiteracy rate of the Ghanaian populace that contribute to merchandizing ministry are discussed. Again, this research compares ministry as set forth in the Bible with that of the 21 st century and concludes that a great number of contemporary prophetic ministry is slavery and not emancipatory. To buttress biblical truth, this paper unfolds some of the extreme biblical praxis of these merchandizing ministry and their frustrated patrons on few selected television stations in Ghana. Finally, there are biblical recommendations which serve as "a wake-up call" to the 21 st century Christian Church to teach and preach sound biblical doctrine in the power of the Holy Spirit to emancipate such tyrannical exploiters as well as their distressed clients from the mud of slavery into the Kingdom of God through faith in the Prophet, Priest and King Jesus the Christ.
Missionalia, 2021
Allan H. Anderson has done extensive research about Pentecostalism as a global phenomenon, his work is well situated in the phenomenology of religion which is regarded as a useful conceptual framework in Pentecostal research. The study is conducted in the form of a comparative literature study and draws from literature on the phenomenon of Pentecostalism in the work of Allan H. Anderson to have a critical understanding of the prosperity gospel and how it impacts current conversations on the commercialisation of religion in Pentecostalism. The World Council of Churches (WCC) regards the emergence of strong Pentecostal and charismatic movements from different localities as one of the most noteworthy characteristics of world Christianity today-calling it a shift to the centre of gravity of Christianity. Due to the influence of the commercialising of religion on Pentecostalism, this centre is threatened but it can also be an opportunity for mission and transformation. The study illustrates how the commercialising of religion has become a part of Christianity, how it has been clothed and shipped by missionaries from the European and North American context into the Two-Thirds world. The vision of the early church is to be holy, while the vision of the early Pentecostal movement is to restore New Testament Christianity that can assist Pentecostals today to have a balanced view of the commercialisation of religion that embraces both individual and social holiness that is faithful witnesses of the mission Dei and bring transformation in society.
Commoditization of God in religion Marketing Pentecostalism in the Nigerian public space
2023
Religion cannot thrive on its own without the use of a Supreme Being or the use of God as a symbol of the supernatural on the society. In Nigerian society, religion has become a major occupation and most sought after by the people. This paper explores the invaluableness of God in religion through the use of marketing and how Pentecostal practitioners commodify God in the public space. This paper argues that God in religion has been converted into services and marketable product in the Nigerian public space, which leads to ‘rivalry’ among Pentecostal churches to gain mass appeal, membership, promotion of church and theological affiliations, and the creation of businesses, which is largely fuelled by massive socio-economic and political disorder in the country
Legon Journal of the Humanities
In Africa, religion, generally, has often been used as a medium to assuage difficulties in life. The pragmatic-oriented function of religion, as found in Africa's economy of faith, makes religion a kind of an economic good/service that can be harnessed to deal with existential needs and aspirations. Operating within this worldview, and with the help of the media, some Ghanaian Pentecostal/Charismatic pastors-prophets have commodified the gospel by employing various means of marketing to advertise, brand, and package religion as a consumer or spiritual product that can be bought to solve lifedebilitating issues. This article focuses on some of the contemporary practices of the neo-Pentecostal/Charismatic churches that are symptomatic of the commercialization and the commodification of religion. In so doing, the article attempts to tease out the positive and negative socioeconomic implications of these practices. The work demonstrates that though there are some deleterious implications of the commodification of the gospel, the neo-Pentecostal/Charismatic churches, through such practices, have been able to raise substantial amounts of money to fund numerous social intervention projects that are helping transform the lives of people. Data used in this article was gleaned from the radio, television, and relevant literature.
Fans and Followers: Marketing Charisma, Making Religious Celebrity in Ghana
Presenting a case study of the Ghanaian charismatic-Pentecostal celebrity pastor Mensa Otabil, this article explores processes of marketing and mass mediating charisma in the making of religious celebrity. In order to grasp the convincing force of this ‘Man of God’, it moves beyond classical Weberian and theological understandings of charisma by looking at styling, marketing, and branding strategies. Thus analyzing ‘the making of’ religious celebrity in the broader context of Ghana’s religious arena, the secular celebrity scene, and global charismatic Christianity, it argues that while part of the global charismatic movement with its jet set leaders and high tech styling, Ghanaian charismatic celebrities are also rooted in traditional modes of religious ‘celebrity’. Otabil’s charisma—or his fans’ and followers’ perception of his supernatural giftedness—derives largely from his being (crafted as) a national and international star. Despite clear similarities to ‘secular’ stardom, the specificity of religious celebrity lies, in the case of Ghanaian pastors, in how the contagious aura of celebrity connects to traditional beliefs in the power of religious specialists. The religious authority of African ‘Men of God’ such as Otabil thrives, I argue, on an embodied fusion of the mass mediated and marketed charisma of modern celebrity and the perceived power of traditional shrine priests as intermediaries between the human and the spirit world. The magical aura of celebrity at work in the transmission of Holy Spirit power through the ‘Man of God’ to his followers is fragile though, perpetually challenged by the possible visibility of ‘the making of’ threatening to undermine Otabil’s authenticity.
In die Skriflig/In Luce Verbi
How can we make Christological sense of the Zimbabwean Pentecostal prophets’ mediatory role? This article analyses the domineering and mediatory role of the Pentecostal prophets from a Christological perspective. The mediatory role of the Pentecostal prophets is riddled with competition against the mediatory role of Christ between God and humanity (1 Tm 2:5) as it tends to usurp Christ’s role over the church. Instead of being channels that lead people to depend only on Christ for their spiritual security, prosperity Pentecostal prophets present themselves as super spiritual authorities who must be relied upon by the believers in addition to Christ. Prosperity Pentecostalism, also known as the gospel of wealth and health, emphasises that prosperity in material wealth and good health is an integral component of the Christian faith. As super spiritual authorities, Pentecostal prophets project themselves as uniquely anointed by God. This places them closer to God than other people and, ...