‘A man’s gift will make room for him’: sources of wealth and legitimacy in charismatic Christianity in Ghana

ABSTRACT

The moral practices and principles of accumulating and (re)distributing wealth in charismatic Christianity in Africa are controversial and contested. In Ghana, rich charismatic pastors are perceived as dubious figures and the legitimacy of their wealth is questionable. At the same time, a pastor’s wealth is a sign of his or her spiritual and charismatic gifts. In this article, I discuss the ways in which Ghanaian charismatic pastors, church members and the broader public understand different forms and shifting principles of wealth acquisition and (re)distribution within the religious field. The article highlights the dynamic and fluid nature of distinctions such as legitimate and illegitimate and argues that a moral economy approach is apt for capturing these tensions. Moreover, it is important to include religion and sources of spiritual power in the analysis of moral economies as these are crucial parts of social life and moral values in many African societies.

KEYWORDS:

• Charismatic Christianity
• Ghana
• moral economy
• spiritual economy
• wealth

Introduction

A man’s gift will make room for him (Proverbs 18:16)

Probably the next time you come, I might be riding a bigger car, enjoying life more than you are seeing now. I think the fundamental issue is that your income should be legitimate. A man’s gift will make room for him … If you use your gifts and use it well, you are not supposed to be poor. (Samuel Adu-Gyamfi, founder of Think Tank Intercessors Ministry, Kumasi)

In the above quote, the founder of Think Tank Intercessors Ministry (a charismatic church located in Kumasi, Ghana) and lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Dr Samuel Adu-Gyamfi, makes a connection between the use of spiritual gifts and becoming wealthy. He refers to Proverbs 18:16 to say that ‘if you have a gift and use it well’, you will become rich.¹ Importantly ‘using it well’ refers to how the pastor uses his or her spiritual power to influence other people’s lives and how people will give to the pastor in response. It is within these transactional relations, and how they unfold, that the question of moral legitimacy arises. The legitimacy of a pastor’s wealth is directly related to how the wealth has been acquired and how it is distributed and redistributed. I use these terms in the context of informal institutions and practices that are not normally associated with structures of production, labour, and ownership, but that are nevertheless important sites of (re)distribution and moral assessment of such practices. I refer to these terms as the practices and discourses by which actors within different yet overlapping fields morally assess such relationships of exchange. This enables us to understand how different sets of norms intersect and change over time. The religious field is particularly important to include as it shapes social, economic, and political life in Africa, and it is moreover an important element of morality. This means that religion is not considered merely in a compartmental or institutionalised way, but rather as a wider set of practices and moral principles. This contribution focuses on the two fundamental mechanisms of acquisition and (re)distribution in order to discuss the legitimatisation of wealth in charismatic² Christianity in Ghana as part of a broader moral spiritual economy that also intersects with a neoliberal (e.g. deregulated) public sphere. I argue that including the religious field is fundamental in the understanding of what is morally legitimate in wealth acquisition and (re)distribution as it concerns not only religious forms of exchange, but also broader criteria of what is considered fake, corrupted, or truthful. The key tension in the moral economy of wealth accumulation in charismatic Christianity in Ghana revolves around how wealth is acquired and redistributed and whether it is given ‘freely’ or is seen as part of a ‘forced’ transaction.

The article investigates how wealth is talked about by pastors, among church members as well as in public debate. Such questions echo earlier writings on the classification of money, such as Parker Shipton’s work on Luo distinctions between different kinds of money (good and evil/bitter). These distinctions were related to how money was achieved: ‘How money was obtained determines how it is classed; and how it is classed determines how people think it should be used’ (Shipton 1989, 9). Hannah Hoechner shows how in a northern Nigerian context the spiritual economy is not only related to what is being exchanged (knowledge, commodities, recognition), but also to the status of the key actors involved in it (Mallams for instance) and whether their careers and rise in status have been ‘slow’ or has been marked by short-cuts (Hoechner 2018, 191; see also Lauterbach (2017) on young pastors’ careers). In southern Ghana, distinctions connected to the use of wealth could historically be related to classifications such as ‘modern money’ used for individual consumption and other (often precolonial) currencies that were thought of as communal wealth or wealth for redistribution (McCaskie 2000, see also the distinction between culture and business in Baral 2023). The introduction of a capitalist economy and the later adaptation of a neoliberal market ideology in Ghana has come alongside an important change and reconstitution of the religious landscape with an enormous growth of Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity and the preaching of the prosperity gospel (see Ukah 2016 for a continent-wide discussion of this). This has meant a pluralisation of the religious field, a marketisation of religion, as well as a more individualised view on success (see Mohammed 2018). Moreover, within certain branches of Christianity this has resulted in the view that the accumulation and display of wealth is no longer a taboo compared to missionary Christianity that valued a more ascetic form of life. The public display of wealth was (again) seen as legitimate in Christian settings (Lauterbach 2017, 69–70).

It is within these broad trends (the rapprochement between the religious and the economic fields as well as the historic and changing morality of wealth display and circulation) that I discuss how acquisition and redistribution of wealth is legitimised within charismatic Christianity in contemporary Ghana. My main argument is that these processes of legitimisation revolve around a distinction between voluntary giving and required payment for a religious service as well as the nature of the sources of the wealth. Discussing these questions in a moral economy framework sheds light on the important religious aspects of economic transactions (non-market norms) in contemporary Africa. Moreover, shifts in the moral economy of religious transactions reflect broader changes of moral economy in society and vice versa because the role of religion in Ghana is not restricted to the religious field, but is shaping social, political, and economic life. This adds to what the moral economy framework offers ‘as critical vocabulary, alternative histories, and political counterpoints to thinking about market analogies’ (Ukah 2022, 15). The dialectical relation between moral-religious norms and economic forces is key here as the emerging forms of Christianity take on market like traits (consumption and competition) that are simultaneously embraced and contested (such as competition for members, and a focus on a causal relationship between religious practice and economic success) (Appau 2021). As Asonzeh Ukah suggests (drawing on Andrew Sayer), moral economy is a plural and tension-filled field that involves both ‘how economic activities – in the broad sense – are influenced by the study of moral-political norms and sentiments, and how, conversely those norms are compromised by economic forces’ (Ukah 2022, 6).

The article draws on fieldwork carried out in Ghana during 2004–2005 and 2014–2021. The main part of the fieldwork was conducted in Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city and the capital of the Asante kingdom. The first part of the fieldwork was conducted in relation to my PhD dissertation on young pastors’ careers in Ghana (Lauterbach 2017). Later fieldwork was part of a various research projects on wealth in charismatic Christianity among others. The material consists of interviews with pastors, church members, family members, and other traditional and religious leaders. I have conducted around 150 interviews in total and have interviewed some people several times. Moreover, I have had numerous and extensive informal conversations with friends, research partners and informants over the years that also form the basis of the present analysis. I have participated in numerous church services, collected audio-visual material and newspaper articles that relate to the public debate of pastors’ accumulation of wealth. My material as well as years of following the public debate on charismatic Christianity in Ghana provide the basis for the present analysis.

Studying the moral economy of wealth acquisition and charismatic Christianity

As outlined above, I discuss the acquisition, accumulation, and redistribution of wealth in Ghanaian charismatic Christianity as part of broader historical and contemporary culturally informed moral tensions that informally regulate these wealth transactions. As such, the approach places itself within debates on moral economy in African contexts and does so in a way that brings in the religious aspects of the concept. Taking religion into a moral-economy framework means considering how religion informs the ways in which exchange and redistribution is morally evaluated and how this sometimes overlaps and sometimes is distinct from other moral frameworks (Daswani 2015a; Scherz 2014). There exists a long and vast literature on the relationship between religion and the market going back to the foundational work of Max Weber (on the protestant ethic and the rise of capitalism) and Marcel Mauss (on the exchange of gifts). Although the idea that the evolvement of modernity would push religion into the private sphere has since long been rejected, the way in which religion has been analysed in relation to the market and capitalism has often been with a narrow focus on how market logics influence religion and religious life (Osella and Rudnyckyj 2017) or in an instrumental way in which religion is mainly seen as a response to market forces (Coleman 2011; Kirby 2019; Soares 2017). An important part of the literature has promoted a market analogy in which religion is seen as a reflection of the market and in which for instance paying tithes and giving offering is seen as investments in economic terms as Lindhardt (2009) points out. Other studies have focused on the social value of practices of giving and receiving, such as Premawardhana (2012), who focuses on the lived experiences of people and sees tithing and offerings as practices that are about creating social relationships. He argues that ‘more important than the quantitative value of what passes between sacrificer and divinity, between giver and receiver, is the quality of the relationship to which the exchange binds the two parties’ (2012, 90).

Bringing the moral economy concept into such debates enables us to focus analytically on how the entanglements between the religious and the economic are morally debated and contested in a way that approaches both fields as changeable and transformative (Soares 2017). It allows us to see how religious doctrine and practices of exchange are embedded in context-specific moral economies (Robbins 2020, 85), and it opens for an understanding of seeing non-market norms, social relations, and reciprocity as important features of these entanglements and to recognise that religion is an influential source of such norms and ideas (Keane 2021). What I am interested in here is the changes, ambiguities, and contestations in how religious ideas and practices serve as a source for understanding economic practice, rather than seeing religion as a well-defined and unified system of ideas (Keane 2021; see also Lauterbach 2019 for a critique of understanding the prosperity gospel as script). Webb Keane points out that there has been a tendency to understand moral economy as a stable morality (referring to James Scott’s work on the ‘shared moral universe’ of rural Southeast Asia) and as something of the past and hence different from modernity (Keane 2021, 5–6). He further highlights that including religion opens for seeing ‘transcendental sources of value and divine modes of agency or causation that are largely absent in the thought of political economy’ (Keane 2021, 7). This implies that what is being exchanged (the material) might have a spiritual significance related to its source for instance. As I will show below this is of importance when discussing the legitimacy of wealth in a charismatic Christian setting in Ghana, where the moral frame is not stable and not merely of the past, but is simultaneously shaped by a neo-liberal economic context and drawing on historical moral repertoires and perceptions of wealth accumulation and redistribution.

Religion, wealth, and truthfulness in Ghana

The growth of charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity in Ghana in the 1970s and 1980s was concurrent with economic hardship, restrictive political regimes, instability, and the implementation of harsh economic policy measures through the Structural Adjustment Programs (Asamoah-Gyadu 2005; Golo 2013). Throughout the 1990s and up until today Ghana has witnessed a continuous growth of charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity, this time in conjuncture with the liberalisation of the state, the pluralisation of the public sphere and the evolvement of a market-oriented capitalist economy. During this time, Ghana experienced significant economic growth, as well as increasing inequality (Awanyo and Attua 2018). In the years 2000–2010, the proportion of Ghanaians who identified as Pentecostal/Charismatic grew from 24.1% to 28.3%, while other Christian denominations as well as adherents of traditional religion declined (Ghana Statistical Service 2013; Tweneboah 2021, 109). Alongside the growth in Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity came a change in how the acquisition and redistribution of wealth was perceived ideologically among charismatic and Pentecostal pastors and their congregations. Moving from a more ascetic and withdrawn stance in the classical Pentecostal movement to a more this-worldly engaged Christianity that places emphasis on material wealth as a sign of God’s blessing, also known as the prosperity gospel (see Kirby 2019). A core aspect of the prosperity gospel lies in the ‘sowing and reaping’ metaphor, which signifies that church members are encouraged to sow tithes and give offerings in church to reap a harvest of wealth and success (Bonsu and Belk 2010; Lauterbach 2017; Wariboko 2012).³ This focus on success and wealth in this life is often referred to as one of the appealing features of charismatic Christianity in various African contexts today and reflecting many people’s aspirations for a modern life.

The abundant wealth, and claim to wealth, of elite pastors in charismatic Christianity in Ghana, and many other African countries, is a morally contested field (Casciano 2021; Oduro-Frimpong 2021; Smith 2021). In Ghana, the accumulation and display of wealth of certain charismatic pastors as well as accusations of dubious moral behaviour is subject to extensive public debate (Daswani 2015b). These debates revolve around the authenticity and legitimacy of pastors by distinguishing whether they are fake or genuine. Such accusations of fakery reflect a deeper social concern and anxiety about the spiritual authenticity of religious leaders and ‘men of God’ and their relationship to money (Oduro-Frimpong 2021). Assessing someone’s authenticity is partly linked to discerning their source of spiritual power and whether they draw on occult sources of spiritual power, which is perceived as bad. This means that questioning the spiritual power that a pastor draws on, also questions their legitimacy as a pastor. Assessments of pastors’ genuinity are not new, but with the pluralisation of the religious field since the 1980s (such as the emergence of small and independent charismatic churches) has also come a different form of moral assessment that increasingly tends to focus on the institutional anchorage and innovativeness of religious practices. One controversial issue is if the richness of a pastor is seen as being achieved through selling religious services such as prayer, holy water or anointing oil or if it is associated with the use of other spiritual forces mediated by indigenous priests (akɔmfoɔ) (Lauterbach 2019; Tweneboah 2021).⁴ The moral controversy here lies in accumulating through the act of extracting or selling religious services and by the use of so-called demonic forces rather than ‘free’ giving or giving as a token of appreciation as ideals. This is linked to the moral standing of pastors and the distinction of being fake (i.e., drawing on occult power or being a ‘scam’ pastor (only in it for quick money)) or genuine (i.e., having received a calling from God that is recognised and sanctioned by the religious community) that is widespread within the charismatic sector (Lauterbach 2019). These distinctions and categories are not clear-cut or straight-forward to discern, but rather remain to be proven or refuted. Moreover, the distinction between what an extraction is and what ‘free’ giving is, is not easily distinguishable. This stems in part from the pragmatic or utilitarian function that religion plays and has played in Akan society. According to Kwasi Wiredu, spiritual power is a resource in this world and ‘humans can exploit their powers to their advantage’ (Wiredu 1998, 34). It is not the use of spiritual power to maximise one’s opportunities (including accumulating wealth) that is controversial, it is rather the distinction between relying on occult forces or the power of the Holy Spirit. At the same time, this moral ideal unfolds in a neoliberal economic context where religious experts become entrepreneurs (i.e., by investing in setting up small churches) and in which individual resource accumulation is celebrated (Lauterbach 2015).⁵ This conjuncture between established moral economies and new moral economies of religious entrepreneurship creates an open field in which the acquisition and redistribution of resources become challenged and redefined. These questions are linked to questions of moral economy and redistribution in the sense that ‘free’ giving is seen as a culturally legitimate form of redistribution that is closely connected to the nature of the social relationships involved. Selling on the other hand, is widely perceived as business and for individual gain and thereby amoral (see also Casciano 2021). At the same time, providing religious services involves some forms of exchange and transaction, which means that the understanding of how selling is defined is not clear-cut.

Furthermore, relationships of exchange happen in multiple and diverse ways within charismatic churches. In the established churches paying tithe is a common, and often documented, practice. Different kinds of offerings take place during church services, which can either be for church related purposes or social events, such as funerals and marriages. Finally, it is also common that church members give individually to a pastor if the pastor has been involved in addressing and solving a particular problem for instance through prayers. It is within these relationships of exchange that wealth redistribution takes place within the charismatic Christian scene and where pastors need to balance the line of appearing wealthy (accumulation for him or herself) or redistributing within the community. The prosperity gospel also plays a role at a more national level as has been discussed in relation to the building of a national cathedral in Ghana (Lauterbach and Bob-Milliar 2023).

As I have shown in detail elsewhere (Lauterbach 2017), the position of a pastor in Akan society is strongly linked to the idea of truthfulness (nokwarε). To be perceived as truthful means that one’s act or behaviour must correspond to what one says. Being truthful is strongly related to how one deals with wealth. Wealth and prosperity are perceived as legitimate if they are acquired and redistributed in a morally acceptable way, such as being redistributed for the well-being of society and not only for the benefit of the individual (Lauterbach 2017, 69). Such an ethic of redistribution has been discussed by Girish Daswani in the context of Accra. He shows how the wealth of pastors is assessed by others (both inside and outside of the churches) according to criteria pertaining to the pastors’ character such as humbleness and readiness to share with others. Importantly, Daswani links these moral debates to the shifting economic context in Ghana and argues that ‘the problem is less the presence of money than its redistribution’ (Daswani 2015b, 112). He situates this view in a moral economy that is both shaped by a more individualistic and capitalistic system and by historical values related to the legitimacy of wealth.⁶

Many pastors focus strongly on prosperity and economic success in their preaching. At the same time, they draw attention to their role as providers and caretakers of the community, for instance by praying for the well-being of society, engaging in social development projects, and contributing to their home communities.⁷ At the moral level they need to accommodate and relate to these tensions in order to be truthful mediators between the spiritual and the material world. At the same time, they are eager to show that their wealth is legitimate wealth by underscoring that it is given to them or their church freely. This shows how looking at the religious field offers new understandings of redistribution and moral economy and in particular sheds light on questions around corruption, fakeness and truthfulness that are of broader social relevance.

In what follows, I supplement the focus on redistribution and legitimacy, by drawing attention to another crucial aspect of the legitimation of wealth, namely the moralities of acquisition.

Dr Adu-Gyamfi, whom I quoted in the beginning of the article, continued our conversation by explaining that he had been on the radio a few days earlier to discuss some religious issues. A rich businessman called the radio programme and said he wanted to meet the person talking. Adu-Gyamfi accounted:

He just came, saw me and gave me some money and told me to come to his office. I went to his office, and we talked. He gave me money, but he was not a church member … He gave me good money and it was exciting. I was not even preaching about money. He felt he was spiritually persuaded and physically impressed … Interestingly he engaged me on more spiritual points of view and debated me on some spiritual positions he has against mine. The point I am trying to make is that a man’s gift will make room for him … He calls and we talk for long periods because he has money. Most importantly, when he heard me, he could accept my position as a priest because what I shared matched up to what I claimed to be. It is not about laying on of hands or exorcising him of some demons. It is more of a spiritual persuasion and a kind of intellectual something.⁸

Through narrating his encounter with the rich businessman, Samuel Adu-Gyamfi explains that the businessman acknowledged the pastoral work of Adu-Gyamfi by giving him money. He indicates that the money he received from the man (and thereby its source) is legitimate wealth, because he acquired it through making use of his spiritual gifts (a spiritual and intellectual insight and ministration). Importantly, he ‘matched up’ to what he claimed to be; he was truthful and sincere, and this added to the legitimisation of the wealth he received. Receiving the money was a sign of recognition of him as a man of God; his gift made room for him.

It is furthermore relevant to note that Adu-Gyamfi makes a connection between legitimate wealth and the avoidance of poverty (see the quote at the beginning of this article). This partly draws on an understanding in Akan social thought that poverty is to be avoided and is seen as in contradiction to enlightenment and success (see Lauterbach 2017, 74–76). When discussing this Adu-Gyamfi made further reference to 1 Corinthians 9:11, Proverbs 22:9, 2 Corinthians 8:9 and Matthew 21:12 to support the proposition that pastors should not be poor. They need to specifically qualify to benefit from wealth, as long as they do not ‘merchandise the gospel’.⁹ Merchandising the gospel makes reference to an extractive form of relationship as mentioned earlier and is further discussed below.

‘You need a good heart in order to give’: conceptions around the acquisition of wealth

‘Some are stingy and do not give easily. There is a saying that a good man leaves inheritance for future generations. You need a good heart in order to give. God loves a cheerful giver so when you are giving and it is not from the heart, it is better to stop. When you give, it has to come from within’.¹⁰

The legitimacy of accumulated wealth is not only assessed based on how that wealth is spent and used, but also regarding how is has been acquired. A central distinction is whether it was given ‘from the heart’ or whether it was ‘forced giving’. Regarding giving in church, it was often highlighted by the people I interviewed that giving should be voluntary (from the heart), which implied that it was giving to God. Forced forms of giving could be either when pastors charged money for religious services (for instance selling anointing oil) or when people did not give easily by themselves (Lauterbach 2019). The church member quoted above explained the difference between those who give easily and those who do not, and he places the question of voluntary or forced giving to be an internal matter for the church members, rather than a question of a pastor asking money for religious services. This can be seen as a sign of an individualisation of giving within churches. Moreover, what is perceived as a pastor asking for money or selling religious services is an open question, which means that such statements can be seen as ways of justifying giving practices within a church or legitimising a certain pastor rather than implying that such transactions (or expectations of transactions) do not occur. Within these internal debates, giving relates to questions of truthfulness; how freely you give is a matter of how much ‘you are of God’. The nature of one’s faith is linked to and reflects the way in which one gives. Giving freely is also related to people’s religious knowledge. A woman, who was a church member and treasurer in another church in Kumasi explained that if you know the word of God, you will give freely and not let the pastor force you to give.¹¹ Having knowledge allows people to give in the right way (freely and from the heart) was a shared perception among the people I talked to. This of course raises analytical questions of the meaning of free and forced forms of giving.

One pastor, who had constructed a new church, explained how some church members had collected money to construct a house for him at the church site. He was at the time living in a rented apartment and he did not have the money to renew the rent period. He explained that some of the church members:

decided to use part of the plot on which the church was built to put up a house for me. They did so within about ten months. By the time, my rent expired completely, I was moving into the new house. They did it from their own heart with their own money. For one to decide to extort money, I think it is not right and it is not the godly way of doing God’s business. When they realize they are benefitting from what God has given you, they would not hesitate to give willingly. It is reciprocal as stated by Apostle Paul.¹²

There is a certain ambiguity to this quote in the sense that the pastor on the one hand explains that the church members were giving from their hearts, but at the same time saying that it is when they realise that they will get something in return from God that they give freely. This way of understanding ‘free giving’ as related to reciprocity illustrates that there might not necessarily be a perceived opposition between free giving and reciprocity (that is often theorised as involving social obligations). Here, giving is perceived as voluntary but also involves getting something in return from God. At the same time, giving can be enforced by God and therefore the distinction between what is voluntary and what is enforced is not clear-cut.

The same pastor also criticised those who focus too much on getting big gifts from their members:

Sometimes, it is just too much. Those people are the ones who are in for something; ride the best cars, have big houses etc. They therefore use all means possible to attain that. If you want to see them, you would have to join a queue and then pay consultation fee before seeing them. Some charge for deliverance. Here, you come and state your problem. We then pray for you and if there is anything you want to give, it is okay. If you do not have, we don’t force you to pay anything. You give from your heart (Wo yi fri w’akoma mu).¹³

In this quote the pastor emphasises that charging for religious services is not morally acceptable and again emphasises that giving should be from the heart.¹⁴ This distinction was widely expressed among the younger pastors and used as a way to distinguish themselves from the more established pastors. As I have written about elsewhere, another pastor explained how he encouraged church members to give in church, but at the same time found it ethically wrong to ‘use the Bible to extract money from people’. He distinguished between voluntary giving and ‘begging your church members, please give me money, anybody you pray for “pay money”’ (Lauterbach 2017, 84).¹⁵

It is of relevance here to compare the charismatic pastors’ moral assessment with exchange and payment between indigenous healers and those who consult them. In his biography of a Ghanaian spiritualist and healer (Kofi Dɔnkɔ), Kwasi Konadu, explains how payment (aseda, which means ‘giving thanks’) ‘was given only after the patient declared that their illness – social, physical, psychic, or otherwise – had been effectively treated’ (Konadu 2019, 211).¹⁶ This indicates that payment for a religious or spiritual service depended on the outcome of the service and that payment before was seen as inappropriate. This distinction echoes the differentiation between offering thanks for a religious service and paying directly for a religious service. Drawing on more contemporary material, Ursula M. Read and Solomon Nyame show that aseda can be demanded before a person has ended treatment and healing is complete, although this is not always the norm (Read and Nyame 2019, 24, fn. 6). This confirms that giving is perceived as legitimate when it is a recognition of something that is already received.

The distinction between giving freely and extracting money is not only part of the moral compass in charismatic churches; it is also prevalent in mainline churches. At the occasion of an annual harvest festival in a Catholic congregation in Kumasi, in which the main part of Sunday mass was used to raise money for a new church building, the distinction was expressed clearly to differentiate from the prosperity gospel preached in charismatic churches. The collection of money took place as an auction; items were presented by two hosts and people were bidding. The hosts emphasised several times during the bidding that what was going on was not selling holy water, but that people should be giving from their hearts. They urged people to look into their hearts and see what God had done for them, and then give from there. This event was carefully presented as not being about ‘selling religion’, but rather about giving to the church in appreciation and acknowledgement of God’s interventions in people’s life.¹⁷

The moral tension around forced or free giving reflects a deeper concern about the nature of the relationship involved in the transaction. The difference lies in whether the relationship is based on an extraction or whether it is voluntary. An exchange that is based on extraction is dubious because it questions the reciprocity of the relationship involved and thereby the relationship itself. Giving from the heart on the other hand symbolises social order and means that benefits of the relationship are recognised.¹⁸ As the next section shows, practices of wealth accumulation and redistribution are not only contested according to the relationships these practices build on, but also with regard to the sources of power involved.

Illegitimate wealth: sources of wealth as sources of power

A controversial figure on the charismatic Christian scene in Ghana is Prophet Ebenezer Opambour Adarkwa Yiadom (also known as ‘Prophet One’ or ‘Asante Moses’), who is the leader and founder of Ebenezer Miracle Worship Centre in Kumasi. According to some, his church is among the largest churches in the town.¹⁹ The church is believed to have 20,000 members and branches elsewhere in Ghana and abroad (Heuser 2015; Kuwornu-Adjaottor 2013). As with other so-called neo-prophetic churches it is built on the belief that people’s lives are influenced by evil spiritual forces, hence the need for invoking the spiritual power of God, accessed and mediated by the prophet, in order to combat and overcome these evil spiritual forces. Prophet Ebenezer belongs to the category of spiritual experts that Appau and Bonsu (2020) describe as pastors who sell objects that are spiritualised.

One of the Prophet’s activities is the selling of anointed oil and sacred water, which according to Andreas Heuser is one of his main sources of income. The anointing oil, which is blessed by the prophet, is sold at the church premise, and comes with guidance on how to use it (Heuser 2015, 155–56). Prophet Ebenezer also sells sacred water (aburamu nsuo); water that is drawn from a well that he had constructed at the church site and which he has blessed. On Wednesdays the church conducted a miracle service (running from 6 am to 2 pm), and at this occasion people come to the church site carrying large yellow plastic cans to buy sacred water. It is interesting to note that according to Anderson (2022) ‘Prophet One’ asserts that he does not sell sacred water or anointing oil, but that this can be given to anyone who assists the church financially.

The controversies and contestations of this pastor is related to the alleged practices of selling holy water and other religious services, which by some is seen as greedy and antisocial and hence morally wrong. In a Nigerian context, Davide Casciano similarly discusses the moral boundaries of Pentecostal pastors’ consumption. Casciano shows that accusations and suspicion of corruption and fakery are central to popular views of these pastors. Their excessive consumption is seen as corrupt (and hence in line with the behaviour of politicians) because of its ‘destructive, antisocial, immoral nature’ (2021, 64).

It is, however, not only the practice of selling religious services that is morally questioned. The dubiety of pastors is also linked to the sources of power the pastor uses to exercise his religious practices. Some would associate such practices with the use of occult power and hence perceive this pastor as fake (also known as scam (azaa) pastors). Oduro-Frimpong (2014) discusses popular cultural representations of Sakawa cyber fraudsters and narratives of occult money in Ghanaian video production. These cultural imaginaries provide insight into the moral tensions around spirituality, wealth, and sources of power as disputed terrain. In his analysis, Oduro-Frimpong highlights that money achieved through occult practices are morally dubious and builds on the shared belief that this kind of money might lead to misfortune and death (those who consume money acquired this way will eventually die). The narratives and representations of the Sakawa phenomenon build on shared popular tales around the morality of accumulation including the sika duro idiom, which refers to wealth achieved through occult practices and with an important time element to it (quick or fast money as well as greed) (Oduro-Frimpong 2014).²⁰ It is useful to draw on these popular representations to contextualise the controversies around Prophet Ebenezer and the moral economy of wealth accumulation and redistribution in Ghanaian charismatic Christianity that they represent. Being talked about as a pastor who charges money for religious services questions the pastor’s credibility.

A woman, who was a church member and general secretary of another charismatic church in Kumasi, talked about this moral illegitimacy. She said the following about Prophet Ebenezer:

‘I heard that before you go for counselling at Ebenezer’s place, you have to pay 500 Ghanaian cedis. I do not believe in that … For those pastors they have their own ways of getting wealth from the church members. For some rich pastors like Archbishop Duncan Williams, you can see that their wealth is from God. They started from scratch and God has raised them to that level. For these fake ones, they get rich overnight. God is a miracle worker, not a sorcerer … The genuine men of God struggle before they become successful. The fake ones become successful at once without struggle. They go for charms to be able to look into the future and past to impress people.’²¹

The criticism expressed by this woman illustrates the above-mentioned points namely that the wealth of Prophet Ebenezer is considered to be morally illegitimate, and hence related to fakeness, because it is perceived to have been extracted from church members by the use of charms or witchcraft. The time aspect is central to this (‘they get rich overnight’) and it involves an element of cheating as such pastors have not worked hard enough. Prophet Ebenezer was also known in town for having had public controversies with a renowned traditional priest (Kwaku Bonsam) and with Nigerian pastors operating in Ghana whom he challenged in spiritual competitions. In this way, the controversies around the legitimacy of pastors’ accumulated wealth are also about the sources of their power. These accusations are commonly heard in Ghana and are particularly directed at charismatic pastors that perform rituals related to money. Moreover, such accusations are not only directed at pastors, but also at traditional priests and mallams, who too promise fast wealth or money doubling (sika gari). One example is the former traditional priestess Nana Agradaa, who in 2021 became a Christian evangelist and established her own church. She has on multiple occasions been accused of stealing people’s money (money doubling scams) and has been arrested by the police.²² Besides being an illustration of accusations of fakery that cut across religious boundaries, this example further shows the porous and open boundaries between different kinds of religious experts, which indicates that the fundamental question of sources of spiritual power is the same, but takes on different forms and names within different religious traditions (see also Lindhardt (2016) on the competition between different religious experts in Tanzania).

The legitimacy of wealth and wealth redistribution is therefore closely tied to the source of spiritual power that has been drawn upon when acquiring wealth. Within charismatic Christianity in Ghana, and elsewhere, it is believed that there are two basic sources of power: divine sources and evil sources.²³ Pastors take power (gye tumi) from the spiritual domain, which a young pastor explained in this way: ‘They take it from fetish priests, marine spirits, goddesses, mallams and lower order gods’ (Lauterbach 2017, 127–130). Drawing on this kind of power is dangerous because it is hard to leave again, and the spiritual forces require continuous sacrifices. Genuine pastors, and those who accumulate legitimate wealth, take power from the Holy Spirit. This form of power is unstable in that it can easily leave and come back again, but, according to this pastor, one’s spiritual gift will remain.²⁴ This indicates that pastors constantly need to pay attention to their spiritual maturity and that the association between spiritual power and religious acts is an unsettled one. The spiritual field is an open one and the question of what sources of power a pastor draws upon is open for interpretation. This furthermore means that the way the legitimacy of wealth is perceived is unstable and flexible, as sources of power are not easily revealed. What is of importance is the ways in which wealth is circulated and transacted as that reveals its spiritual source and hence its legitimacy.

Discussion: the moral economy of wealth circulation in Ghanaian charismatic Christianity

In this article, I have argued that religious practices, ideas, and debates are important sources for the study of the moral economy. I have discussed how the legitimacy and illegitimacy of wealth acquisition and accumulation within Ghanaian charismatic Christianity is perceived and debated and how the legitimacy of wealth is related to the nature of the relationships and transactions in which acquisition and redistribution take place.

The starting quote of the paper, ‘A man’s gift will make room for him’, encapsulates the importance of how value is perceived and circulated and how this is expressed and manifested within the moral economy of charismatic Christianity. I have argued that morality, although embedded within and drawing upon the past, also reflects ongoing and changing constellations and manifestations of what is perceived as morally legitimate. Wealth accumulation and redistribution and the assessment of legitimate wealth reflect historical tensions around voluntary or forced forms of exchange. At the same time, with the evolvement of charismatic Christianity and the emergence of a capitalist economy, practices of payment for religious services are becoming more widespread but are also contested. This reiterates Webb Keane’s critique of the tendency to perceive the moral as something unified, stable, and mainly of the past (2021). Moreover, by looking at how spiritual gifts and religious services circulate and are connected to wealth generation and redistribution, the conception of moral economy is enlarged. As I have shown, religious services and spiritual gifts are exchanged and the religious aspect of the moral economy is therefore not only about morality, but is also part of what is being exchanged as well. This calls for an opening up of the material/immaterial and secular/spiritual distinctions.

The opening quote indicates that if a pastor has a spiritual gift, uses it well and receives wealth in recognition, this wealth is legitimate. It is understood as being from God because the gift is God-given. But if wealth is achieved through selling religious services or drawing on occult power, it is seen as dangerous, illegitimate, and as ‘merchandizing religion’.²⁵ One cannot legitimately charge for a religious service, but one can put spiritual talents and gifts into circulation in a spiritual economy. This moral assessment and distinction are furthermore related to the idea of integrity and truthfulness. As Samuel Adu-Gyamfi explains: ‘if the man of God takes the money for other purposes than what he says, then he has milked the people because the money would not have gone to God but to people’.²⁶

At the same time, with the emergence and growth of charismatic Christianity and the focus on the prosperity gospel, there is a new focus on money and expectations of church members regarding how and when to give in church. These evolving practices reflect the changing moral practices of wealth circulation within the religious scene and more broadly in a neo-liberal context in Africa. As Adu-Gyamfi points out: ‘you cannot come to church empty-handed, some perceive it as a gift, some perceive it as payment’.²⁷ With this he underlines that the understanding of the moral economy of wealth circulation in charismatic Christianity is open, pluralistic, and debated. It is by studying the contours of these debates that we get insight into the moral economy of the religious field as well as the religious nature of the moral economy. These debates are at the same time reflections and products of changing moral values regarding wealth accumulation and (re)distribution in neo-liberal African contexts. Understanding moral economic dynamics in such contexts requires looking outside of where the economy is conventionally thought to be localised. The religious and spiritual fields are strongly entangled in economic life and integrating them in a moral economy framework enables us to grasp how such intersecting fields unfold and disrupt neoliberal ideologies and practices in Africa. This is not about seeing new religious ideas and practices as mirrors of neoliberalism, but about understanding how a range of contemporary and historical moral frameworks intersect. Although certain moral principles are reshaped in these encounters, they continue to revolve around tensions between accumulating for the community or the individual and around whether exchange is perceived to be free or forced.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the special issue editors, Jörg Wiegratz, Cristiano Lanzano and Tijo Salverda, for organising the workshops that led to this special issue and for their encouragement, patience, and constructive feedback on my paper. I also wish to thank the anonymous peer-reviewers for their engagement and sharp reading. I am indebted to my colleagues at the Centre of African Studies, University of Copenhagen, as well as Dorothy Antwi Boasiako, George Bob-Milliar, Samuel Adu-Gyamfi, and Rim Akandoh Jnr. for sharing and enlightenment.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council and the Lund Mission Society.

Notes on contributors

Karen Lauterbach

Karen Lauterbach is Associate Professor at the Centre of African Studies, University of Copenhagen. Her research interests include religion, social mobility, wealth, power and urban history in Ghana. Her publications include Christianity, Wealth, and Spiritual Power in Ghana (2017, Palgrave) and Faith in African Lived Christianity (co-edited, 2019, Brill).

Notes

1 Myles Munroe (late Bahamian Evangelical Christian evangelist who trained at the Oral Roberts University) has popularised Proverbs 18:16 and the notion of God-given gifts through his many books and talks.

2 In this text I mainly use the term charismatic Christianity to refer to independent charismatic neo-Pentecostal churches, sometimes also referred to as neo-prophetism. I hence differentiate charismatic neo-Pentecostal churches from the classical Pentecostal churches; I also do not include charismatic sections within the mainline churches.

3 The origins of the faith gospel are ascribed to American evangelists such as Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagin, Oral Roberts and T. S. Osborn (Gifford 2001, 62–63, see also Asamoah-Gyadu (2005, 2020) and Lindhardt (2009).

4 One example from 2009 in Kumasi is the case of Pastor Frank Annor who accused Bishop Obinim of hiring him to bury human bones, snakes and four red candles at the site of Ebenezer Miracle Worship Centre in order to discredit the pastor of that church. It is reported that when Bishop Obimin denied knowing Pastor Frank Annor, the pastor put away his Bible and used schnapps and eggs to curse Bishop Obinim. See: http://www.modernghana.com/news/251722/1/kumasi-pastors-in-juju-drama.html.

5 It is important to note that there is a history of such individualistic tendencies and tensions between accumulating for the individual or for the community among the Akan, so it is not solely a reflection of the emergence of a neoliberal economy (McCaskie 1986, 1995; see also Gyekye 1987). In precolonial Asante accumulation for the individual was seen as anti-social and as ‘an act of theft from the future wellbeing of Asante society’ (McCaskie 1995, 47). With colonial rule came the introduction of a monetary economy, which altered the moral criteria around the use of wealth. The growth in cocoa production and the emergence of a cash crop economy facilitated individual accumulation of wealth.

6 See also Haynes (2012) for a critical discussion of accumulation in the prosperity gospel as being for individual consumption rather than for redistribution in the community.

7 According to Gyekye, the Akan concept of ’good’ is focusing on the welfare and the well-being of the community (1987, 132). This explains why the tension between accumulation to oneself or the community is central in Akan morality.

8 Interview Samuel Adu-Gyamfi, Kumasi, 10 December 2014.

9 Personal communication, 14 June 2021.

10 Interview with church member, Kumasi, 14 December 2014.

11 Interview with church member, Kumasi, 9 December 2014.

12 Interview with pastor, Kumasi, 8 December 2014.

13 Interview with pastor, Kumasi, 8 December 2014.

14 On the relationship between morality, emotions and the heart in Pentecostalism in DR Congo, see Pype 2015.

15 Interview with pastor, Kumasi, 13 September 2005.

16 This distinction is also portrayed in the Ghanaian video film Diabolo in which a spiritualist healer is asked to bring a mother's child back to life. He does not succeed and as he declares this to the mother he says: ‘All the charge I charged you, I won't take anything. Your daughter born snakes. Your daughter die’.

17 Sunday service, Catholic Chaplaincy, Kumasi, 4 December 2016.

18 I am grateful to T. C. McCaskie for pointing this out.

19 His church can be characterised as being situated within the neo-Pentecostal / charismatic sector, but is also defined by some as being within the neo-prophetic movement (Kuwornu-Adjaottor 2013).

20 Sika duro is also referred to as the power that brings money or ritual money and as being related to individual consumption and against communal values (interview with Samuel Adu-Gyamfi, 5 December 2016).

21 Interview with church member and general secretary, Kumasi, 11 December 2014.

22 See: https://citinewsroom.com/2022/10/nana-agradaa-arrested-over-alleged-double-money-scam/.

23 Interview Samuel Adu-Gyamfi, Kumasi, 5 December 2016.

24 Interview with pastor, Kumasi 5 December 2014.

25 Personal communication, Samuel Adu-Gyamfi, 14 June 2021.

26 Interview Samuel Adu-Gyamfi, Kumasi, 10 December 2014.

27 Interview Samuel Adu-Gyamfi, Kumasi, 5 December 2016.