I am rich I am prosperous I am blessed How would you feel if these lyrics came up in a song you were singing in church? That was our experience at church this week. The first question is how you read them I guess. Are they describing a situation that […]
In our writing on prosperity, Arthur and I have been concerned to give space to Tanzanian thinking about the prosperity gospel. Working within our context, which is urban and educated Tanzania (not the 70% of Tanzanians who live in villages!) we have learned that they mean something different by that term from westerners, […]
Reading Anastasia Boniface-Malle’s thesis about the absence of lament in Tanzanian Christianity exposed for me another plank in the theological foundations of prosperity theology, that is, the idea that God wants you to be happy and healthy, and that for the Christian this kind of victory is within your reach. A key […]
What is the Christian life about? Is it about success, and victory? The emphasis of the Tanzanian church on prosperity often comes from a conviction that God wants wholeness for his people, and brings healing to them by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the blood of Jesus. Or […]
We’re into week six of sermons about money at church. It turns out our pastor has almost as much to say about money as Jesus did! This week was the third on tithing. The passages were Haggai 1:9-13 and Malachi 3:10, and he did all the things that Aussie evangelicals […]
A friend of ours once likened South Sudan to Tanzania. He had visited South Sudan for a construction project, and looming large in his experience was the constant presence of armed men. As he spoke, he seemed to be describing a potential failed state, a hive of barely contained conflict, […]
Arthur and I have been arguing for some time now that some western theologies radically misunderstand Tanzanian theologies, particularly with respect to the theme of prosperity. We have been arguing that westerners tend to see anything that mentions ‘prosperity’ as part of the ‘prosperity gospel’, a teaching that manipulates people into […]
