Last time I said that part two was entitled ‘Why do you want to be rich?’, but the nuance in Swahili is a little different to that. It’s more like, “Why are you wanted to become rich?” or “What is requiring you to become rich?” This is an important distinction, because […]
Back in July at a TAFES event I bought a copy of ‘Biblia na Utajiri’ (The Bible And Wealth), which was written by Ufoo Kassa George, a businesswoman and TAFES Associate. I haven’t finished it yet, but the really exciting thing for me is that much of what Ufoo says […]
What is the place of money in the Christian life for the Tanzanian? Pastor John spoke of how wanting wealth is not a wrong thing for a Christian, if the purpose of that wealth is to be shared. We learned from a discussion with our language tutor in our Dodoma […]
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, […]
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 […]
This Sunday at church I was struck by how fear/power language permeated everything. (I wrote recently on the fear/power cultural paradigm, and we’ve previously written on it referring to it as animism, and with reference to the prosperity gospel.) In the children’s program… great attention was given to scripture memorisation. Last week’s […]
Many of our Aussie partners would be familiar with our friend Pastor John and his family because Arthur mentioned them in his deputation sermon. This past weekend they visited us in Dar es Salaam for a few days and Pastor John asked me, “How was your time in Australia? Were people pleased to […]
Meet Jesus at uni 