On the Potential and Problems of Pentecostal Exchange

This chapter once again focuses on the relationship between charisma and prosperity, this time through an analysis of “seed offerings”—the small gifts associated with the prosperity gospel that are believed to result in large blessings for the giver. All Copperbelt Pentecostals acknowledge the power of seed offerings, but they are likewise keenly aware of the problems they raise. Through a careful examination of the different registers through which believers interpret seed offerings, this chapter demonstrates how believers keep prosperity in its proper place even in this socially dangerous practice. By focusing on the priestly capacities of the leaders who receive a gift on God's behalf, Pentecostals work to protect seed offerings from the taint of corruption, allowing relationships between leaders and laypeople to develop through socially productive exchange.

Making Moving Happen

This chapter explores moving as a value, an animating idea that gives social life on the Copperbelt its shape. It shows how people in Nsofu structure their relationships around the possibility of moving through two types of social ties. Most important here are relationships of patronage, or “dependence,” which connect poorer people to those with greater economic and social resources. People also move through relationships that produce alternating indebtedness, including rotating credit associations and the “committees” that finance expensive events like weddings. In both cases moving requires asymmetry, which makes these ties particularly vulnerable to the leveling forces of economic downturn, and the chapter concludes by describing how events like the 2008–2009 financial crisis have impacted the social world of Nsofu. It is these economic factors, coupled with a cultural emphasis on novelty, that make Pentecostalism especially compelling.

The Circulation of Copperbelt Saints

This chapter examines what happens when Pentecostal social relationships break down after the promise of moving by the Spirit is not realized. Under these circumstances, some people decide that they no longer want to be part of Pentecostal communities, but most will simply choose to try their luck in another church, perhaps one of the new fellowships that regularly spring up in Nsofu and neighboring communities. The goal here is not to overemphasize the failures of Pentecostalism, but to show how the movement of believers from church to church serves as a mechanism of valuation, raising and lowering different congregations on the Copperbelt religious landscape. This analysis in turn allows us to revisit prominent social scientific arguments about schism, and to challenge these arguments by demonstrating that schism is about realizing values.

Boom and Bust, Revival and Renewal

This chapter provides the ethnographic background for the rest of this book. It begins by responding to James Ferguson's (1999) well-known study of Kitwe, which portrayed the Copperbelt as a place of decline and despair. In contrast to Ferguson's description, this chapter situates the Copperbelt in a broader historical context of boom and bust, with regular cycles of prosperity as well as poverty. This is one of the main reasons for the optimism found during fieldwork. The chapter also offers a description of Nsofu, focused on those features of township life that facilitate moving, namely economic diversity and the large number of Pentecostal churches. In addition, it traces the development of Pentecostalism in Zambia, beginning with the arrival of the first Pentecostal missionaries in the 1950s.

Introduction

This introductory chapter fleshes out the themes introduced in the prologue, particularly the Pentecostal model of moving, or “moving by the Spirit,” through which the rest of this volume can properly interpret not only the widespread popularity of Pentecostalism in Zambia, but also, and more importantly, its particular local traits. It also briefly looks into neoliberalism and Africa, and how religion in particular functions within the neoliberal context. From here, the chapter puts together an “anthropology of the good,” which acts as a relational model or a vision of an ideal social world. Finally, the chapter returns to Nsofu, where much of the book's study is situated, to discuss the expansion of Pentecostalism in urban Zambia.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter briefly explores those characteristics of Pentecostalism that make it especially effective at making claims about value—about what constitutes the good life. As a religion that is remarkably capable of resonating with local concerns wherever it is taken up, while at the same time critically engaging with local cultural models in a way that demands a response, Pentecostalism represents a potent framework for reimagining the terms of the good. The chapter argues that this capacity for creative value reconfiguration or realization is a key component of Pentecostalism's worldwide success. It then concludes by showing how the theory of value developed in this book responds to materialist critiques of the anthropology of Christianity by bringing together the ideological framework of Pentecostalism with the political economic context of the Copperbelt.

Ritual and the (Un)making of the Pentecostal Relational World

This chapter examines how the relationships formed in Pentecostal churches—both vertical ties to church leaders and horizontal ties among laypeople—are worked out through ritual. Over the course of a Sunday morning worship service, believers move toward increasingly hierarchical practices like preaching, demonstrating the primacy of ties to church leaders in the Pentecostal relational world. However, egalitarian practices like prayer nevertheless persist throughout the ritual, reminding everyone that charismatic authority is by definition unstable. At any moment, the authority of the pastor may be challenged, and his position as a spiritual leader given to someone else. This potential for charismatic hierarchy to be upended serves as an important safeguard against what one believer called “corruption.”

Mending Mother’s Kitchen

This chapter focuses on a large party given for the wife of Pastor Mwanza, the leader of the congregation the Zulus had departed from. Like seed offerings, donations to this party sparked fears of choosing, since not everyone in the congregation was able to contribute the same amount toward the event. Those who gave the most were members of a subset of Pentecostal laity that called “supermembers.” These believers are both spiritually devout and materially wealthy, and as such they occupy a difficult position. Although their ambivalent status made the kitchen mending a risky event, these believers also played a central role in making it ritually successful.

Prosperity, Charisma, and the Problem of Gender

This chapter explores the tension between charisma and prosperity through a discussion of gender, especially as it relates to church leadership. In Pentecostal congregations on the Copperbelt, as in other parts of the world, women are generally not given the same authority as men, despite the democratic thrust of Pentecostal theology. Rather than argue that the subordination of women in Pentecostal groups is simply an extension of dominant ideas about gender into the church, this chapter shows that on the Copperbelt Pentecostal gender politics are a result of the need to keep prosperity in its proper place. This is because prosperity and charisma represent social orientations that are both gendered and gendering. Prosperity is a female social orientation, while charisma is a male social orientation. By subordinating female leaders, then, believers are also subordinating prosperity, attempting in the process to keep it in its proper place.

Becoming Pentecostal on the Copperbelt

This chapter explores the relationships in which Pentecostal adherence embeds believers. For many people in Nsofu, Pentecostal membership is constituted by their connection to a church leader, whose superior spiritual power is able to transform what they call “stubborn situations” such as childlessness or unemployment. The other relational axis on which Pentecostal membership turns is lateral networks of collective prayer. Prayer in Pentecostal groups creates a rolling tide of ritual energy that carries everyone along with it, and like connections to church leaders, the relationships that form through prayer also have the power to effect change. The pivotal role of these relationships reveals moving by the Spirit as a central Pentecostal value, and the chapter concludes with a discussion of how moving by the Spirit is realized in displays of charisma and prosperity.