Chancing upon moneylenders practising capitalism inside the temple, Jesus Christ famously got livid, judo-sweeping tables and raising all kinds of hell. If he lived in Gaborone, it is highly likely he would spend weekends at the Central Police Station, probably changing water in the cells to Drostdy-Hof dry red in an unholy moment of mischief. On Monday mornings, he would walk a short distance to the Extension II Magistrate Court under police escort to answer charges of having upturned tables at a worship service at the national stadium which is in the latter’s policing district. While that scenario might seem unlikely, Jesus was clear about one thing: religion should never ever be adulterated with commerce.
On that basis, it seems reasonable to suppose that he would have taken an issue with a phenomenon called prosperity gospel which is being peddled by “fire” churches which – ironically enough, are spreading throughout Botswana like wildfire. The prosperity gospel church has a quite distinct family business model. It is, to use an Americanism, a mom-and-pop operation that is generally created and owned by a male pastor who makes his wife co-pastor and treasurer. This setup essentially guarantees that the church will remain a family business. Naturally, the prosperity gospel church sets up where there is money and Botswana is particularly vulnerable because by African standards, the country is rich.
However, not enough of its citizens can be so classified and the International Monetary Fund is a little too worried that Botswana’s income inequality is one of the highest in the world, especially when compared with other high middle-income countries. As a character observes in “The Dixie Medicine Man”, a novel by Professor John Makgala of the University of Botswana, the prosperity gospel church operates no differently from a casino where punters put in money with the hope that they will get more. Makgala’s novel fictionally reinterprets the epidemic of “casino churches” in Botswana. Members are required to make a slew of payments with the hope that, by some divine intervention, they will be blessed with riches.
Where one gets nothing back, this payment can have the effect of eroding one’s earning power and viewed against scholarship that establishes a causal link between poverty and conflict, this situation tells one to worry. A broad range of scholarship has made this link through econometric data and scholars who have wrapped their minds around this issue will tell you when exactly a country will go up in flames and how long those flames will last. By one measurement, Botswana is in safe territory because is economy is in pretty good shape. However, the ability of prosperity gospel to induce poverty and the mushrooming of churches that preach this gospel should cause some concern.
Before she became President Barack Obama’s national security advisor, Susan Rice was Senior Fellow in the Global Economy and Development and Foreign Policy Studies programmes at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington. In that position, she authored a seminal paper titled “Poverty and Civil War: What Policymakers Need to Know” which says in part that “recent academic research on the causes of conflict demonstrates compellingly that countries with low income per capita are at increased risk of civil conflict.” According to that study, for a country at the fiftieth percentile for income, the risk of experiencing civil conflict within five years is 7-11 percent while such risk rises to 15-18 percent for countries at the tenth percentile.
If Botswana ever came close to poverty-induced conflagration, it would have been in 2004, the year in which a University of Oxford study suggested that at $5,000 GDP per capita, a Third World country has less than 1 percent risk of war within five years. In that year, Botswana’s GDP per capita was $5440. It then went up steadily reaching $6785 last year which is reasonably high but not high enough for James Fearon and David Laitin of Stanford University who estimate that at $9,466 GDP per capita, a country has less than 1 percent risk of war within one year. The latter have asserted that “in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, $1,000 less in income corresponds to 36 percent greater odds of [conflict] outbreak.” However, prosperity is itself not a bad thing and very few would argue with having lots of money because that makes life less stressful and people friendlier. It would seem though that the Botswana government takes the view that prosperity churches are not making their members prosperous.
Labour and Home Affairs minister, Edwin Batshu, has stated that in the future, each church will be required to provide an audit on how it uses its money “in an effort to curb the rampant abuse of church finances by pastors.” For some reason, prosperity churches don’t want to discuss prosperity outside a church setting. Fortunately though, there was at least one church, Heavenly International Souls (HIS), whose public relations officer, Neiso Modise, took our questions. Sunday Standard’s preference would have been to speak directly with the church leader, Apostle Joel Keitumele, who controversially claimed to have found himself mysteriously in possession of P900 at a Ditshupo Hall church service by Prophet Shepherd Bushiri, a prosperity gospel pastor from Malawi. Instead, Keitumele referred all queries to Modise.
In an interview with The Voice last year, Keitumele stated “that giving in church is a good thing because you receive more of what you have given out.” Modise locates the genesis of prosperity gospel in Genesis 12 verses 1 to 3: “Now the Lord had said unto Abram, ‘Get thee out thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shall be a blessing and I will bless them that bless thee and curse him that curse thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”
As regards the theology of his church, Modise explains that HIS believes that God desires to bless His people with prosperity. “We teach God’s blessings and prosperity as they apply to the spiritual, physical and financial areas of life. These blessings and prosperity are then used to bless others; that is, the church, the members and even the pastor,” he says.
Some people express concern that while the economic empowerment of the congregation is left to divine intervention, the pastor’s own is a direct result of money raised from that same congregation. Modise’s mention of the pastor is in response to a question that asked him to explain how the empowerment of the pastor occurs within the context of prosperity gospel. He goes further to quote Joshua 1 verse 8 which restates the message says that the faithful shall prosper. “We see here that if we walk in accordance with God’s will and keep His word, He shall bless us and make us prosperous in soul and body.
In conclusion, it has to be noted that a prosperity gospel that solely equates blessings with financial gain is out of balance. This is highly detrimental and has potential to damage a person’s walk with God,” Modise says. Echoing the views expressed by Rice and others, Joe Seabenyane expressly states that prosperity gospel churches that are unable to deliver on their promises present a national security threat. Seabenyane is more than qualified to analyse this issue because he is a former member of the Botswana Defence Force who studied security studies at the Air Command and Staff College in the United States.
Upon his retirement, he held the rank of lieutenant colonel. “Plant a seed” is the phrase that prosperity gospel churches deploy in service of getting their congregants to give. This is a simple enough analogy that suggests that the planted seed will sprout and yield a bountiful harvest. Seabenyane says that someone who has had to use his house or car as a seed and gets nothing back is definitely headed for the poor house. “That person becomes very bitter and is capable of doing anything,” he states.
