Money, wealth, and consumption among Pentecostal Charismatic Christians in Harare

Abstract

This thesis examines the entanglements and interactions between OMG – a Charismatic Pentecostal Church and the post-colonial Zimbabwean state through an ethnographic analysis of church members' everyday lives. I focus on money and consumption, and make several arguments in an attempt to explain the rapid expansion of OMG. Whilst the study adopts a political economy approach in framing the conditions under which the church emerged, I place Pentecostal Charismatic belief and experience at the centre of the analysis. Money and commodity consumption have been creatively incorporated into OMG belief systems and doctrines at a time when the Zimbabwean economy is performing poorly, and poverty is an everyday reality for most of the population. The consumption of commodities has religious significance inasmuch as it is a critique of the post- independence government that has largely failed to improve the lives of Zimbabweans. In consuming commodities, OMG congregants set themselves apart from non-members and construct themselves as ‘blessed’ and thriving. I argue that the mismanagement of the postcolonial state has provided crevices and clefts through which OMG has emerged and grown as a proxy to the state by appropriating aspects of state and chieftaincy rituals. Secondly, OMG offers alternative social spaces for citizens to be - or to appear to be - upwardly mobile and construct a sense of common identity based on religion, history and belonging.