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While people flock to these churches, many people are critical of them. Zuze, a freelance journalist, interviewed Bishop Noah Pashapa17 _{of Liberty Churches}

International on 5 September 2015. Bishop Pashapa was requested to comment on the continued growth and popularity of PCCs. Bishop Pashapa claimed that when it comes to his own church, he does not take money from the congregation. He spoke out against ‘wealth churches’, accusing them of partaking in superficial care activities while robbing from the poor and enriching themselves (Zuze, 5 September 2015). Zuze expressed critical views against the numerous prosperity-focused churches mushrooming in the country. He claimed that some young people were founding churches with the intention of enriching themselves. At several political rallies the President has spoken against PCCs, claiming that they are stealing money from people and making them more docile (The Herald, 24 March 2015). One of my interviewees from UFIC, Patience, made the following statement:

       17 _{Bishop Pashapa was asked by the Newsday newspaper to comment on the mushrooming churches in}  Zimbabwe that is UFIC PHD Ministries and Spirit Embassy. He is a founder and Bishop of Liberty Churches  International. His church doesn’t believe in taking money from people. He asked to participate on several  occasions to the radio Star FM and he has given various interviews to different independent newspapers on  this topic.  

Prosperity is the gospel that is being taught not to enrich the pastor, but I think people misinterpret when it comes to prosperity. The prophet has so many businesses, so how can he take a $5 from someone or a car from someone. He is rich already, he doesn’t need anything from anyone. Least people should be grateful from because he will be helping people.18

At PHD Ministries and UFIC prosperity means success in every area of one’s life. The leaders say in their sermons that if someone preaches that people will go to heaven, and they do go to heaven, it counts as prosperity. If someone gets married and does not get divorced, it counts as prosperity. If someone cooks very well and none of the food gets burnt, it counts as prosperity. PHD Ministries and UFIC preach a worldview according to which everything is understood in terms of prosperity.

Another popular message is that God created people for a purpose and that he gave them a mandate to dominate. In addition, (people must enjoy life on earth for it should mirror the life we are going to live when people finally transformed from these earthy bodies into celestial beings). Two members of UFIC, Patience19 _{and Junior, echoed}

the same sentiments as the foregoing participants on the topic of Prosperity Theology and self-enrichment. Junior is a spokesperson for the Zim PF political party in Zimbabwe, a journalist by profession, and a deacon at UFIC. He is 40 years old, has a family with two kids, and started attending UFIC in 2012. Junior said:

It’s the Gospel that uhm that makes people relate to their God. And to see…The fundamental message is God wants us to prosper in everything that we do. He wants us to prosper in our health, he wants us to prosper in our relationships, and he wants us to prosper in our business. He wants us ultimately to prosper as we go to heaven, because going to heaven is the highest form of prosperity that you can ever have. Because, we are moving from a lesser world to a higher world. So, it’s a message that teaches us to have faith in God and a message that teaches that when God created us we are here not by mistake and not by accident but wanting us here he designed us to be here. And he gave us a dominion mandate that we should dominate. A dominion mandates that we should be here, and we should dominate; that we should have dominion over

everything: dominion over money, dominion over everything that creeps over the earth, dominion over, we should have control even of our economic affairs. And that’s the fundamental message that we find in UFIC that we are here to enjoy. You know we are here on earth to enjoy and to experience the same goodness, the same life God created for us on the other world. We should experience that world here on earth. It’s not like that understanding of religion as the opium of the oppressed.20

In her study of Pentecostal Churches in Mozambique Van der Kamp (2016:23) found that they encouraged people to develop their own agency, self-worth and upward social mobility. The Brazilian Pentecostal pastors of these churches offer converts business courses, where they are encouraged to position themselves better in the neo-liberal market economy. My research indicates that in Zimbabwean PCCs a similar phenomenon is taking place. This happens during service gatherings, where business skills are taught. ZAOGA, UFIC and PHD Ministries encourage their members to survive the neo-liberal market economy by equipping them with entrepreneurship skills.

Professor Marvelous Mhloyi, lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe and Bishop at Revival United Christ International, maintains that Jesus never accepted money to help people: ‘Jesus is our prime example as Christians and we ought to imitate him. He never accepted money during his ministry. He healed people for free and my Bible says we will get reward in heaven’ (Ncube 2016). Prof. Mhloyi encourages Christians to seek guidance from the Holy Spirit regarding any spiritual matter, but he does not believe that people should pay to have a prophet or pastor pray on their behalf. Prophet Prince Wonderful expresses the same sentiments when he cites Acts 8:18 to show that the apostles never accepted money when they assisted the needy, rebuking Simon the Sorcerer for trying to buy the Holy Spirit. He goes on to say that merchandising is what the apostle Peter predicted as one of the signs of a rising generation of false prophets and teachers, claiming to be servants of Christ. ‘It is clear the apostle did not sell the epistles they sent to different congregations; yet God funded their activities through generous givers in the ministry’, said Prophet Wonderful during a programme that aired on the radio station Star FM on Tuesday 15 November 2016.

Ncube (2016) expresses the view that there is a crop of ‘men of God’ operating these days who, even after collecting tithes, offerings and all kinds of seed money and ‘pastors’ appreciations’ (money and goods), still go ahead and sell oil, wrist bands, water and many other so-called ‘holy’ things. Prof. Ezra Chitando, during my interview with him, attempted a harmonisation of the ongoing debates about PCCs and Prosperity Gospel:

The kind of gospel being emphasised in ZAOGA, UFIC, PHD Ministries is the emphasis on prosperity health and well-being and elimination of, at the theoretical level, elimination of poverty and suffering, and this serves as a pull factor. So, one would argue that this movement, the prophetic Pentecostal movement…you have put them together, but I think they have salient differences between…the Gospel of Prosperity differs from church to church. Remember earlier this year – or is it late last year? – when baba Guti came out to analyse aspects of prosperity within the Magaya and Makandiwa paradigm. So, and even some of the AFM leaders are not as comfortable with the militants or if not militants but with the abrasive approach adopted by the younger biblical preachers. So, perhaps we need to desegregate and say that the prosperity message is itself contested within Pentecostals. But I would say nonetheless all versions of Pentecostalism appear to emphasise more of a life well lived here on earth rather than a life to come.21

Magbadelo (2004:17) argues that Malachi 3:10 has been used too often by pastors to extort money from congregants. They encourage people to bring tithes to the house of the Lord to support the pastor. They claim that the windows of heaven will poor out blessings upon the lives of those who give. Malachi 3:10 is used by many Pentecostal pastors to buttress their requests for monetary assistance, claiming that it is a non- negotiable financial obligation. The obligation is known as a 'tithe', according to which 10 percent of people’s income should be given to God (meaning, the church). In most contemporary PCCs in Nigeria, pastors have introduced additional ways of increasing church income. Levies for church building, procurement of musical instruments, welfare for the needy, church planting within and outside Nigeria, and so on, have often served as complementary sources of generating funds as people are encourage

to money to this causes over and above their tithes. The cupidity of Pentecostal pastors is not confined to members of their own churches; even on crusade grounds, where people are from different denominations and subscribe to different orientations and perspectives, pastors openly urge people to make substantial offerings

(Magbadelo 2004:17).

In addition, Magbadelo (2004:24) argues that PCCs have a responsibility to care not only for their pastors, but also for their congregations. Paying tithes to support pastors is motivated by the fact that these ‘men of God’ will in turn be casting out demonic spirits from people’s lives. At UFIC the 20th _{of November 2016 was called a ‘Prophetic}

Sunday’. Cell group members were told that this Sunday was unique, never to happen again, because it was full of prophecy. They preached about tithing from Malachi 3:10. The master of ceremonies said:

Before we welcome our father-and-mother prophet, Nzou, I want men to go into your pockets and women into your handbags and grab anything valuable and bring it up front, if you don’t have money for tithe.

Some people went to the pulpit, where they left their shoes, watches and other items. They then prayed for all the gifts that were brought forward and carried on with the service. After the master of ceremonies had preached about tithing, it was time for prophecy. Three people received prophesies during that particular service. The master of ceremonies then called on people to thank the prophet for the wonderful prophecies. Since he had prophesied, congregants were expected to show their appreciation in the form of love offerings to the prophet. They asked those with larger amounts to come up first, starting with those who had 20 US dollar notes. Only three went up to the pulpit. They then called for those with 10 US dollar notes. As these people were placing their love offerings in the basket, they were being prayed for.

Asamoah-Gyadu (2005:96) is of the opinion that the Prosperity Gospel relies very heavily on proof-texts to ‘prove’ that if believers are compliant, God will bless their endeavors. The emphasis in mainline Catholic and Protestant theology on ‘pain and suffering’ as a means to grow spiritually is not at all popular in these churches. Instead, PCCs teach that ‘negative things’ in life must be ‘refused’ through positive assertions, and that they are obstacles that can be overcome by doing God's will.

The following testimony by Patience is an example of a ‘proof text’ being used to show that she has been miraculously blessed with prosperity by a prophet or a ‘man of God’:

My testimony happened recently. I don’t want to lie to you, this job I got it after a long struggle. I hand over the papers to the department in October. The papers were rejected and the February semester they couldn’t take me. It so happened that I had a dream it wasn’t a physical thing. Prophet Makandiwa said when I visit you in a dream I’m not a spiritual husband who come to your dream to have sex with you. When I come to your dream receive your testimony. I dreamt Prophet Makandiwa he was praying for everyone in the service. I dreamt on Friday or Saturday. In that dream I touched his hand and I said: ‘Father pray for my job, I really needs this job’. When I woke up I told my aunt. She said it is well my niece. He started to say ‘Job, Job, Job’ until I woke up. On the next Sunday I went to church and the service was so unusual. He didn’t preach, he prayed for people. He started with the bay that I was in and Prophet jumped me, and he returned to the stage and I joined the queue and he went home before I could receive a touch. I then remembered that he once said: ‘If I pray for you in a dream, I will have prayed for you; just believe’. It didn’t take a week; they called me right away.22

However, in an African context that is characterised by corruption, poverty, deprivation, squalor, a highly volatile business environment, inter-tribal and internecine ethnic conflicts, and a general lack of opportunities for young people, the prosperity message is not accepted by everyone all the time (Asamoah-Gyadu 2005:96). People become particularly sceptical when they seed money, and nothing materialises. People accept the Prosperity Gospel more readily when they actually see results. I experienced the same attitudes when I attended church services at UFIC. Not everyone who seeds money always has their prayers answered. A couple who wanted an airline seeded a substantial amount of money to the church. After faithfully seeding money for an extended period and still not getting their airline, they pressed charges against the prophet. Asamoah-Gyadu (2005:96) goes on to say:

Where they are presumed to have worked, the so-called prosperity gains may either have an uncertain security, or they simply may not last. In many cases

the only concrete evidence of the prosperity message are the lives of those who preach it themselves. The ministry of dealing with demons in life, although biblically interpreted, also helps to make up for the shortfalls in the prosperity message. If things are not going well despite one doing everything that the Bible demands, for example confession of sins and payments of tithes and offerings, then the lack may be explicable in terms of demonic activity.

Van der Kamp (2016) and Van Wyk (2014) show that the UCKG emphasises breaking away from the past. ‘The past’ refers here to evil customs and relationships. ‘Breaking away from the past’ means to participate in the spiritual war. People seem to have an affinity for this message. During various personal crises, people tend to ‘fight with the devil’ because of the things that he has made them do. In other words, the underlying belief is that every crisis has a cause, and that blame should fall on this cause. Many of these people do not blame the government for the social, economic and political ills that they are facing, because the devil is the one causing the problems. They end up blaming either the invisible spiritual powers of the devil or other people through whom the devil works to do evil. This is also true for UFIC, ZAOGA and PHD Ministries. People are convinced that they should break relations with their relatives, because these relatives are blamed for the bad luck in their lives. These people believe that breaking ties with others is a way of fighting the devil and avoiding him.

One of the reasons for the continued popularity of the prosperity message in Africa is that it has two ‘built-in fail-safes’. The first, as Asamoah-Gyadu (2005:96) points out, is that the devil can always be blamed if the desired prosperity fails to materialise, even when large sums of money were given to the church. The second is that many (but not all) of these churches offer courses and programmes on self-improvement and the development of entrepreneurial skills. The consequence is that if the desired material prosperity is not experienced in any particular individual’s life, he/she might need to gain some extra skills in order to run a business more effectively or perform better at work. All three churches considered here offer a variety of teaching programmes that not only equip members with skills to plan their lives and become more independent, but also encourage them to take initiatives and risks in order to realise personal prosperity. ZAOGA provides a lot more of these programmes than UFIC and PHD Ministries.

These observations echo what other researchers have found in Mozambique, South Africa and Ghana, including for example what Van der Kamp (2016) found at the UCKG in Mozambique. Frahm-Arp (2010) maintains that these life-skill teachings were central to the success of Grace Bible Church and His People in South Africa. Girish (2010:443) argues that Pentecostal Christian practices and ideologies converge in shaping the personal desires, life strategies and biographies of people in Ghana. The three Pentecostal churches in this study provide members with a framework for positive change, which includes individual choice and economic betterment, so that they no longer see themselves as victims of circumstances beyond their control. ‘It allowed them to better cope with the multitude of life’s problems including unhealthy relationships and witchcraft attacks, and in helping them to move toward an improved socio-economic status and increased geographic mobility’ (Girish 2010:443).