“I drowned in debt trying to buy a miracle”: the religious who abuse the “prosperity gospel”

Evarline Okello breaks down in tears when she tells me she is hundreds of dollars in debt, after paying a pastor to pray for her.

He lives in a small shack in Kibera, a vast slum in the capital of KenyaNairobi, and can no longer support her four children.

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Evarline hasn’t earned anything in months, she tells me as we talk on the phone.

So, he tells me that when went to a pastor whose prayers could improve his life, he asked for US$115 (15,000 Kenyan shillings).

This is known as “seed offering”: a financial contribution to a religious leader, with a specific outcome in mind.

Evarline borrowed the money from a friend, who took out a loan on her behalf.

He had been told that this pastor’s prayers they were so powerful that he would see a return on his money in a week.

But the miracle never came.

In fact, things got even worse, she says.

The Kibera slum in Nairobi. (Getty Images).

The loan installments that your friend took have skyrocketed due to non-payment interest.

Now he owes more than $300 and has no idea how he’s going to pay it back.

Her friend has stopped talking to her and he still doesn’t have a job.

“Things have become so difficult that I have lost all hope,” he says.

doubled unemployment

Kenya has been hit hard by the cost of living crisis.

Food prices rose nearly 16% year-on-year to September 2022, according to Kenya’s Office for National Statistics.

World Bank figures show that the number of Kenyans out of work has more than doubled in the last seven years.

“People are very desperate,” says Gladys Nyachieo, a sociologist at the Kenya Multimedia University.

Kenya has experienced several protests over the rising cost of living. (GETTY IMAGES).

‘Supernatural Solutions’

This has increased the desire to find supernatural solutions, he says, and now many are willing to pay for a miracle.

Even if they have to borrow the money.

“People are told that God doesn’t want them to stay poor. So they ‘plant a seed,'” he tells me.

The practice derives from what is known as the Prosperity Gospelwhich preaches that God rewards faith with wealth and health.

Believers are encouraged to show their faith by giving money and it is said that God will return it increased.

It has its roots in the United States. and began to gain followers at the beginning of the 20th century.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Nigerian herders traveled to the United States to get a closer look at the system.

At the beginning the 2000s, its popularity spread across Africa, fueled in part by German-American evangelists like Reinhard Bonnke, it drew huge crowds from Lagos to Nairobi. That growth in popularity continues today.

German-American evangelist Reinhard Bonnke, who died in 2019, was very popular in Nigeria. (GETTY IMAGES).

Nyachieo also points to another factor that tempts people to go into debt: loan offers that appear regularly on phones Kenyan cell phones.

“People just apply and get the money,” she says.

That’s what happened to 26-year-old Dennis Opili.

After more than three years of looking for a job and feeling very discouraged, he asked a friend for help.

“He recommended a church that you go to and they pray for you. You give a certain offering, they pray for you, and you can get a jobsays Dennis.

They told him to make a donation every Sunday for three months and he gave about $180.

When her savings ran out, she borrowed about $120 from cash-lending apps and friends.

“I believed what the pastor told me, that I could get a job. So I didn’t have any problem with the loan, because I thought that eventually I could return it“.

But when no jobs turned up, Dennis began to suspect he’d been duped.

Dennis borrowed from apps that lend cash to pay a pastor

He was soon hounded by loan companies to make him pay up.

“Sometimes I was just sitting somewhere, relaxing, thinking about other things. Then someone calls you, wants their money back, and you don’t have anything to pay them with,” he says.

“I was afraid because you don’t know what action they might take if you don’t pay them. You don’t know if they can sue you or take you into police custody.”

Fortunately, Dennis has found a job, which has allowed him to return part of the money, both loan companies and your friends.

“I still believe very much in God,” he says.

“All I have to be a little more careful.”

pressured to give

But it is not only in Kenya where people go into debt in the hope of a miracle.

A woman who used to attend a Nigerian church in the US says she and her husband were pressured to donate and they were even expected to make “seed offerings.”

“Sarah” asked me not to use her real name or to say which state in the southern United States she lives in for fear of intimidation from the church or her lawyers.

Say what both parishioners and the local pastors of his former church were expected to give a 10% “tithe” of his monthly income to finance the church and his leadership in Nigeria.

A practice that goes by the name of “first collaboration”: a complete payment package for the first month of the year.

American evangelist Oral Roberts (1918-2009) is known as the father of the Prosperity Gospel. (GETTY IMAGES).

Local leaders were given monthly goals, he says, which required them to pressure the congregation to make “seed offerings.”

Members were told that they would be blessed by the senior pastor in Nigeria.

Sarah says she saw people paying the offerings with your credit cards in church services.

“I remember one time in church a lady said, ‘I’ve been paying my tithing but I don’t have enough money at the end of the month.'”

The pastor’s response, Sarah says, was to tell the people that giving was more important than paying the rent.

And he claims that anyone who asked why miracles didn’t happen got the answer: “You didn’t pray enough, you didn’t plant enough seeds. You didn’t have enough faith.”

She says her husband was pressured to leave her because she was asking questions, but in the end they both left the church.

A vendor holding posters with photographs of German-American Pentecostal evangelist Reinhard Bonnke and his successor Daniel Kolenda. (GETTY IMAGES).

So why do others stay in churches of this type?

Jörg Haustein, Associate Professor of World Christianity at Cambridge University, says it’s possible understand why people keep donating when “promises are not kept”.

For the middle class and socially mobile, as most members of Sarah’s church are, Haustein says the Prosperity Gospel offers “an air of economic success and social advancement that people find attractive.”

last resort

But it can also appeal to those living in poverty, he says.

“A church that says, ‘We know you’re hurting and we have a practical, achievable solution for you,’ will be more attractive than one that preaches elusive systemic change.”

But, I ask, why do people keep donating even when it means going into debt?

“It’s a bit like play the lottery when you don’t have moneyright?” Haustein asks me.

“It’s something that seems remotely affordable because you can borrow a few hundred Kenyan shillings on a phone to invest and see if it helps.” she says.

“Of course, there is also an air of despair, it may be the last resort one has.”

Back in Kenya, Evarline says the experience it has not made her abandon her faith.

“I would not say that the church is bad. The church is good. It is the pastors who are doing wrong. They are the ones who are asking for money.”

Source: Elcomercio