Currencies of Salvation: A Constructive African Pentecostal Political Theology of Money and Debt

Abstract

This dissertation delineates an African Pentecostal political theology of money within the context of Ghana’s public and private debt, which originates in the disparities created by the enchanted Black Atlantic currency exchange system. Exploring the Ghanaian Pentecostal/Charismatic economy of tithes and seed offerings, it delves into the soteriological and political utility of money as a mediation object that generates the spiritual and material condition for humans to enter a credit–debt relationship with God. The Pentecostal use of money as a mediation object spawns fundamental soteriological questions, such as whether divine gifts to humans are unconditional or products of exchange. From a political and economic theology perspective, it begs the question of the extent to which human exchange economies are similar or dissimilar to the divine economy of unconditional giving. Addressing these questions, the study offers a constructive theological framework that gestures toward a more faithful and just way of organizing credit–debt relationships that resists the manufactured conditions of debt and austerity under neoliberal capitalism.Drawing on the sermons and writings of eminent Ghanaian Pentecostal/Charismatic preachers in dialogue with cultural anthropological theories of gift, debt, and money, the dissertation argues that all political economic discourse is imbricated with salvation discourse. In developing this argument, the dissertation offers a theological and anthropological account of the exchange logic in the Pentecostal economy of tithes and seed offerings. Furthermore, from a historical perspective, it examines the mutually constitutive relationship between the history of Ghana’s currencies, political economic history, and the economy of salvation, as manifested in Ghana’s history from the precolonial era to the present day. Given the absence of money, debt, and the Pentecostal exchange economy in African political theologies and global Pentecostal studies, the constructive and theological vision offered contributes to African Christian theology, world Christianity, and political theology.