This article examines the relationship between the Faith Gospel in a Tanzanian prosperity ministry and "occult economies," described as discourses and practices relating the means of generating wealth to an occult and morally ambiguous dimension. The author argues that in addition to offering miraculous means of attaining material ends, the Faith Gospel provides ways of dealing with moral and perceived dangerous aspects of wealth and accumulation. This argument is pursued through a focus on ritualized offerings, seen as a "gift economy" along the lines described by Marcel Mauss. In offerings, coins and bills are purified and invested with complex human and divine qualities, turning them into personalized gifts rather than neutral mediums of exchange. Finally the author discusses how born-again Christians come to terms with the absence of immediate divine countergifts, in part by emphasizing the cultural value of slowness and transparency.
University of California Press