Paper short abstract:

Once framed as antithetical to development, religion and development resurfaced as a field within development studies, reconfiguring mainstream understandings of development as a secular economic and social modernisation

Paper long abstract:

During the era of enlightenment, religion was once framed as antithetical to development. Yet a few decades now, religion and development has emerged as a distinct sub-genre within development studies, reconfiguring mainstream understandings of development as a secular project of economic and social modernisation. What changed? In this presentation, I aim to sketch the discursive shift towards religion within development studies, highlighting the plurality of conceptual frameworks, empirical research goals, and development practice orientations. Against the backdrop of a rapidly expanding and multifaceted religion and development discourse, I invoke the case of the very popular Pentecostal prosperity gospel doctrine, a “religious policy” on poverty alleviation that promises material wealth and health to all believers through faith and monetary offerings to God (church). I examine the shifting development approaches and local imagination of poverty, the moral agency of pursuing wealth in the market economy, and the ethics and apologetics of the doctrine’s material costs. I conclude by inviting development stakeholders and researchers to take religion more seriously in the conversation on development and poverty alleviation in Africa.