Redemptive materialism: consumption practices in contemporary African Pentecostalism

We examine Pentecostal adherents in Ghana to derive a concept of how adherent religious beliefs are reconciled to valorise contemporary consumer pursuits. Based on over ten years of ethnographic inquiry, we suggest the analytical notion of ‘redemptive materialism’ that references some pragmatic processes and practices of contemporary religious consumption – dream-making, legitimisation and moral translation – in a manner that allows adherents to transform experiences of lack into avenues of hope for material abundance. We intend redemptive materialism to speak to how various elements work together to shape how we live, the way we think as well, our consumer tastes, our capacity to pray, the nature of our prayers, and the way religious tutelage instructs our values (Wuthnow, 1995: 15). Future studies are invited to explore the possibilities that abound for religion to embrace seemingly antithetical elements of human existence.