Institutional Prosperity: No Money, No Church, No Fellowship in South Africa? Migrant Women’s Relationships in a Context of Lack at Saint Aidan’s Anglican Church

Abstract

ABSTRACT Monetary relations were embedded in the social practices of the Saint Aidan’s Anglican Church in South Africa. Consequently, when money was needed to employ a priest, additional dimensions of financial relatedness were established. According to Bonnie Hagerty, Judith Lynch-Sauer, Kathleen Patusky and Maria Bouwsema (1993), relatedness is the movement in a circle of connectedness, disconnectedness, parallelism, and enmeshment. This article discusses how money mediated migrant women’s experiences of relatedness while giving them a sense of belonging in the context of migration, xenophobia and other gender-related challenges. This paper demonstrates the way money shaped people’s relationships in a faith community where money was already embedded in the church’s social practices. I argue that St Aidan’s Anglican Church, like many other South African mainstream churches in a similar context, practises institutional prosperity theology. This paper demonstrates that the monetary relations define people’s sense of belonging. The prominence of monetary relations and the commodification of belonging at St Aidan’s suggest that, as an institution, it should be prosperous for the survival of people’s fellowship.