Prosperity Theology and Women’s Religious Agency in Rural Assemblies of God Church

This article examines how prosperity theology shapes women’s religious agency within Assemblies of God churches in rural Rivers State, Nigeria. Rather than treating the prosperity gospel as either purely liberative or exploitative, the study situates Women’s participation within a complex negotiation involving faith, gender hierarchy, economic precarity, and institutional constraint. Drawing on Pentecostal studies, African feminist theology, and scholarship on religion and development, it analyses women’s engagement through worship, prayer, testimony, economic giving, and informal leadership practices. Prosperity theology functions as a gendered moral economy that simultaneously expands women’s spiritual visibility and intensifies expectations of sacrifice, submission, and religious labour while leaving formal authority largely male-controlled. Illustrative cases from rural Assemblies of God congregations show how women appropriate prosperity discourse to pursue dignity, survival, and moral authority, even as they navigate doctrinal limits. By foregrounding lived religious practice in a rural Pentecostal context, the article contributes to debates on gender, agency, and socio-economic implications of prosperity Christianity in contemporary Africa.