A comparative analysis of economic empowerment within the African-Caribbean Pentecostal Church

This thesis is study of African-Caribbean attitudes towards economic development with specific focus on Birmingham Pentecostal Churches. Pentecostalism has maintained an inextricable relationship within Caribbean culture and this extends to the contemporary Caribbean community within the U.K. Using research methods such as discursive analysis, ethnography, and auto-ethnography, I will draw insights from personal, emotive, and experiential interactions within an African-Caribbean Pentecostal environment and contrast them with existing theories on Black economic empowerment, religious enterprise, and prosperity doctrines.

Largely, these scholastic discourses have used African-American churches in the United States as a central ethnographic observation point. Subsequently, my research will primarily consult domestic church based initiatives within the U.K., which will then form a comparative analysis between the two.

The motivation behind this thesis is to raise awareness around this topic by exploring the extent to which the trends identified within my research can be explained through auto-ethnographic observations of cultural expression. This work will be contextualised within a historical framework to assess how far British colonialism in the West Indies has impacted the contemporary psycho-religious personality of different individuals in relation to economic empowerment. This thesis then offers theoretical and practical examples of Black religious enterprise and entrepreneurship from inside and outside the Pentecostal paradigm. I will then critically assess how these case studies relate to deficiency of Black British scholarship on this topic. Finally, my intention is that this thesis will raise awareness and encourage an inner search for enlightened subjective realisations which will serve to impel prosperity and abundance as realistic possibilities.