Asking as Giving: Apostolic Prayers and the Aesthetics of Well-Being in Botswana

Abstract

Drawing on an ethnographic description of hymns, prayers, and requests for material goods among Apostolic Christians in Botswana, this article considers how styles of asking bring aspects of the person to the attention of divine and human others. Apostolic believers regard personal well-being under circumstances of vulnerability as hinging in part on styles of prayer and asking, which entail forms of both self-assertion and engagement with the personhood of others. Experiences of vulnerability compel Apostolics' awareness of how partible aspects of their persons, including the voice, move among them so as ideally to build up well-being. Thus prayers to God as the ultimate source of well-being frame persons in aesthetic terms so that they may be well apprehended by divine and human others. In light of Mauss's theory of the gift, the article considers how verbal requests can foster well-being by conveying aspects of the person to divine and human hearers in ways that assert personal standing while sustaining moral consideration. An avenue is presented for comparative inquiry into the ways in which asking opens spaces of agency and obligation in religious and humanitarian discourses.

The gospel of self‐help: Born‐again musicians and the moral problem of dependency in Uganda

“…In a system that values the position of dependents as contributors to a broader social hierarchy, complaining is a means of asserting oneself and engaging with the personhood of others. “Styles of asking,” Frederick Klaits () has written in his study of Tswana Christians, “constitute forms of giving, in the sense that requests are made not only to elicit returns but to bring the person of the asker to the attention of the hearer” (209; see also Coleman ). Expressions of vulnerability or need in this context are not passive, personally diminishing actions; rather, they affirm the personhood of both the giver and receiver of aid.…”

Prayer, Patronage, and Personal Agency in Nicaraguan Accounts of Receiving International Aid

“…Klaits () argues that the act of asking for support signals the personhood of a recipient as much as offering a gift signals the moral worthiness or prestige of a giver. Recipients who cannot make the much‐lauded transition to giver may instead position themselves as clients, placing donors and development workers in the role of wealthy patrons (Englund ; Smith ).…”

“…By inviting the prospective bride's parents to pray with her, she invoked their shared identity as Christians rather than her socially inferior identity as a divorced woman. In Botswana, Klaits () found requests for support often took the form of prayers. These prayers communicated a desirable moral “aesthetic” of equality that eased tension between those who ask and those who (typically) deny support.…”

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“…This perspective helps to illuminate how pastors’ requests for tithes and offerings constitute styles of giving that take the form of asking (Klaits , n.d.). As in Mauss's formulation, in which the gift makes the person of the giver present to the recipient, pastors’ requests for tithes cause listeners to feel obligations to compensate them for the gift of the word.…”