In recent decades, the African religious landscape has witnessed a disturbing rise in manipulative pastors and self-proclaimed prophets who prey on the vulnerable. Their pulpits have turned into marketplaces, their sermons into sales pitches, and their congregations into consumers of so-called “faith products.” From miracle oils to holy water, from “anointed” cloths to seed offerings, spirituality has been repackaged and sold like a commercial commodity.
And the majority of those falling victim to these schemes are women.
The question is not merely how these pastors deceive but why women disproportionately bear the brunt. Understanding this requires peeling back layers of psychology, economics, culture, and gender dynamics that make women more susceptible to these scams.
The Feminization of Faith and Emotional Vulnerability
Religion in many African societies has historically been feminized. Women often make up the majority in congregations, attending more services, prayer meetings, and church activities than men. This stronger engagement with church life positions them directly within the orbit of manipulative pastors. Many women carry heavy emotional burdens, failed marriages, financial instability, infertility, chronic illnesses—and unscrupulous prophets promise quick solutions.
Unlike men, who are often socialized to mask vulnerability under stoicism, women are more open to seeking guidance and emotional release in faith spaces. This openness becomes fertile ground for pastors who brand themselves as “spiritual fathers” offering miracles, prophetic declarations, and instant breakthroughs.
This openness becomes fertile ground for pastors who brand themselves as “spiritual fathers”
Marketing the Sacred: Pastors as Salesmen
Today’s prosperity gospel preachers are less shepherds of faith and more cunning marketers. They understand consumer psychology as well as any advertising executive. By staging testimonies of miraculous healings or sudden financial success, they build powerful narratives of hope. They target women with promises of love, marriage restoration, or fertility, knowing these are deeply sensitive issues in patriarchal societies where a woman’s worth is often unfairly tied to her marital status or motherhood.
Faith is packaged as a product: “Buy this oil, your husband will return. Sow this seed, your promotion will come. Drink this water, your womb will open.” It is no coincidence that these commodities are disproportionately marketed to women. The church becomes less a spiritual sanctuary and more a spiritual supermarket.
Why Men Are Harder to Deceive
While some men do fall into these traps, pastors find it harder to deceive them at scale. For one, men are less likely to be targeted with promises of marriage or healing tied to reproductive health, which are common entry points for manipulating women. Men also tend to exercise more financial control in households, meaning they are less likely to give large sums impulsively without skepticism.
Furthermore, cultural expectations of masculinity encourage men to project rationality and independence. Whether genuine or not, this façade makes them less prone to public displays of desperation that pastors exploit. In essence, men may not be less vulnerable in reality, but they are less visible targets for manipulative theology.
The Cultural Weight of Gender Roles
In patriarchal communities, women often turn to faith as a source of empowerment where society offers little support. Economic marginalization, gender-based violence, and limited employment opportunities create fertile ground for pastors promising divine shortcuts. A struggling single mother, for instance, may cling to the hope that a “prophetic seed” will open doors for her children’s future. In such desperation, discernment fades, and manipulation thrives.
Meanwhile, men, even when struggling, are conditioned to seek solutions through networks of business, politics, or social capital. Women, by contrast, are encouraged to endure and pray, making them the natural audience for miracle-sellers.
The Material Church: Faith for Sale
The deeper tragedy is how the church itself has shifted from being a moral and spiritual compass to a materialist enterprise. Prosperity theology has normalized the idea that God’s blessing is transactional, that faith must be proven through financial offerings, often to the direct benefit of the pastor. This theology disproportionately burdens women, who already give of themselves in families, communities, and workplaces, and now are pressured to give even more in church.
Pastors have become skilled brand managers, leveraging media, social platforms, and even fashion to project success as proof of divine favour.
They are not just preaching; they are advertising, positioning themselves as the ultimate lifestyle influencers of the spiritual world.
A Call for Critical Faith
It is time to confront this uncomfortable truth: the church has become more material than spiritual, more business than ministry. Women remain the largest victims, not because they are naïve, but because they are the most engaged, the most desperate for solutions, and the most burdened by the inequalities of society.
This is not merely a critique of deceptive pastors but a challenge to society itself. Why should a woman have to buy miracle water to feel worthy of love or secure in her health? Why should her dignity depend on the manipulations of a so-called prophet? And why do communities remain silent while religion is hijacked by opportunists in designer suits?
The answer lies in cultivating critical faith. Churches must be held accountable. Women must be empowered with education and economic independence, reducing the lure of miracle shortcuts. And society must dismantle the patriarchal systems that leave women vulnerable in the first place.
Until then, the pulpit will remain a marketplace, the pastor a salesman, and the faithful, especially women—the paying customers of a gospel that promises everything yet delivers nothing.
