This study investigates the social costs and benefits of atonement
within Nigerian Christianity, focusing on Catholic, Aladura (Christ
Apostolic Church, CAC), and Pentecostal (Living Faith Church,
Winners’ Chapel) congregations in Ibadan, Oyo State. While
theological scholarship emphasizes atonement’s soteriological
dimensions—from substitutionary to Christus Victor models—it
largely neglects its sociological implications for power relations, moral
economies, and Durkheimian collective effervescence. Drawing on
Durkheim’s functionalism, which positions rituals as mechanisms for
social solidarity, and Weber’s insights on the routinization of charisma
into ethical rationalization, the study explores how atonement shapes
ethical habitus, mitigates anomie, and reproduces social hierarchies.
Anchored in a qualitative ethnographic design, the research combines
25 semi-structured interviews with university fellowship members and
leaders (aged 18–35) and NVivo-assisted thematic analysis of 40 church
documents (2018–2025). Findings indicate that Catholic penance fosters
guilt and reinforces hierarchical authority; CAC rituals cultivate
solidarity amid precarity; and Winners’ Chapel covenants enforce performative faith linked to prosperity. Atonement’s benefits include
moral accountability, horizontal reconciliation, and institutional
legitimacy, generating communal effervescence. Its costs—
psychological strain, economic pressures, surveillance of testimonials,
and exclusion of deviants—reflect Weberian disenchantment when
charisma is bureaucratized. Overall, the value of atonement depends
on balancing justice, restitution, and compassion; misalignments,
particularly in neoliberal Pentecostal contexts, can perpetuate
exploitation. The study situates atonement as a dialectical institution
that merges spiritual praxis with social regulation in pluralistic
Nigerian society.
