The New Pentecostal Message?

An Introduction to the Prosperity Movement

Lewis Brogdon

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781498205900
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Konfessionen

The prosperity movement has influenced millions of people in North America, Asia, Europe, South America, and Africa through Pentecostal, Charismatic and nondenominational preachers in some of the largest churches in the world. CNN, ABC, and Time magazine have examined the preachers and churches in this popular and controversial movement. Scholars and church leaders have studied it for more than two decades, producing dozens of books and articles on it. Considering the widespread popularity of the prosperity movement and the attention it is given by its critics, Brogdon asks, "Is prosperity preaching the new Pentecostal message?" In order to answer this question, one has to examine the prosperity movement as a Pentecostal movement instead of a Word of Faith movement that is a revised form of New Thought metaphysics and Science of Mind. Brogdon provides an introduction to the prosperity movement as a Pentecostal movement. He asks important questions in the study of the prosperity movement, such as who popularized prosperity teaching, Oral Roberts or Ken Hagin? Do all Pentecostals agree with the prosperity doctrine? Is prosperity teaching good news to the poor? Has prosperity replaced the emphasis on the Holy Spirit? The answers may surprise you.

Chapter 1

Changing the Way We Study the Prosperity Movement

The prosperity movement became one of the dominant features of global Pentecostalism in the last two decades of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century. In recent years, it is becoming one of the most significant developments in American Protestantism. Prosperity preaching has significantly affected how people think about money, faith, and the church both in America and globally. This is probably because some of the largest churches in America preach varying forms of prosperity teaching. Joel Osteen, the widely popular pastor of the 30,000-member Lakewood Church in Houston, is one such example. Kenneth Hagin Jr. in Oklahoma, Mark Chirona in Florida, I. V. Hillard in Houston, and Michael Freeman in Baltimore all pastor large congregations. Prosperity teaching has become popular even in smaller cities and towns. For example, Leroy Thompson in Darrow, Louisiana is a major proponent of prosperity teaching. What do these pastors and churches have in common besides thousands of members in their churches? They preach prosperity and they do it in a culture where there is widespread appeal for this form of teaching.

Nothing captures the prominence of the prosperity movement in America today quite like a feature in Time magazine. Its treatment in the September 18, 2006 edition, headlined “Does God Want You To Be Rich?” is one indicator of the prominence and widespread influence of this movement. According to the article, 61 percent of Christians polled agreed that God wants people to be financially prosperous while 26 percent disagreed. 49 percent of the Christians polled disagreed that poverty can be a blessing from God and 44 percent did not agree with the principle of following the example of Jesus by being poor.1 This movement seems to resonate with millions of Americans and is possibly one reason for its success and popularity in the nineties and the first decade of the twenty-first century.

The prosperity phenomenon is not just an American religious movement, but a global one. Prosperity teaching churches are growing in Africa, Asia, and South America. For example, David Oyedepo pastors Canaanland Church in Lagos, Nigeria, a 55,000-plus-member prosperity church. David Yonggi Cho pastors Full Gospel Church in Seoul, South Korea, that preaches prosperity to over 800,000 members. Some critics of the movement thought that it was strictly an American phenomenon that would not flourish in poor countries. That belief has proven to be false. According to a recent report by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, prosperity churches are the fastest growing churches in Africa, including one-fourth of Nigeria’s population, more than one-third of South Africa’s, and 56 percent of Kenya’s population.2 When asked if God granted material prosperity to believers with faith, 85 percent of Kenyan Pentecostals, 90 percent of South African Pentecostals, and 95 percent of Nigerian Pentecostals responded yes.3 Such startling data reinforces not only the prominence of the movement but the importance of the intersection between faith and economic realities for many Pentecostal Christians. The assumption for many African Pentecostals is that God cares about their economic condition. But there is by no means unanimity about the movement’s importance in Africa, a continent facing significant economic challenges for millions of people.

The sheer magnitude of these churches both in America and the rest of the world is influencing a growing segment of the Christian world. As a result of the tremendous growth of this movement, more public and scholarly attention is being given to its history and theology and their implications for the broader church for the past two decades. The spring edition of the African American Pulpit addressed trends in the black church. The prosperity movement was mentioned as a major trend in many black churches.4 In May 2007, Anderson Cooper’s nightly news program 360 ended with a documentary piece on contemporary Christian issues with a discussion of the prosperity phenomenon. ABC News did a story on the movement on January 23, 2008, after a United States senator sent a letter to six prosperity teachers questioning their lavish lifestyles and whether these ministries are abusing their tax-exempt status as nonprofit organizations.5 Lectures given by Howard University ethicist Cheryl Sanders at the 2007 Hampton Minister’s Conference interrogated this movement’s popularity in the African American community. This is one of the largest black church gatherings in the country. After one of Sanders’s lectures, the worship leader led an altar call giving people the opportunity to repent for preaching the prosperity gospel. Robert Franklin’s new book Crisis in the Village contends that this movement poses the greatest threat to the black community.6 The highly acclaimed magazine Gospel Today took up the prosperity debate in its May-June 2007 issue. One of the most prominent gatherings of highly educated African American clergy is the Samuel Dewitt Proctor Conference. In 2005 the conference was held in Atlanta and discussed the growing influence of the prosperity movement in America. Again, speakers were interested in how popular the movement had become in the black community and black churches. What is clear from the increased attention is the negativity of the coverage and assessment of the movement. Attention was given to excesses and abuses caused by and linked to this message, as if that is all there is to the movement. This leads me to a very important point that I began with in the introduction but will now discuss further, which is to explore how this movement is studied or approached by scholars.

How the Prosperity Movement is Studied

For the past two-plus decades, religious scholars have been studying the origins of the movement, its teachings, and how best to respond to its tremendous growth. This increased attention and popular media coverage has led to a fierce debate about the orthodoxy of these teachings and the meaning of this movement in a capitalistic and consumerist society. Some religious scholars and church leaders believe that the movement is heretical. And those who may not lay the charge of heresy question the theology and hermeneutical principles employed to support these teachings. Some go so far as to claim that the movement is a product of a capitalist and consumerist society and not one with theological beliefs rooted in a particular Christian tradition. The perennial questions revolve around the basic teachings and historical origins of the movement.

What I have discovered is that popular works on the prosperity movement have given a thorough analysis of the non-Christian origins of this form of teaching. Most scholarly and popular studies of the movement argue that prosperity teaching is based on New Thought metaphysics and Mind Science. They assert that Word of Faith teachers such as Ken Hagin Sr., Fred Price, Ken and Gloria Copeland, and Creflo Dollar take non-Christian beliefs and use the Bible to sanction a system of belief that is erroneous and possibly heretical. However, these works have not examined the movement’s history within the classical Pentecostal and Charismatic movement from the 1950s to the present. There is an exception: the recently published book Blessed: The History of the Prosperity Movement, by Duke University historian Kate Bowler.7 The lack of analysis about the movement’s origins within Pentecostalism is a problem. It leads to inaccuracies about the history and theology of the movement.

I want to amend on some points and correct on other points by writing a history that views this movement as ultimately a Pentecostal one. I also hope that this history will complement important studies on the movement currently in print like D. R. McConnell’s A Different Gospel (1995), Andrew Perriman’s Faith, Health, and Prosperity (2003), Bruce Barron’s The Health and Wealth Gospel (1987), Robert Bowman’s The Word of Faith Controversy (2001), Milmon F. Harrison’s Righteous Riches (2007), Debra Mumford’s Exploring Prosperity Preaching (2012), and the recent comprehensive study by Kate Bowler, Blessed (2013). I also hope to advance the study of this movement and encourage continued scholarly interest in why this movement has struck a chord in the religious imagination of millions of people globally and why it has become one of the popular features of global Pentecostalism.

The first step in advancing the study of this movement is to critique and interrogate the dominant posture toward its teaching, which is largely negative and at times inaccurate. I have wonder, “Why would one study a movement without an adequate understanding of the historical and ideological context out of which the movement emerged?” Too many critics do so because they do not take Pentecostalism seriously as a subject of scholarly inquiry. It is too common for scholarly studies to launch critiques about the prosperity movement without a basic understanding of the history of Pentecostalism, the basic features of Pentecostal theologies, or an awareness of how a failure to understand Pentecostalism discredits attempts to examine one of its popular movements. While I am not attempting to silence those who are critical of the movement, because I am very critical of many aspects, it is my aim to advance the study of prosperity teaching beyond just critiques to an overall understanding of the history and thought of the movement within the world of Pentecostalism. Scholars of religion need research on the history and thought of the prosperity movement as it evolved from within the complex world of American Pentecostalism. And this is where most works on the prosperity movement fall short. These works do not account for the vast diversity within global Pentecostalism and I am not sure if these scholars know where the Word of Faith movement fits within the larger matrix of global Pentecostalism.

The second step in advancing the study of this movement is for mainline scholars to get over its growth and popularity. The tremendous growth of the prosperity movement in the eighties, nineties, and the first decade of the twenty-first century has been an overriding foci and preoccupation by relig...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Changing the Way We Study the Prosperity Movement
• Chapter 2: Changing the Narrative of American Penecostalism
• Chapter 3: Is Prosperity Teaching a New Heresy?
• Chapter 4: Is Prosperity Teaching Good News to the Poor?
• Chapter 5: Is Prosperity Teaching the New Pentecostal Message?
• Appendix: Critiques of Prosperity Theology
• Bibliography