Prosperity theology

Based on Wikipedia: Prosperity theology

In 2007, a United States Senator launched an investigation into six religious ministries. The charges weren't about spiritual matters—they were about money. Specifically, about preachers who lived in mansions, flew private jets, and told their congregations that God wanted them to be rich too. All they had to do was give more.

This is the world of prosperity theology, sometimes called the prosperity gospel or the health and wealth gospel. It's a belief system that has attracted tens of millions of followers worldwide while being denounced as heresy by almost every other Christian denomination. It promises divine riches while its critics accuse it of exploiting the poor. It represents one of the most controversial and fastest-growing religious movements of the past century.

How did this theology emerge? And why has it proven so remarkably durable despite widespread condemnation?

The Core Belief

At its heart, prosperity theology rests on a simple premise: the Bible is essentially a contract between God and humanity. If you hold up your end—through faith, through positive declarations, through generous giving—God is obligated to deliver security and prosperity in return.

This isn't a metaphorical prosperity. Adherents mean actual money in your bank account, actual healing of your physical ailments. Material success becomes evidence of God's favor. Poverty and sickness, by extension, suggest something has gone wrong in your relationship with the divine.

The doctrine emphasizes personal empowerment. Believers are taught that they have been given power over creation because they are made in God's image. Through positive confession—speaking your desires into existence with faith-filled words—you can claim what is rightfully yours.

This stands in stark contrast to traditional Christian theology, which generally holds that earthly suffering can coexist with divine favor (consider Job, whose faithfulness was tested through terrible losses) and that material wealth can actually impede spiritual growth (recall the famous teaching about camels and the eyes of needles).

Strange Bedfellows: The Theology's Origins

The prosperity gospel didn't emerge from traditional Christian thought. According to historian Kate Bowler, it formed at the intersection of three distinct ideologies: Pentecostalism, New Thought, and what she calls "an American gospel of pragmatism, individualism, and upward mobility."

That American gospel found its clearest expression in Andrew Carnegie's "Gospel of Wealth" and a famous sermon called "Acres of Diamonds" by Russell Conwell. Conwell, remarkably, equated poverty with sin and declared that anyone could become rich through hard work. This was Muscular Christianity—the idea that success came from personal effort rather than divine intervention.

But the other ingredient was more mystical.

The New Thought movement emerged in the 1880s with a radical proposition: the mind itself had power to shape reality. Initially focused on mental and physical health, teachers like Charles Fillmore soon made material success a major emphasis. By the early twentieth century, New Thought concepts had thoroughly saturated American popular culture, showing up everywhere from self-help books to early psychology.

If you've ever encountered the modern "Law of Attraction" or been told to "manifest" your desires through visualization and positive thinking, you've encountered New Thought's descendants. The prosperity gospel essentially baptized these ideas, clothing them in Christian language.

The Man Who Blended the Streams

The figure credited with introducing mind-power teachings into Pentecostalism was E. W. Kenyon, a Baptist minister who attended Emerson College of Oratory in the 1890s. There he encountered New Thought ideas, though he and later prosperity teachers denied any such influence. Anthropologist Simon Coleman disagrees, pointing to what he calls "obvious parallels."

Kenyon taught that Christ's sacrifice on the cross secured believers' right to divine healing. But here's where it gets interesting: this wasn't something to pray for humbly. Kenyon taught believers to demand healing, because they were already legally entitled to receive it. Prayer became a binding legal act, not a humble petition.

The spoken word, in Kenyon's teaching, carried the same spiritual power God used to create the world. Speak with faith, and you appropriate that power.

This resonated with certain Pentecostals, who already believed strongly in the power of speech—in speaking in tongues, in using the names of God, especially the name of Jesus. Kenyon's ideas found their way into the teachings of healing evangelists like F. F. Bosworth and John G. Lake.

But notably, this first generation didn't extend the doctrine to material wealth. Early Pentecostals actually viewed prosperity as a spiritual danger. That would change.

The Healing Revivals

The 1940s and 1950s brought the healing revivals, and with them, a new generation of evangelists who combined prosperity teaching with faith healing and old-fashioned revivalism. They taught what they called "the laws of faith"—ask and you shall receive—alongside "the laws of divine reciprocity"—give and it will be given back unto you.

Oral Roberts began teaching prosperity theology in 1947. He described his approach as a "blessing pact": God would return donations "sevenfold." If you gave to his ministry and didn't receive an equivalent unexpected payment in return, Roberts offered to refund your donation.

Think about that for a moment. It's essentially a money-back guarantee on divine intervention.

By the 1970s, Roberts had refined this into the "seed faith" doctrine. Your donation was a seed. Plant it, and watch it grow. He also began cultivating "partners"—wealthy donors who received exclusive conference invitations and ministry access in exchange for their support. This created a tiered system of spiritual access based on giving capacity.

A. A. Allen, another faith healer, published "The Secret to Scriptural Financial Success" in 1953 and began selling merchandise including "miracle tent shavings" and prayer cloths anointed with "miracle oil." He later claimed a miraculous experience in which God supernaturally transformed one-dollar bills into twenties to help him pay his debts.

By the 1960s, T. L. Osborn became known for ostentatious displays of personal wealth. Even within the movement, some grew uncomfortable. Oral Roberts and William Branham criticized other prosperity ministries for fund-raising tactics they considered unfairly pressuring to attendees.

The expense of building nationwide radio networks and campaign schedules drove some of these aggressive tactics. Media ministry was expensive, and the bills had to be paid somehow.

Television Changes Everything

The 1960s brought television, and prosperity preachers embraced it with enthusiasm. Oral Roberts developed a syndicated weekly program that became the most-watched religious show in America. By 1968, television had completely replaced the tent meeting in his ministry.

A pastor from New York City who called himself Reverend Ike began preaching about prosperity in the late 1960s. He soon had widely aired radio and television programs and became distinguished for his flashy style—he made no secret of his love for material possessions. His teachings about the "Science of the Mind" (note the New Thought connection) led many evangelists to distance themselves from him, but his audience didn't seem to mind.

The 1980s brought even greater mainstream attention through televangelists like Jim Bakker, whose influence waned only after a high-profile scandal involving fraud and sexual misconduct. In the aftermath, Trinity Broadcasting Network emerged as the dominant force in prosperity televangelism, elevating figures like Robert Tilton and Benny Hinn to prominence.

The Word of Faith Movement

While the healing evangelists laid the groundwork, a distinct movement emerged in the 1970s called "Positive Confession" or "Word of Faith." Its central teaching: a Christian with faith can speak into existence anything consistent with God's will.

Kenneth Hagin played a key role in expanding this theology. In 1974, he founded the RHEMA Bible Training Center, which trained more than ten thousand students in his approach over the following two decades. There's no theological governing body for the Word of Faith movement—well-known ministries differ on various points—but many are unofficially linked, and Hagin's teachings have been described as the most "orthodox" form of Word of Faith prosperity teaching.

Some scholars have traced surprising theological roots for the movement. Kirk MacGregor of the University of Northern Iowa has argued that Word of Faith theology shows influences from the Nation of Islam and Mormonism. The Nation of Islam holds that God is literally a man and that original humans were exactly like God. Frederick K. C. Price, a Word of Faith leader, citing Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, made similar claims.

The Mormon connection involves the idea of human progression toward godhood. One interpretation of Latter-day Saint theology holds that God the Father was once a mortal man who progressed to his current state, and that humans may follow the same path. Kenneth Copeland, another Word of Faith leader, teaches that God has a human body and that humans, once born again, return to their godhood with divine power over their own lives—including their personal health and prosperity.

The logical implication is striking: any failure to attain what you need or want reflects your own failure to understand your divine nature. As Price put it: "Whether you win or lose is not up to God. Whether you are a success or a failure is not up to God. It is up to you.... God is on vacation... the work he did for our benefit is already done on his part."

This represents a dramatic departure from traditional Christianity, in which God remains actively involved in human affairs and outcomes rest ultimately in divine hands.

Global Explosion

By the late 2000s, proponents claimed tens of millions of Christians had accepted prosperity theology. A 2006 Time poll found that seventeen percent of American Christians identified with the movement. By that year, three of the four largest congregations in the United States were teaching prosperity theology.

Joel Osteen, pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston—which meets in a former basketball arena seating over sixteen thousand—has been credited with spreading the message beyond Pentecostal and Charismatic circles. His books have sold over four million copies. Bruce Wilkinson's "The Prayer of Jabez" also sold millions, inviting readers to seek prosperity through a specific biblical prayer.

American adherents concentrated in the Sun Belt, but the movement's most explosive growth came elsewhere.

In the Global South and developing nations, Evangelical-Pentecostal churches teaching prosperity theology saw remarkable expansion. Philip Jenkins of Pennsylvania State University suggests that poor citizens of impoverished countries often find the doctrine appealing precisely because of their economic powerlessness. When you have nothing and see no path forward through conventional means, the promise of miraculous provision carries tremendous appeal.

Western Africa, particularly Nigeria, has seen explosive growth. David Oyedepo, founder of Winners' Chapel, has built one of the largest church auditoriums in the world—a fifty-thousand-seat sanctuary called Faith Tabernacle. In the Philippines, the El Shaddai movement, part of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, has spread prosperity theology outside Protestant Christianity entirely. In South Korea, Yoido Full Gospel Church gained attention in the 1990s by claiming to be the world's largest congregation.

Scandals and Investigations

The movement has attracted persistent controversy. In 2005, Matthew Ashimolowo, founder of the largely African Kingsway International Christian Centre in southern England, was ordered by the Charity Commission to repay money he had appropriated for personal use. By 2017, the organization was under criminal investigation after a leading member was found to have operated a Ponzi scheme, losing or spending eight million pounds of investors' money.

The 2007 investigation by Senator Chuck Grassley targeted six televangelism ministries: Kenneth Copeland Ministries, Creflo Dollar Ministries, Benny Hinn Ministries, Bishop Eddie Long Ministries, Joyce Meyer Ministries, and Paula White Ministries. Grassley was investigating whether these tax-exempt religious organizations were being used to finance lavish lifestyles.

Only the ministries led by Meyer and Hinn cooperated with the investigation. In 2011, Grassley concluded by stating he believed self-regulation was preferable to government action—a somewhat anticlimactic ending given the initial concerns.

The movement's political influence became visible in 2017 when Donald Trump's inauguration featured prayers from two preachers known for advocating prosperity theology. Paula White, one of Trump's spiritual advisers, gave the invocation.

The Critique

Almost every other Christian denomination considers prosperity theology heretical. Critics span the theological spectrum, from mainline Protestants to Catholics to other Pentecostals and Charismatics.

The objections are multiple. First, critics argue the theology is simply wrong—that the Bible doesn't promise material wealth to the faithful, and that interpreting it as a contract fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the divine-human relationship. They point to numerous biblical figures who suffered despite their faith, and to explicit teachings about the spiritual dangers of wealth.

Second, critics charge that prosperity theology promotes idolatry—placing material success at the center of religious life rather than spiritual transformation or service to others.

Third, and perhaps most damning, critics argue that prosperity theology exploits the poor. The logic is cruel in its simplicity: give money to receive money. When the promised returns don't materialize, the believer is told their faith was insufficient. Give more. Believe harder. The preacher keeps the donations; the poor congregant keeps the poverty and now bears an additional burden of spiritual inadequacy.

Secular observers have made similar criticisms, viewing the whole enterprise as a mechanism for extracting money from vulnerable people by promising them divine intervention that never comes.

Why It Persists

Given this withering critique, why does prosperity theology continue to grow?

Part of the answer lies in its theological flexibility. Without a governing body, the movement can adapt to local contexts. Nigerian prosperity churches don't look exactly like American ones, which don't look exactly like Korean ones.

Part of the answer lies in its media sophistication. Prosperity preachers were early adopters of radio, television, and now social media. They understand how to build audiences.

Part of the answer lies in its psychological appeal. In a world that often feels random and unjust, the prosperity gospel offers a sense of control. Your outcomes depend on your faith. If things aren't working out, there's something you can do about it. This is more comforting than the alternative—that bad things happen to good people for no reason at all.

And part of the answer lies in its social function. Prosperity churches often create tight-knit communities. They provide networks for business connections and mutual support. Even if the theology is questionable, the community is real.

The movement also taps into something genuinely present in American culture: the belief that anyone can make it, that material success reflects personal virtue, that wanting more isn't greed but aspiration. The prosperity gospel didn't invent these ideas—it just gave them religious sanction.

The Uncomfortable Questions

Perhaps the most uncomfortable aspect of prosperity theology is what it reveals about the broader relationship between religion and economics in America.

Traditional Christianity in the West has often struggled with wealth. The early church shared possessions communally. Medieval Catholicism developed elaborate theological frameworks for thinking about just prices and usury. Protestant reformers worked out their own accommodations with capitalism. American Christianity has generally made peace with prosperity, even celebrated it.

Prosperity theology takes this accommodation to its logical extreme. If wealth isn't bad, if God wants good things for his children, if faith really does move mountains—why not mountains of money?

The answer, critics would say, is that this fundamentally distorts the gospel message, turning it from a call to spiritual transformation and service into a cosmic get-rich-quick scheme. But the prosperity preachers would reply that their critics are the ones with a distorted view—that God genuinely does want abundance for believers, and that false humility about money is just another form of faithlessness.

This argument has been running for decades now, with no resolution in sight. Meanwhile, the megachurches keep building, the television broadcasts keep airing, and tens of millions keep believing that faith, properly exercised, will bring wealth their way.

Whether this represents a genuine spiritual movement, a massive exercise in self-deception, or something more predatory depends very much on whom you ask—and perhaps on how much you've given.