Within the wake of Tropical Storm Harvey, which killed a minimum of 46 folks, few tales have captured the general public creativeness — or anger — like that of Joel Osteen and his Lakewood Church, one of many nation's largest megachurches. Osteen's seeming hesitation to open the church as a shelter for evacuees drew intense backlash on social media.
Lakewood officers say the church opened as quickly because it was protected and possible. However whether or not the backlash was based or not, it displays the deeply ambivalent emotions of People of all faiths about wildly rich preachers like Osteen — whose web price is estimated at greater than $50 million — and concerning the “prosperity gospel” he preaches.
As Laura Turner notes in a wonderful piece for BuzzFeed, no theological custom is as rife with accusations of hypocrisy because the “prosperity gospel,” a distinctly American theological custom. Though common amongst many evangelical Protestants, many others have condemned him. However for a lot of of its critics, particularly because the election of Donald Trump, the custom has come to signify the worst mixture of American-style capitalism, faith, and Republican social gathering politics.
The prosperity gospel has its roots in an American occult custom known as New Thought
Prosperity gospel is an umbrella time period for a bunch of concepts—common amongst charismatic preachers within the evangelical custom—that equate Christian religion with materials, and particularly monetary, success. It has a protracted historical past in American tradition, with figures like Osteen and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, the glamorous, flamboyantly dressed TV evangelists whose Christian theme park with Disneyland and Bethlehem, Heritage USA, was as soon as the third most visited web site in America. .
And 2006 Instances The survey discovered that 17 p.c of American Christians explicitly determine with the motion, whereas 31 p.c assist the concept “for those who give your cash to God, God will bless you with more cash.” A full 61 p.c agree with the extra common concept that “God desires folks to prosper.”
Nonetheless, its roots don’t lie solely within the explicitly Christian custom. In truth, it’s doable to hint the origins of the American prosperity gospel to the custom of New Thought, a nineteenth-century non secular motion popularized by decidedly unorthodox thinkers resembling Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James. Practitioners of the New Thought, not all of whom recognized as Christians, typically thought of the divinity of the person human being and the primacy of thoughts over matter. In different phrases, for those who may direct your psychological power correctly, you would reap its materials outcomes. New Thought, also called “thoughts medication,” took many types: from an curiosity within the occult to splinter Christian denominations resembling Christian Science to the event of a “speaking medication” rooted in psychotherapy.
Nonetheless, the results of New Thought was the basically American concept that the person is liable for his personal happiness, well being and life scenario, and that using psychological power in the suitable route is enough to treatment all ills.
Thus, New Thought thinker Ralph Waldo Trine (to not be confused with Ralph Waldo Emerson) may exhort his readers: “You see yourselves in a affluent state. Verify that you may be in a affluent state earlier than lengthy.”
Along with influencing Christian actions such because the Prosperity Gospel, New Thought additionally made inroads into many “secular” elements of American life, together with the positive-thinking self-help custom represented by books resembling Secret, which was written by an Australian however gained recognition when Oprah promoted it.
At present's prosperity gospel has additionally been formed by pro-capitalist and Pentecostal traditions of thought
A second aspect within the improvement of the American prosperity gospel was the appreciation of the “Protestant work ethic.”
Written in 1905 by Max Weber The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism he traced what he noticed as a particularly Protestant strategy to labor as integral to the event of capitalism and industrialization.
In Weber's historic evaluation, Protestant Calvinists—who typically imagine within the concept of ”predestination,” or that God has chosen some folks to be saved and others to be damned—felt the necessity to justify their very own sense of being saved. They sought each outward indicators of God's favor (i.e., by way of materials success) and methods to specific internal advantage (i.e., by way of onerous work). Whereas accuracy Weber's evaluation continues to be debated by students, but it tells us a lot about cultural attitudes on the time Weber wrote it.
Till 1905, a minimum of the concept he works onerous and receives a cloth, monetary reward for that the work was an integral a part of a sure part of Protestant Christianity entered the general public consciousness. In keeping with a current Dutch examine, this view nonetheless holds true immediately: Protestants and residents of predominantly Protestant international locations are inclined to affiliate work with private satisfaction greater than different spiritual traditions.
The ultimate aspect within the improvement of the prosperity gospel was the event of charismatic Pentecostal church buildings in America. An umbrella time period for a decentralized group of church buildings – comprising over 700 denominations – Pentecostal church buildings are characterised by an emphasis on what are often known as “non secular presents” (or charisma, from which the time period “charismatic” is derived). For instance, a worshiping Christian might expertise the present of therapeutic or might all of the sudden start to talk in “tongues.” This custom of worship meant to the believer the concept God would seem to believers in particular, miraculous methods. Right here and Now it was extra widespread than it will be in, say, the mainline Episcopal Church. Moreover, the decentralized nature of those church buildings additionally meant that particular person leaders, a lot of whom practiced religion therapeutic or comparable practices, had a very robust affect over their congregations and will construct particular person private followings.
These three sources collided through the twentieth century when the prosperity gospel was born. It started—just like the “work ethic” described by Max Weber—as a solution to justify why some folks had been wealthy and others poor through the Gilded Age. (One early proponent of the prosperity gospel, Baptist minister Russell H. Conwell, informed his principally destitute congregation in 1915, “I say you must be wealthy; you don’t have any proper to be poor.”) As an alternative of blaming structural inequality, Conwell and people like him blamed perceived failure of the person.
All through the 20 th century, proponents of this notably American mix of theology imagined God as a sort of banker who distributed cash to those that deserved it, with Jesus because the mannequin enterprise supervisor. Each of those characterizations had been at instances literal: In 1936, New Thought mystic and Unity Church founder Charles Fillmore rewrote Psalm 23 to learn, “The Lord is my banker/My credit score is sweet”; wrote promoting government Bruce Bowler in 1925 Man No person is aware of argue that Jesus was the primary nice capitalist. A literal quote about cash is, “Sooner or later…somebody will write a ebook about Jesus. Each dealer will learn it and ship it to their companions and their merchants. For it should inform the story of the founding father of a contemporary enterprise.”
But it was within the Pentecostal church buildings—with their deal with instant non secular presents and God's energy to grant instantaneous favor (and well being)—that the prosperity gospel as we all know it immediately took maintain. The “Phrase of Religion” motion—a Pentecostal model of New Thought that noticed constructive affirmation as central to monetary and materials success—turned extra outstanding. Figures like Kenneth Hagin, his protégé Kenneth Copeland, Oral Roberts, and naturally Osteen himself constructed particular person followings: followings that always grew by way of mutual promotion (one thing spiritual historian Kate Bowler factors out in her glorious Blessed, historical past of the prosperity gospel motion). For instance, one preacher might converse with one other at his convention or hawk tapes.
Central to the prosperity gospel was the concept of tithing, or giving cash to the church, ideally one's “first fruits”—or preliminary earnings. This cash, as promised by many prosperity gospel preachers, was an funding. By exhibiting religion, parishioners may have a “hundredfold” return on their funding, a reference to the verse in Mark's Gospel about those that undergo for Christ receiving a hundredfold of what they misplaced. So Ken Copeland may write in his Legal guidelines of Prosperity“Would you like a hundredfold return in your cash? Give and let God multiply it again to you. No financial institution on this planet affords such a yield! Reward the Lord!” On this mentality, tithing is a financially accountable factor to do. It’s an train of religion and a wise funding, a guess on the concept God is performing right here and now to reward those that have religion and a sufficiently developed work ethic.
Most of the evangelical leaders who encompass Trump are proponents of the prosperity gospel
The prosperity gospel tended to ebb and circulation with broader cultural developments – flourishing within the post-war increase of the Nineteen Fifties after which once more (unsurprisingly) within the no much less flamboyant Eighties, when massive hair and massive cash had been concerned. regardless of the catastrophic fall of a number of the gospel's most outstanding advocates—Jim Bakker, for instance, spent years in jail for fraud—the motion has endured to the current day. Maybe no much less surprisingly, two of his fundamental supporters—Paula White and Wayne T. Jackson—had been among the many six religion leaders invited to wish with Donald Trump at his inauguration.
Trump is definitely in some sense a product of this mentality. In a current op-ed in The New York Instances, Theology professor Anthea Butler argued that Donald Trump and Joel Osteen had been “mirrors” of one another:
Each take pleasure in large assist amongst evangelicals, but they lack information of the biblical scriptures. Each are within the 1 p.c… Mr. Trump and Mr. Osteen's manufacturers are rooted in success, not Scripture. Believers in prosperity as winners. Hurricanes and catastrophic floods don’t present the victory narratives which might be important to maintaining followers engaged within the mindset of the prosperity gospel. That's why it's simple for each males to spout empathetic phrases throughout pure disasters.
It’s onerous to say that the prosperity gospel alone led to the inauguration of Donald Trump. Once more, solely 17 p.c of American Christians explicitly determine with it. However it's way more true to say that the identical cultural forces which have led to the unfold of the prosperity gospel in America—individualism, a passion for flamboyant and charismatic leaders, the Protestant work ethic, and a cultural obsession with the facility of “constructive considering”—form how we strategy politics as a nation .
In any case, what’s our collective strategy to well being care if it isn’t rooted in a visceral sense that the unlucky have themselves responsible for his or her misfortune? What’s our willingness to vote somebody like Trump into workplace, however the collective cultural reward for many who describe themselves as profitable?
In any case, Trump might have embraced New Thought greater than anybody realized: he noticed himself within the White Home, confirmatory alone within the White Home earlier than anybody noticed it.
His funding returned a hundredfold.
