[Magdalen] Prosperity Gospel

[Jim Guthrie]

Some of us have discussed this on fb, but I thought listsubs might find 
this article both interesting and enlightening (for those not familiar 
with the concepts of Prosperity Gospel)

Durham, N.C. — ON a Thursday morning a few months ago, I got a call from 
my doctor’s assistant telling me that I have Stage 4 cancer. The stomach 
cramps I was suffering from were not caused by a faulty gallbladder, but 
by a massive tumor.

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I am 35. I did the things you might expect of someone whose world has 
suddenly become very small. I sank to my knees and cried. I called my 
husband at our home nearby. I waited until he arrived so we could wrap 
our arms around each other and say the things that must be said/. I have 
loved you forever. I am so grateful for our life together. Please take 
care of our son./ Then he walked me from my office to the hospital to 
start what was left of my new life.

But one of my first thoughts was also /Oh, God, this is ironic. /I 
recently wrote a book called “Blessed.”

I am a historian of the American prosperity gospel. Put simply, the 
prosperity gospel is the belief that God grants health and wealth to 
those with the right kind of faith. I spent 10 years interviewing 
televangelists with spiritual formulas for how to earn God’s miracle 
money. I held hands with people in wheelchairs being prayed for by 
celebrities known for their miracle touch. I sat in people’s living 
rooms and heard about how they never would have dreamed of owning this 
home without the encouragement they heard on Sundays.

[snip]

The riddle of a Mennonite megachurch became my intellectual obsession. 
No one had written a sustained account of how the prosperity gospel grew 
from small tent revivals across the country in the 1950s into one of the 
most popular forms of American Christianity, and I was determined to do 
it. I learned that the prosperity gospel sprang, in part, from the 
American metaphysical tradition of New Thought, a late-19th-century 
ripening of ideas about the power of the mind: Positive thoughts yielded 
positive circumstances, and negative thoughts negative circumstances.

[snip]

One of the most endearing and saddest things about being sick is 
watching people’s attempts to make sense of your problem. My academic 
friends did what researchers do and Googled the hell out of it. When did 
you start noticing pain? What exactly were the symptoms, again? Is it 
hereditary? I can out-know my cancer using the Mayo Clinic website. 
Buried in all their concern is the unspoken question: Do I have any control?

I can also hear it in all my hippie friends’ attempts to find the most 
healing kale salad for me. I can eat my way out of cancer. Or, if I were 
to follow my prosperity gospel friends’ advice, I can positively declare 
that it has no power over me and set myself free.

Read it all at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/opinion/sunday/death-the-prosperity-gospel-and-me.html

Cheers,
Jim