[Magdalen] Prosperity Gospel

[Charles Wohlers]

I see "Mennonite megachurch" and prosperity gospel, and, somehow, that just 
does not compute. Up here, the Mennonites are only a step removed from the 
Amish: they do drive cars, but they must be grey or black. They dress like 
the Amish. At church, men sit on one side and women on the other, with kids 
separately up front. I realize the Mennonites are congregational in polity, 
but they seem to me to be about the last ones to embrace the prosperity 
gospel.

Chad Wohlers
Woodbury, VT USA
chadwohl at satucket.com



-----Original Message----- 
From: Jim Guthrie
Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2016 1:13 PM
To: Magdalen List
Subject: [Magdalen] Prosperity Gospel

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.

  *
  *
  *
  *

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