[Magdalen] Prosperity Gospel

[Jay Weigel]

We have all flavors of Mennonites here, from the Old Order variety who at
least drive buggies on Sunday and dress *very* conservatively almost but
not quite like Amish. to the sort of conservative ones whose women either
wear what we call "uniform dress" (a specific style/pattern) or relatively
conservative blouses and longish skirts along with the "sin-sifter"
bonnets, scarves, or little lace doilies, to the modern ones you can't tell
from anyone else.

On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 4:04 PM, Charles Wohlers <
charles.wohlers at verizon.net> wrote:

> 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
>