"Death, The Prosperity Gospel, and Me"
February 14, 2016 3:25 PM Subscribe
An essay [NYT] by Kate Bowler, author of Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel, following her diagnosis with stage 4 cancer.
The prosperity gospel has taken a religion based on the contemplation of a dying man and stripped it of its call to surrender all. Perhaps worse, it has replaced Christian faith with the most painful forms of certainty.
For those who are interested, the PDF of her doctoral dissertation which was adapted into Blessed is here.
For those who are interested, the PDF of her doctoral dissertation which was adapted into Blessed is here.
And God is always, for some reason, going around closing doors and opening windows. God is super into that.
posted by supercrayon at 4:19 PM on February 14, 2016 [9 favorites]
posted by supercrayon at 4:19 PM on February 14, 2016 [9 favorites]
That article was a hell of a body blow, and encapsulated a lot of things I had been thinking about lately. Thanks so much for sharing this, Pater Aletheias.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 4:29 PM on February 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 4:29 PM on February 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
I have always gotten the creeps when strangers said to me, "Have a blessed day!" and now I know why. The prosperity gospel and it's hawkers are such charlatans. The worst part of it is when you meet people who have taken the philosophy and have ended up with the attitude -- I'm #blessed because I'm good, that's why God rewarded me. You're poor, so obviously you must be a piece of shit human. It's all YOUR fault you don't have $$$$$.
I hope Kate Bowler survives her cancer, or at least is able to live with it, without too much pain. She seems to be a brave and gentle soul and we need more people like her in the world. #godfuckedheroverbutsheloveslifeanyway #exceptgodhadnothingtodowithit
posted by pjsky at 4:39 PM on February 14, 2016 [2 favorites]
I hope Kate Bowler survives her cancer, or at least is able to live with it, without too much pain. She seems to be a brave and gentle soul and we need more people like her in the world. #godfuckedheroverbutsheloveslifeanyway #exceptgodhadnothingtodowithit
posted by pjsky at 4:39 PM on February 14, 2016 [2 favorites]
The neighbor has a big mouth. It is a pity her husband had to hear that.
Prosperity gospel is a heresy. It is founded on a principle that the commandment against coveting has a cheat code. Maimonedes had a gentle refutation. He said nowhere is it written Job was wise, by which his meaning was closer to Job was kind of a drooling idiot.
Pater Alethias thank you for linking the dissertation pdf. This topic fascinates me ever since I moved a couple zip codes over from Osteen's church. I saved it and will definitely give it at least a scan.
posted by bukvich at 7:32 PM on February 14, 2016 [6 favorites]
Prosperity gospel is a heresy. It is founded on a principle that the commandment against coveting has a cheat code. Maimonedes had a gentle refutation. He said nowhere is it written Job was wise, by which his meaning was closer to Job was kind of a drooling idiot.
Pater Alethias thank you for linking the dissertation pdf. This topic fascinates me ever since I moved a couple zip codes over from Osteen's church. I saved it and will definitely give it at least a scan.
posted by bukvich at 7:32 PM on February 14, 2016 [6 favorites]
The modern prosperity gospel can be directly traced to the turn-of-the-century theology of a pastor named E. W. Kenyon, whose evangelical spin on New Thought taught Christians to believe that their minds were powerful incubators of good or ill. Christians, Kenyon advised, must avoid words and ideas that create sickness and poverty; instead, they should repeat: “God is in me. God’s ability is mine. God’s strength is mine. God’s health is mine. His success is mine. I am a winner. I am a conqueror.” Or, as prosperity believers summarized it for me, “I am blessed.”
Mary Baker Eddy got there first, but I assume she goes into that in her book.
posted by emjaybee at 8:30 PM on February 14, 2016
Mary Baker Eddy got there first, but I assume she goes into that in her book.
posted by emjaybee at 8:30 PM on February 14, 2016
Good article, and surely a pretty even-handed book. I'm surprised (not really, because this is about Christianity) that she doesn't deal with the extensive rabbinical commentary on The Holocaust.
Actually, the 1755 earthquake in pious Lisbon spurred a lot of similar soul-stirring theological controversy: how could God destroy all of his/our churches/people?
What a great and loaded word she titled her book: Blessed.
posted by kozad at 10:27 PM on February 14, 2016
Actually, the 1755 earthquake in pious Lisbon spurred a lot of similar soul-stirring theological controversy: how could God destroy all of his/our churches/people?
What a great and loaded word she titled her book: Blessed.
posted by kozad at 10:27 PM on February 14, 2016
Just beautiful. Thanks for posting.
posted by Vcholerae at 1:47 AM on February 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Vcholerae at 1:47 AM on February 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
Very beautiful, profound, heartbreaking. I wish her well facing a terrible illness.
posted by mermayd at 6:03 AM on February 15, 2016
posted by mermayd at 6:03 AM on February 15, 2016
As someone who provides care to the dying, I can only say with complete certainty that I have met both "good" and "not so good " people who got sick and died. I have cared for rich and poor, nice and not so nice. Everyone is humbled by the process. Especially me.
posted by BarcelonaRed at 6:20 AM on February 15, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by BarcelonaRed at 6:20 AM on February 15, 2016 [5 favorites]
Mary Baker Eddy got there first, but I assume she goes into that in her book.
I haven't read the published book, but she does mention Eddy in the dissertation, although she presents New Thought as her "rival and successor." Prosperity and Health wasn't published until 1875 and New Thought was already well under way by the 1880s. Both of them were influenced by Phineas Quimby, who had been Eddy's teacher. I think a fair summary is that the modern origins of this version of "mental magic" began with Quimby. Eddy spun it into Christian Science, which emphasized purity of thought for healing. Another stream developed into New Thought, which Kenyon mingled with late 19th century evangelicalism into a "name it and claim it" triumphalism that is almost exactly what Osteen is doing now. Kenyon is Osteen's spiritual father, Quimby his grandfather. Eddy is his aunt.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 6:24 AM on February 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
I haven't read the published book, but she does mention Eddy in the dissertation, although she presents New Thought as her "rival and successor." Prosperity and Health wasn't published until 1875 and New Thought was already well under way by the 1880s. Both of them were influenced by Phineas Quimby, who had been Eddy's teacher. I think a fair summary is that the modern origins of this version of "mental magic" began with Quimby. Eddy spun it into Christian Science, which emphasized purity of thought for healing. Another stream developed into New Thought, which Kenyon mingled with late 19th century evangelicalism into a "name it and claim it" triumphalism that is almost exactly what Osteen is doing now. Kenyon is Osteen's spiritual father, Quimby his grandfather. Eddy is his aunt.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 6:24 AM on February 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
The line I quoted in the FPP,--"The prosperity gospel has taken a religion based on the contemplation of a dying man and stripped it of its call to surrender all. Perhaps worse, it has replaced Christian faith with the most painful forms of certainty"--stuck out to me because I saw that so much as a pastor. My churches weren't anything at all like the prosperity gospel's megachurches, but Osteen is so pervasive that many of my parishioners were watching him on TV or reading Your Best Life Now, and his theology was having a notable impact. People kept "claiming God's promises" for full healing on 70 year olds with terminal illness who were certainly not ever going to bounce back, and it drove me a bit bonkers because instead of using the vast resources of more orthodox Christianity to prepare for death with a measure of hope and contentment, well meaning family and friends were encouraging the dying to "just have faith." Final days were spent in a bitter desperation that folks just weren't believing hard enough to save grandpa. Honestly, I usually would up in a very uncomfortable silence around those families, because I couldn't join in that kind of prayer, but if I tried to move them toward something more realistic, I would become the enemy who didn't have enough faith. When I could, I found some time alone with grandpa and let him know that it was okay to say his good-byes; I would check in on his family when he was gone.
The worst example came with the devastating injury of a youngish woman, one of my good friends in our church. She was in her early 40's when she had an unexpected and massive stroke. She was standing in her living room when it happened.She fell and the hit her temple on the corner of a coffee table. She was a mess: the stroke had done serious damage, and the coffee table had bruised and gashed her head. It was soon clear that stroke was one of the worst ones possible--she was unlikely to survive. The next morning, the latest series of tests showed no real hope, except for one CT scan that showed very very minor healing in her brain. Of course, that was the only thing that the family paid attention to. They took it as a sign that their prayers were working, and they spent the next 24 hours joyously claiming God's promises and renouncing Satan's lies until the doctors announced my friend had died.
Because of experiences like that, Osteen and his ilk make me very angry, because his wrong-headed teachings delay, and sometimes make impossible, the kind of farewell conversations that families should be having when someone is nearing death. Far too often the grief of the funeral is compounded by a sense of failure (we didn't pray hard enough!) or, worse, a sense of betrayal (you didn't really believe she could be healed!). It is bizarre that you can take a religion that begins with crucifixion and exalts the poor and the martyred and wind up with the health and wealth abomination that we have today. I wish I could see it as an interesting sociological quirk of American religion, but its false promises hurt people again and again.
Osteen got a nice mansion out of it, though, so it worked for him.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 6:56 AM on February 15, 2016 [40 favorites]
The worst example came with the devastating injury of a youngish woman, one of my good friends in our church. She was in her early 40's when she had an unexpected and massive stroke. She was standing in her living room when it happened.She fell and the hit her temple on the corner of a coffee table. She was a mess: the stroke had done serious damage, and the coffee table had bruised and gashed her head. It was soon clear that stroke was one of the worst ones possible--she was unlikely to survive. The next morning, the latest series of tests showed no real hope, except for one CT scan that showed very very minor healing in her brain. Of course, that was the only thing that the family paid attention to. They took it as a sign that their prayers were working, and they spent the next 24 hours joyously claiming God's promises and renouncing Satan's lies until the doctors announced my friend had died.
Because of experiences like that, Osteen and his ilk make me very angry, because his wrong-headed teachings delay, and sometimes make impossible, the kind of farewell conversations that families should be having when someone is nearing death. Far too often the grief of the funeral is compounded by a sense of failure (we didn't pray hard enough!) or, worse, a sense of betrayal (you didn't really believe she could be healed!). It is bizarre that you can take a religion that begins with crucifixion and exalts the poor and the martyred and wind up with the health and wealth abomination that we have today. I wish I could see it as an interesting sociological quirk of American religion, but its false promises hurt people again and again.
Osteen got a nice mansion out of it, though, so it worked for him.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 6:56 AM on February 15, 2016 [40 favorites]
The most heartbreaking thing I have read about the horrible effects of the prosperity gospel was written by Paul Prather, the religion columnist for the Lexington Herald Leader, called It's dangerous to rely on faith as a magic elixir. (They don't seem to have it online, so I've linked to another site that republished the text of the article) I remember reading it in the paper, and just being stunned and so sad for her family.
posted by antimony at 10:28 AM on February 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by antimony at 10:28 AM on February 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
OK I spent about an hour going over her Phd thesis. She has some very interesting points. One thing I missed is the state of flux of the whole thing. If you look at her appendix list of mega churches and then google for comparison there is mega turnover. She has a lot of Robert Schuller and Joel Osteen but no Rick Warren or Bill Hydels. Lots of capitalism creative destruction in this field.
My favorite mega church fact is Schuller's church filed for bankruptcy and the Crystal Cathedral is now owned by the Orange County Diocese Roman Catholic Church.
Conspicuous consumption display is the least of those guys' corruptions.
Much of the appeal is designed for people who would otherwise not be in church at all. It is not a choice between them being in a church with this erroneous doctrine or being in a church with more pure doctrine. The choice is them being in this goofy church-lite and them not being in any church at all. That is how the Schullers and the Osteens and the others defend their practice if anybody ever calls them on it, which almost nobody ever does, because who ever criticizes fat cats in America. If you want to see some video that would make your grandma have a heart attack, have a look at the Church of Tares on youtube. It's three hours and I cannot go through it and time stamp highlights, but there is a rock band in a Sunday Service playing ACDC "Highway to Hell" and there is a mega church pastor doing a battle rap style thing (no obscenities) on the subject of Haters.
Link to the full three hour video.
Link to the Highway to Hell worship performance. It's 7 minutes but you'll get the point in about 30 seconds.
Link to Steven Furdick (Elevation Church Charlotte NC) Haters bit. It's 2.5 minutes and I recommend the whole thing. This guy's dental work looks to me like he has mini-vampire extensions but it could just be my overactive imagination and low youtube resolution.
Another omission in Bowler's thesis/book is Peter Drucker. Rick Warren (America's pastor) says he owes everything to Peter Drucker (although I haven't seen him quoted anywhere saying he owes everything to Jesus.) Peter Drucker's management theories (core competency, community, &c) are the method of Warren and his peers. Drucker had an interest in the church as an institution but apparently no interest in any religious message. The mega church pastors have huge personalities. I wonder how many of their churches will go bankrupt when they retire like Schuller's did. Do the mega church employers do rank and yank evaluations on their employees?
posted by bukvich at 6:20 AM on February 21, 2016
My favorite mega church fact is Schuller's church filed for bankruptcy and the Crystal Cathedral is now owned by the Orange County Diocese Roman Catholic Church.
Conspicuous consumption display is the least of those guys' corruptions.
Much of the appeal is designed for people who would otherwise not be in church at all. It is not a choice between them being in a church with this erroneous doctrine or being in a church with more pure doctrine. The choice is them being in this goofy church-lite and them not being in any church at all. That is how the Schullers and the Osteens and the others defend their practice if anybody ever calls them on it, which almost nobody ever does, because who ever criticizes fat cats in America. If you want to see some video that would make your grandma have a heart attack, have a look at the Church of Tares on youtube. It's three hours and I cannot go through it and time stamp highlights, but there is a rock band in a Sunday Service playing ACDC "Highway to Hell" and there is a mega church pastor doing a battle rap style thing (no obscenities) on the subject of Haters.
Link to the full three hour video.
Link to the Highway to Hell worship performance. It's 7 minutes but you'll get the point in about 30 seconds.
Link to Steven Furdick (Elevation Church Charlotte NC) Haters bit. It's 2.5 minutes and I recommend the whole thing. This guy's dental work looks to me like he has mini-vampire extensions but it could just be my overactive imagination and low youtube resolution.
Another omission in Bowler's thesis/book is Peter Drucker. Rick Warren (America's pastor) says he owes everything to Peter Drucker (although I haven't seen him quoted anywhere saying he owes everything to Jesus.) Peter Drucker's management theories (core competency, community, &c) are the method of Warren and his peers. Drucker had an interest in the church as an institution but apparently no interest in any religious message. The mega church pastors have huge personalities. I wonder how many of their churches will go bankrupt when they retire like Schuller's did. Do the mega church employers do rank and yank evaluations on their employees?
posted by bukvich at 6:20 AM on February 21, 2016
bukvich: "I wonder how many of their churches will go bankrupt when they retire like Schuller's did. Do the mega church employers do rank and yank evaluations on their employees?"
Most typically, the megachurch is "owned" by the superstar pastor; there's not a lot of succession planning except from father to son, and there's rarely a real board or outside management -- if there's a board, it's just a rubber stamp for whatever the pastor wants to do. It's an extreme form of American Protestant congregational independence; the majority of these churches don't survive a change in pastor. Sometimes they stumble along for a few years if the superstar dies or is removed for a scandal, but the theological rejection of institutional control above the pastor's level means that they most often just fade away if the pastor has no son to succeed him.
There's a local guy in a sort of wannabe megachurch who's actively being investigated by the IRS for misuse of church funds for personal and political purposes (basically he just takes whatever people donate and uses it however he wants); some of his church members who are professionals in finance/accounting/law/etc. went to see how they could report him to the board to have him removed or at least have the financials removed from his control, and it turned out he was basically wholly in control of everything and, oh, they can't do anything about it. From what I heard they had a meeting with him and he kind-of gloated about it, in a, "Haha, you can't touch me!" way, and kept piously insisting that's what GOD wanted him to do with the money, and until GOD turned against him they wouldn't be able to do anything to stop him. So I mean obviously they all quit the congregation and made a big stink, but not as many people left as you might think, and that guy's basically still doing the same thing and will keep doing it unless he gets indicted. The place SEEMS like a relatively prosperous, stable Protestant congregation of the loosey-goosier sort who don't have a strong congregational affiliation, but you'd have no way of known from all the trappings of the place, which must have been around in its present form for 30 years now and has a big solid church building and lots of community presence, that if you checked into the financials and corporate organization of it, it's all just the one guy's personal fiefdom. I hope I'd check out that sort of thing before giving my money to it, especially given that I'm particularly aware of these sorts of situations, but it honestly never occurred to me to wonder about that church until the scandal started breaking. It seemed so typical and stable.
I think I'd check. I read my new diocese's financials when I moved, and Catholic dioceses are pretty standardized so it was pretty unnecessary, so I think I'd be careful enough. But this place just SEEMED like a regular old church.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:14 PM on February 21, 2016
Most typically, the megachurch is "owned" by the superstar pastor; there's not a lot of succession planning except from father to son, and there's rarely a real board or outside management -- if there's a board, it's just a rubber stamp for whatever the pastor wants to do. It's an extreme form of American Protestant congregational independence; the majority of these churches don't survive a change in pastor. Sometimes they stumble along for a few years if the superstar dies or is removed for a scandal, but the theological rejection of institutional control above the pastor's level means that they most often just fade away if the pastor has no son to succeed him.
There's a local guy in a sort of wannabe megachurch who's actively being investigated by the IRS for misuse of church funds for personal and political purposes (basically he just takes whatever people donate and uses it however he wants); some of his church members who are professionals in finance/accounting/law/etc. went to see how they could report him to the board to have him removed or at least have the financials removed from his control, and it turned out he was basically wholly in control of everything and, oh, they can't do anything about it. From what I heard they had a meeting with him and he kind-of gloated about it, in a, "Haha, you can't touch me!" way, and kept piously insisting that's what GOD wanted him to do with the money, and until GOD turned against him they wouldn't be able to do anything to stop him. So I mean obviously they all quit the congregation and made a big stink, but not as many people left as you might think, and that guy's basically still doing the same thing and will keep doing it unless he gets indicted. The place SEEMS like a relatively prosperous, stable Protestant congregation of the loosey-goosier sort who don't have a strong congregational affiliation, but you'd have no way of known from all the trappings of the place, which must have been around in its present form for 30 years now and has a big solid church building and lots of community presence, that if you checked into the financials and corporate organization of it, it's all just the one guy's personal fiefdom. I hope I'd check out that sort of thing before giving my money to it, especially given that I'm particularly aware of these sorts of situations, but it honestly never occurred to me to wonder about that church until the scandal started breaking. It seemed so typical and stable.
I think I'd check. I read my new diocese's financials when I moved, and Catholic dioceses are pretty standardized so it was pretty unnecessary, so I think I'd be careful enough. But this place just SEEMED like a regular old church.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:14 PM on February 21, 2016
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posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:40 PM on February 14, 2016 [3 favorites]