Has the so-called Prosperity gospel turned its followers into some of the most willing participants ”” and hence, victims ”” of the current financial crisis? That’s what a scholar of the fast-growing brand of Pentecostal Christianity believes. While researching a book on black televangelism, says Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California at Riverside, he realized that Prosperity’s central promise ”” that God will “make a way” for poor people to enjoy the better things in life ”” had developed an additional, dangerous expression during the subprime-lending boom. Walton says that this encouraged congregants who got dicey mortgages to believe “God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and blessed me with my first house.” The results, he says, “were disastrous, because they pretty much turned parishioners into prey for greedy brokers.”
Others think he may be right. Says Anthea Butler, an expert in Pentecostalism at the University of Rochester in New York: “The pastor’s not gonna say, ‘Go down to Wachovia and get a loan,’ but I have heard, ‘Even if you have a poor credit rating, God can still bless you ”” if you put some faith out there [that is, make a big donation to the church], you’ll get that house or that car or that apartment.’ ” Adds J. Lee Grady, editor of the magazine Charisma: “It definitely goes on, that a preacher might say, ‘If you give this offering, God will give you a house.’ And if they did get the house, people did think that it was an answer to prayer, when in fact it was really bad banking policy.” If so, the situation offers a look at how a native-born faith built partially on American economic optimism entered into a toxic symbiosis with a pathological market.
Can we please not blame God but instead this awful theology? Read it all.
As opposed to blaming God, why not blame His self-selected messengers who peddle this harmful theology.
Also, let’s blame the banks for offering (and pushing) these loans and blame the people for borrowing more money than they can afford. Finally, let’s blame the Government for pushing the banks (via F&F;) to engage in these practices.
Instead of blaming God, we should turn to him in repentence for putting our faith in money rather than in Him.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Kendall and Phil are right to call this horrible theology. The important thing, in my opinion however, is to see it as only one especially sensational way we are all constantly trying to have what Luther called a “theology of glory” rather than a theology of the cross.
The natural way people theologize — and it is what whole religions like Islam are based on, but it is a constant temptation for Christians — is to imagine that God reveals himself to us and is most present for us in glory: power, wisdom, riches, health, strength, happiness, victory, etc.. But the Gospel tells us something different: which is that God comes to us and is closest to us in our lives where we are weak, foolish, beaten, sick, suffering, miserable sinners. He comes to us and does His work, as Luther would say, sub contrario, or under his opposite. As St. Paul would say this word of the cross — to see all things through the cross and to know nothing save through Christ and his cross — is a stumbling block to the world and folly — to people who thirst for success and victory and glory in this world.
So this prosperity gospel is the way almost everyone theologizes — just usually a bit less obviously.
Blaiming God for what we do and cause! But nothing new here.
[blockquote] Genesis 3:9-12 9 But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, [i] “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”[/i] [/blockquote]
So it was the womans fault and your fault God becauses it was you that gave her to me. It’s the same old story. We disobey and then blame God for the consequences.
Amen, Kendall.
Should we blame God for allowing people freedom to voice silly thoughts?
Before sniffing quite so loudly about the “theology of the Prosperity Gospel” you might read this recent article by Peter Berger in Christianity Today.