Credit Card Report
Financial News Made Easy

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.”

Essentially, the Prosperity Gospel is a form of affinity fraud. It is taught primarily is churches that follow the so-called Word of Faith movement. This movement teaches that Christians are ‘little gods’ and that just like God their words have power to create. Negative words created negative situations, and ‘positive confession‘ (or ‘proclamation’) actually creates things.

Here’s how it is sold: God wants you to be rich (and/or healthy), but He can not bless you unless you first send money (also known as a “seed-faith offering”) to whichever televangelist or teacher tells you about this scheme.

If the scam does not work for you, it is because you don’t have enough faith. You’ll have to repeat the process, but with more faith. If it works, you’ll now have more money to give to the Lord (TV-evangelist).