Prosperity Gospel

This book contains essays by NETS faculty members who bring with them a rich ministry experience in churches and para-church organisations in Namibia and other countries. Each essay is a sustained reflection on a particular aspect of Christian mission and ministry in Namibia and beyond. Thorsten Prill looks at both the challenges and opportunities for the Church in Namibia. He argues that para-church organisations with their focus on evangelism, church-planting and theological training have a significant role to play. In a second essay he identifies key issues in mission today and challenges churches, mission organisations and mission partners to be caught up in a missionary movement with God. Basilius Kasera demonstrates that the use of traditional African names for God as representatives of the God of the Bible is problematic as it leads to a distorted understanding of the biblical revelation. Such an approach fails to distinguish clearly between the revelation of Yahweh and the idols Africans have always worshipped. In a further article Basilius Kasera discusses the dangers of prosperity gospel teaching for the Namibian Church. Simon Gillham argues that the models and assumptions behind theological education in Africa have been largely imported from the west. Using the biblical metaphor of a tree representing spiritual maturity, he explores what roots, what fruits and what species of theological education might be most appropriate for the African context. Victor Kuligin examines the general state of the Namibian Church in light of the well-known statement that ‘faith without deeds is dead’. He argues that there is a discrepancy between the claim of being a Christian country and the lifestyle and conduct of many Namibian church members. He finds an answer for this disconnect in the second chapter of the New Testament letter of James. Achim Rieger believes that local church leadership should be, first and foremost, trained in the local church – given the socio-economic conditions in Namibia. He shows that the training strategy used by the apostle Paul can be a viable option for the Namibian Church. Spencer Tjijenda examines the spiritual condition of the Herero-Banderu people before and during the missionary period. He argues that the evaluation of pioneer missionary Carl Hugo Hahn was not only true but was also motivated by deep concern and love for this Namibian people group – an attitude that is still relevant for God’s mission in Namibia today.

This chapter proposes that a new prosperity gospel is rising. We call it the prosperity ethic. The ethic has two features: sacralizing self-help and celebrating consumption. Taken together, these features value upward mobility and invoke Biblical and Christian principles to justify practical rules to acquire wealth. The main difference of the prosperity ethic from the old prosperity gospel lies in the content. The old prosperity gospel relies heavily on the promise of financial miracle, which is activated through the power of confession and giving. The prosperity ethic, by contrast, emphasizes financial growth through self-help and other practical tips concerning investment and resource management. As a result of these emphases, the old prosperity gospel and the new prosperity ethic have attracted different audiences. The former is a message of hope for the poor. The latter works for the aspirational middle class. Our analysis draws from illustrations from selected preachers and authors who are invested in spiritual and material wealth. These observations are mainly based on our project on the prosperity gospel in the Philippines, but we see resonances elsewhere. We then explain these shifts in relation to the global market economy.

Citation:

Cornelio, Jayeel, and Erron Medina. 2021. "Prosperity ethic: The rise of the new prosperity gospel." In The Routledge International Handbook of Religion in Global Society, edited by Jayeel Cornelio, François Gauthier, Tuomas Martikainen and Linda Woodhead, 65-76. London and NY: Routledge.

In this paper, we draw on fieldwork with middle-class investors in ‘fast money schemes’ (Ponzi scams) to consider how Neo-Pentecostal Christianity may be mediating social and economic change in Papua New Guinea, particularly in relation to gender equality. Ideas of companionate marriage and the cultivation of an affective self imply masculinities that are more sensitive and less domineering. As these images of fulfilled modernity flow out from Pentecostal churches into broader Papua New Guinean society, they corroborate Taylor’s theory of how change occurs within the modern social imaginary.