blessed a history of the american prosperity gospel

I am a conqueror.” Or, as prosperity believers summarized it for me, “I am blessed.” Christians, Kenyon advised, must avoid words and ideas that create sickness and poverty instead, they should repeat: “God is in me. Kenyon, whose evangelical spin on New Thought taught Christians to believe that their minds were powerful incubators of good or ill. The modern prosperity gospel can be directly traced to the turn-of-the-century theology of a pastor named E. 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…. I held hands with people in wheelchairs being prayed for by celebrities known for their miracle touch. I spent 10 years interviewing televangelists with spiritual formulas for how to earn God’s miracle money. Put simply, the prosperity gospel is the belief that God grants health and wealth to those with the right kind of faith.

I am a historian of the American prosperity gospel. of my first thoughts was also Oh, God, this is ironic. The stomach cramps I was suffering from were not caused by a faulty gallbladder, but by a massive tumor…. 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 following are excerpts from her article in The New York Times. Kate Bowler is an assistant professor of the history of Christianity in North America at Duke Divinity School and the author of Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel (2013).

Blessed a history of the american prosperity gospel