Maybe the prosperity gospel isn't so bad

While there might be some truth in the "God doesn't want you poor" (but what of Jesus?) there has been too much abuse by prosperity teachers for this to be a good development, particularly in an area that is as developmentally challenged as Africa. The only prosperity that a lot of the prosperity preachers are interested in is their own, so you get lots of "give to get" and "cast your bread on the waters" type sermons. Bad enough in an affluent area, but poisonous among the poor. Also, what happens when the prosperity doesn't come? This tends to get blamed on a lack of faith by the prosperity teachers, classic blame the victim.

There is no "Prosperity Gospel". There's a secular invention called that, but the Gospel of Christ has nothing to do with materialism or even material things, other than to say that generosity is required of you.

Nothing else is the Gospel. Anything else is a distraction from the Gospel, and harmful to it's spread and the knowlege of the REAL Gospel.

It's interesting that you bring up Weber here. Beyond the similarities of 'Protestant belief leading to wealth', the Calvinist 'Protestant work ethic' Weber studied and the Pentacostal 'prosperity gospel' mentioned here have little in common.

Weber thought it worked like this: the 'Protestant work ethic' encouraged people to be workaholics, since hard work was thought to build moral character. Incidentally, it also makes money, but making money wasn't the point; wealth is a source of temptation. You weren't supposed to spend it on yourself, and you weren't supposed to hoard it either. So instead you spent it on sensible, productive things like land, things economists would call 'capital'. This removes the temptations of miserliness and self-indulgence and, incidentally, also makes /more/ money. It's a virtuous cycle.

I see the prosperity gospel as being a bit like 'The Secret'. It encourages hope, and it encourages ambition, and both will help you get where you're going. But it also encourages a naive understanding of how things work, which can lead to misapplying it. You can't cast your bread on just any water and expect it to come back to you; and land ownership might be more promising 'water' than your pastor's pocketbook. Just sayin'.

"Republicans are happier than Democrats. Even when losing politically."

Of course they are. Ignorance is, after all, bliss.

"Republicans are happier than Democrats."

Because they were spending Saturday night at home commenting on political blogs, close to the phone when the poller called, while the Democrats were out partying.

The concept of a "protestant work ethic" has always been confusing to me, coming from a Lutheran tradition. This belief ties hard work to success, which is more often than not true in a secular sense, but I have no idea how this got connected to faith.

It's clear to me that I am saved because of God's grace, period. Nothing I can do on this earth matters to salvation in the absence of this grace. Likewise, the only thing I HAVE to do to be saved is accept Jesus as my savior. My sins are forgiven due to the sacrifice He made. Hopefully I will be moved to good works in gratitude for this gift, but they have no bearing on my eternal life. There is surely no connection between the gift of salvation and any type of earthly riches.

Because of this the words "properity" and "gospel" next to each other seem pointless to me.

"...there has been too much abuse by prosperity teachers for this to be a good development..."

So abuse/misbehavior by teachers makes a faith a negative thing? Poor Catholicism.

Well, Jim, that's because it didn't come from the Lutheran tradition, but from that other Reformation guy, Calvin. And from TULIP. Namely, predestination, and the idea of the 'elect'.

There's a group out there, they're gonna go to heaven. No matter what. Because God decided they were going to go to heaven. Simple as that.

Doesn't matter what they say, what they do, or anything else. They are the 'elect'. The 'chosen'. But.. nobody, including themselves, really knows who they are.

The rest of humanity, and its pretty clear that's the majority of humanity? They're not so lucky. And once again, it doesn't matter WHAT they do.

So, being human, if they believe in that theory, they know they can't know for sure who is chosen and who is not. But everyone who believes that WANTS to know, especially to know they are. So, they came up with.. these sort of signs of 'election'. And these seemed to have something to do, of course, partly with ethical behavior and such. This doesn't GET you elected, its just a sort of 'tell' that says you are, but also to do with, well.. prosperity.

Of course, prosperity is partly its own reward, but also, if it helps to comfort you, and to display to your neighbors that you are one of the chosen few, the elect, then all the better.

On the positive side, this isn't any sort of miraculous prosperity. God will, as one of his special ones, bless your efforts and make sure they bear fruit, but you have to actually put IN the work. That's why its the 'Protestant WORK ethic', not the 'Protestant Miracle Method'.

Of course, the negative side of that is.. if you are NOT successful, then you are not elect. So the poor aren't just poor, they are damned. And irreversibly damned. Which makes aiding them really a waste of time, in the big picture.

@Karen Brown:
I don't know where you got your knowledge of calvinism, but please; get your facts straight.

First of all; the elect can be sure whether they will be elected or not. In fact, Calvin was pretty sure that practically every christian could be sure of it.
And if we're talking about signs, well, yes, there are signs, but the signs are not the things that give us the security that we are saved, they just logically follow the faith. Signs that have nothing, nada, zero to do with prosperity, but with love, charity and so on. Being sure of your election has nothing to do with that. it has to do with the knowledge that God puts in our hearts and minds.
I've been a calvinist for the last twenty years, I live in a country that was fifty years ago pretty calvinist and I never, ever heard a reverend preach that prosperity was a sign of being elected. On the other hand, i've heard more than a dozen of sermons about the dangers of being rich, the temptations of money and Mammon.

"Maybe the prosperity gospel isn't so bad"

Yes it is.

The 'Prosperity Gospel' scam is the same scam as the 'Faith Healing' scam, wearing new clothes.

95% of the time it's 'Give your money to the church and you will make more money', and it cycles through suckers who end up discontented with Christianity in general. It is very destruction to people's existing faith, it is destructive to people's future faith (You would be amazed as to how many people are not willing to give Christianity a chance because they think the churches are in it for the money.), and, of course, it is destructive to people's finances.

There probably are some preachers out there who aren't in it for the money, just like with faith healing. Sometimes those people have just deluded themselves, sometimes they've seen an actual miracle once and decided that's the way it always works, when in reality relying on miracles is...um...stupid. But the fact there are few honest men doesn't mean that we shouldn't condemn the entire thing as incorrect.

Now, hard work, on average, tends to make you better off than the lack of it, but that doesn't have anything to do with God, and it's not really what the 'prosperity gospel' is teaching. The 'prosperity gospel' is teaching 'If you are a good person, God will pay your bills', which is just flat out wrong. And a lot of them add 'And by 'good person' we mean 'gives large amounts of money to us'.

Sorry, I just realized I addressed a few lines in that last post as if Rod was the one writing the initial stuff, rather than quoting at length from Peter Berger. I got caught up in my thoughts on the issue, rather that necessarily focusing on how to phrase it correctly. Anyway, the point remains that despite what he says about, "leaving aside theology and moral philosophy", you simply cannot do it. A religious belief cannot be simply boiled down to whether or not it is good public policy, as if it has no inherent religious truth (although if the religious value of an argument is established, I have no problem pointing out that it ALSO has positive or negative public policy implications). If you divorce it from it's religious content and look at it only from a functional perspective, you also divorce it from any power it holds to shape people's lives. People follow religious systems because they believe in them, after all.