In this review essay, missionary-scholar Jim Harries challenges Western assumptions used to decry the prosperity gospel as it is taught and believed in Africa.

Hermen Kroesbergen, ed., In Search of Health and Wealth: The Prosperity Gospel in African, Reformed Perspective (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2014).

In reviewing a book about Africa written in English, one is tempted to ignore constant category errors being made. I have chosen in this review not to ignore them.

The contributors to this book have embarked on an impossible, but nevertheless important task. Impossible, I suggest, because one cannot effectively evaluate African thinking using English. Important, because the issue they address is critical and topical. The book is an outcome of debates that occurred at Justo Mwale Theological University in Lusaka, Zambia, in 2012.

My own background affects my interpretation. As a young man, I was much influenced by Calvinism. I continue to love Calvin’s teaching. Yet, I struggle to see how it can fit in Africa. I lived in Zambia from 1988 to 1991. Since 1993, I have lived in Western Kenya. Reformed churches in my home area in Kenya (I am familiar with one or two, there may be more I do not know about) have been swamped by Pentecostalism. It is hard to see how a reformed church can thrive, except through foreign donations, which would then implicate them in a kind of prosperity teaching that this text sees itself as critiquing.

Chilenje gives us a run-down of the kinds of difficulties that the West has with prosperity teaching. In the following chapter, Zulu sees positive things in prosperity teaching, rejecting the idea that it is only a pathology. Ellington tells us that correct analysis of biblical texts would solve the problem of prosperity teaching. Banda, D. suggests that we shouldn’t attack prosperity unless or until we have a better alternative. Then Banda L. suggests that the best way to resolve the rift between reformed and Pentecostal churches, is through dialogue. Kroesbergen struggles not to condemn prosperity teaching as sheer folly, by looking at ways in which it enables African dignity. Soko sees prosperity teaching and Pentecostalism in general as a response to globalisation. Kroesbergen-Kamps realises that in Zambian minds, Christianity and modernism are integrally linked. Togarasei concludes the book, by suggesting that what prosperity-oriented Zambians are looking for is not flagrant wealth, but merely bread on the table.

Many hours were needed to edit and proofread this book (xi). This indicates a starting difficulty – the expectation that citizens of African countries should produce work of a literary standard that pleases Western scholars. The book presents many respectable avenues of exploration of prosperity teaching in Zambia. I very much appreciate the efforts made by its authors.

Theology professor, Frank Macchia, talks about better ways to approach prosperity teaching in this Seven Minute Seminary from Seedbed.com of Asbury Theological Seminary.

Christianity Today July 2007

Isaac Phiri and Joe Maxwell, “Gospel Riches: Africa’s rapid embrace of prosperity Pentecostalism provokes concern—and hope” Christianity Today (July 2007), pages 22-29.

Does faith bring wealth? The 2006 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life study asked if God would “grant material prosperity to all believers who have enough faith” (24). Nearly nine out of every ten Pentecostals in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa said yes.¹ This cover story in Christianity Today investigates the growing dominance of prosperity teaching as being shared throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

While some African prosperity teachers are given brief quotations, the majority of the article presents a highly critical perspective. Some Pentecostal/charismatic scholars are quoted to offer an overview of the parallel growth of Pentecostalism and prosperity teaching in Africa. However, some of these scholars may take exception to the summary of Word of Faith doctrine and health-and-wealth made in this article.

A direct connection is made from E. W. Kenyon to both the heretical New Thought movement and the Christian Science cult. “By the turn of the 20th century, Essek William Kenyon, a pastor and founder of Bethel Bible Institute, had incorporated similar ideas into his preaching on the finished work of Christ” (25). This ignores scholarship² that argues Kenyon taught what some believe to be biblical principles that were influenced by the positivism of New Thought but in distinct contradiction to it. A further connection is made between the late Kenneth E. Hagin and Kenyon. The article claims, “Hagin taught Christians they could get rich by mustering enough faith” (25-26), ignoring any Word of Faith teaching that God’s prosperity is grace to be received in every part of life. Although it may be a case of too little too late, Hagin wrote Midas Touch: A Balanced Approach to Biblical Prosperity (Kenneth Hagin Ministries, 2002) before he died to address this kind of abuse. Marginalization and misrepresentation of Word of Faith beliefs does nothing to bring its adherents to conversation regarding what is sound biblical teaching.

J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma magazine, is quoted as urging discernment when investigating the “strains” of prosperity teaching being preached. “Many of the renewalist leaders in Nigeria preach prosperity as a biblical concept based on the promises of Deuteronomy … proclaiming that when people serve Jesus Christ and renounce other gods, God blesses their nation and economy” (page 24). God is moving, Grady says, despite the greed of some.

The second half of the article considers critics of prosperity teaching from within Africa, and presents a balanced critique of a movement that this article depicts as being out-of-control.

Running along with this article is “First Church of Prosperidad: Arlene Sanchez Walsh on the African-style prosperity gospel right in our backyards—in immigrant Latino churches” (pages 26-27).

Coincidentally, The Christian Century featured a cover story on the same subject. Paul Gifford, an expert in African Christianity, says that growing Pentecostal churches in Africa focus on achieving success. He addresses the tensions that arise when poverty and setbacks to “success” are the daily reality. “Expecting miracles: The prosperity gospel in Africa” The Christian Century (July 10, 2007).

Reading these articles, especially Gifford’s, will broaden and deepen your understanding of Christianity in Africa and how the doctrine of prosperity has been imported there from America.

Reviewed by Raul Mock

Notes

At the time of printing, this article was found online at:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/july/12.22.html

“First Church of Prosperidad” may be found here: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/july/13.26.html

“Expecting Miracles” by Paul Gifford may be found at this location: www.christiancentury.org/article/2007-07/expecting-miracles-0

¹ Time magazine’s 2006 poll of American Christians had 61% believing that God wants people to be prosperous, and 31% agreed that if you give your money to God that God will bless you with more money. “Does God Want You To Be Rich?” Time (September 10, 2006). http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1533448-2,00.html

²Two such studies may be found in Geir Lie, E.W. Kenyon Cult Founder or Evangelical Minister? (Refleks Publishing, 2003) and Joe McIntyre, E.W. Kenyon: The True Story (Charisma House, 1997).

Andrew Perriman, Faith, Health and Prosperity (UK: Paternoster, 2003 / USA: Gabriel Resources, 2004), 214 pages.

It is not difficult finding faults with the modern faith movement. For many people, in fact, it seems to have become something of an obsession. One does not need a theology degree to demonstrate how scriptures have been taken out of context, compromised or misconstrued in the effort to secure an absolute basis for the believer’s right to experience pleasant circumstances, prosperity and full bodily health (on this side of heaven!). What is required, I believe, is some Christian charity, a good deal of patience, and a willingness to understand rather than to condemn, if the rift between the faith movement and main-stream evangelicalism is to be healed (cf. 1Th. 5:19-21; 2Tim. 4:2-3).

Unfortunately, many of the so-called “pop-apologists” of our time seem to know only one word for classifying errors and excesses in their polemics—the singularly divisive and frequently misapplied appellation of “heresy.”¹ In addition to this, they are often caricaturists. Choosing a good piece of apologetic work over a bad one has itself become an exercise in discernment! My own exposure to Word of Faith teaching, however, has left me with a more ambivalent, less clear-cut impression of its spiritual health that will not submit to a ringing endorsement or a blanket condemnation. I am glad I am not alone in that. In a 316 page report entitled Faith, Health and Prosperity, Dr. Andrew Perriman provides a needed balance in the debate over the Word of Faith movement which will appeal to more conciliatory Christians who, though troubled by the faith movement’s mistakes, would want the option of affirming some of the good things that it has to say.

Faith teachers force us to look again at some of the traditional assumptions about poverty and piety; confront us with the radical possibilities of faith; and challenge us to expect much more from a generous and abundant Father-God, who made earth as well as heaven, body as well as soul, and is willing to bless us so that we can be a blessing to others. Nevertheless, in their enthusiasm for “the good things in life,” many would say that they have seriously distorted the fabric of Christian teaching, falling head over heels into an obviously “over-realised” eschatology that downplays the scriptural themes of suffering and hardship; promoting an individualistic doctrine of prosperity that disregards important differences in situation and calling; reducing the believers reliance on and relationship with God to the operation of a legalistic system of spiritual laws; and pushing biblical faith to an irrational and presumptuous fideism that radically disconnects our perception of God’s “truth” from “the facts,” encouraging believers to say “what they know ain’t so.”² And just what are we to do with some of the stranger bits of theology the faith movement has come up with—the “JDS” doctrine,³ or the “little gods” theory, for example, that have so upset evangelicals across the globe?

Andrew Perriman endeavours to sort through these issues, calmly disentangling “the rampant Russian ivy of error” from “the delicate wisteria of truth” (217), as well as challenging evangelicals with the possibility of a more balanced appropriation of some of the Word of Faith movement’s emphases. Written on behalf of the UK Evangelical Alliance and bringing substantial biblical scholarship to bear on the debate, Perriman’s report is an authoritative critique that seeks to praise as well as rebuke, encourage as well as criticise, and learn as well as teach, trailblazing “a path towards constructive dialogue and reconciliation” (15).

Reviewed by W. Simpson

Notes:

¹ I am not suggesting we should never call anything heresy. But when the word is used so often, and for things we need not disfellowship over, it becomes less meaningful—though it seems to retain its power to divide! A more sophisticated system of classification is required. eg. Bowman, Orthodoxy and Heresy: A Biblical Guide to Doctrinal Discernment.

² I am referring here to the faith movement’s practice of confessing as a present reality the thing being sought for by faith.

³ JDS stands for “Jesus died spiritually.” The acronym refers to the faith movement’s doctrine that Christ had to die spiritually as well as physically, go to hell and experience a spiritual rebirth in order to secure our redemption.