A religious teaching that God desires material prosperity for those he favors.[1] Material prosperity in this theology not only includes financial prosperity but success in relationships and good health as well.[2] This material favour may be preordained, or granted by God in return for correct "faith" significantly evidenced in the beliefs,
attitude and obedience of the adherent.
If you think this is actually a Christian message, I'd argue that you know little about the teachings of Jesus, but we aren't going to go there in this post. Instead, I'm going to highlight the articles written about the subject.
Preview from Rainey:
This movement is, if anything, durable. Neither incredulity of its methods nor bad publicity, like the cadre of TBN televangelists under Senate investigation for their Robin Leach-voice-over-worthy lifestyles, affects its salability. After all, Osteen's sunny view is that his message has "increased relevancy in a time of economic uncertainty." His church Lakewood generated $76 million last year, the most in
the United States. He says attendance is up since the economy tanked. Hard-on-their-luck audiences are more likely to buy in to the message's fire-insurance appeal—the very "too big to fail" clout that attracted traders to AIG or Lehman Bros. until they failed them, too. For evangelicals, the culture wars trump self-policing; attempts to intellectually defrock Prosperity preachers come episodically from jailbird Jim Bakker, too-nice Rick Warren, or little-known leaders like Frederick Price of the National Baptist Convention, who compared Prosperity boosters to pimps. The signs do not point to a denouement.
And a priceless comment by Rod Dreher (who I usually disagree with) discussing the Slate article:
These preachers are pimps of false hope and salvation by materialism. It is a cruel irony -- and a testimony to human gullibility -- that they continue to prosper amid hard times.
