Book contents
4 - The faith gospel of health and wealth
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
Summary
In recent years a new kind of Christianity has arisen, called the faith movement, or the faith formula movement, or the health/wealth gospel or the gospel of prosperity. Its origins are linked with Kenneth Hagin of Tulsa, Oklahoma, who claims to have had, while diagnosed as terminally ill in 1934, two revelations about Mk 11, 23f (‘Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, “Be taken up and cast into the sea”, and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it shall be granted him. Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them and they shall be granted you’). The first, in January 1934, he later summed up, ‘Here is the principle of faith, believe in your heart, say it with your mouth, and “he shall have whatsoever he saith”.’ Eight months later Hagin received the second part of the revelation. ‘I was looking at my body and testing my heartbeat to see if I had been healed. But then I saw that the verse says that you have to believe when you pray. The having comes after the believing. I had been reversing it. I was trying to have first and then believe.’ So he started to thank God for his healing despite the fact that he was still seemingly paralysed.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Christianity and Politics in Doe's Liberia , pp. 146 - 189Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993