Blue Cord

Ben Witherington has a blog today on a Time magazine article that deals with the prosperity gospel.  I wanted to put up a quick post on this to direct some of my students to his blog.  I also wanted to make one comment on what Dr. Witherington has to say.

He notes that the prosperity gospel is “a profoundly American Gospel, especially connected to blue collar Protestant religion, that thrives on the rages to riches mythology of our culture.”  I thinking that is a very astute assessment.  But I wanted to point out that the prosperity gospel also has a strong following here in Eastern Europe. 

Towards the end of the Soviet period, when things were beginning to open up, a number of American missionaries began working in this area, including some from the prosperity gospel group.  Due to the fact that communism had left the economy in ruins, the prosperity gospel was very attractive to a number of people and caught on quickly.  It still has a large following now, fifteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Few people in the churches here have heard of Barth or Bonhoeffer, but they certainly know of Kenneth Copeland, Joel Osteen, Benny Hinn, and Kenneth Hagin.  Videos by these pastors shysters are not in short supply here.

One of our theology graduates last year came out of the prosperity gospel movement.  She wrote a wonderful thesis tracing the history of the movement in Lithuania, critiquing the theology, and noting ways in which churches here have moved away from the American version of the prosperity gospel.  Fifteen years without achieving prosperity can certainly have an impact on one’s beliefs.