Really everywhere there is a mega church and a local celebrity, youll find a prosperity preacher. But the term itself is very controversial. No one wants to be called a prosperity preacher and that was the burden of writing this book. How do you bring people and that would naturally resist that kind of label. Did some of those ministers participate in the book . They did. I managed to visit a quarter of all of what identified as prosperity mega churches. I interviewed someone representing the ministry from almost every major ministry. I went to every major conference. I was the annoying person pressed up against the glass at every conference hoping to get a glimpse of what was going on. What did you hear . What kind of message are these churches preaching . I think what surprised me the most was that it wasnt so much about money. I but naturally the prosperity gospel money was its most surprising claim. Sure if this is a gospel about money. What i found was people didnt talk about money nearly as much as expected into. The kind of excitement that they had was that every special detail was given gods attention, not just the kind of guy in into parking space or metallic with a budget, their families, their marriages, their happiness, their promotions, that every little part of their life were worthy of spiritual attention. What does that have to do with the prosperity . I mean is it more than just wealth prosperity . They would call it a whole life prosperity. I guess in theological terms we would Say Something like, well, critics will call it a more overly realize, we will see more of the presence of the kingdom of god here on earth when traditionally christians have thought that most of the good stuff happens after we die. Im paraphrasing but what you give, god gives back tenfold . The search for the numbers is a tricky one. Most of the hard numbers people will get from parts of covenant theology throughout the old testament. Theres a few concrete members, three, seven, 100, but people are looking, the desir decipher numbers is mostly a desire to look for a spiritual formula. What is it, where can we find the key that unlocks gods bank . The weather is a number, revolution, some of the apocalyptic literature, that they will try to find formulas. But for the most part prosperity preachers have tried to shy away from numbers come in part because theres a greater sense that though the theologists were actually do live in a relatively concrete universe and we cant hamas everyone 100 fold on every return. Why mega churches speak with i guess mega churches were easy because it was already a database of 1600 or so mega churches that exist in the country. What i could do then was to go through every single one and everything a website and pull them out and make my own list, based on shared rhetoric, shared institutional connection. They tend to go to the same conferences, get accredited, ingres doctorates from the same schools. I figured then if you look and talk and walk like a prosperity document in this case, then i can lump them together on my own. Did the mega churches become mega churches because they preach this prosperity gospel . Excellent question. The relationship to fundraising and a large church, they seem to be natural allies in many senses. We will sometimes find a Smaller Church who takes on a prosperity theology and then becomes a prosperity mega church. But we shouldnt confusemega churches and the prosperity gospel. There are 1600 or so mega churches in the country, and only a minority of the our prosperity mega churches. Whats most unusual about the note is they wouldnt dominate the upper tier of churches. The biggest of the big churches in the country preached a message and their influence is enormous. They can be thought of like a top of the pyramid would have all sorts of people under them that preaches. So the message goes far bill which might expect a local preacher to do. Lakewood church, joel osteen, selfreported attendance 38,000 or thats an average weekly attendance. Houston, texas, come world changers ministries, crumpled dollar, 30,000. College park georgia. The Potters House t. D. Jakes, 30,000, dallas, texas. Are those prosperity gospel churches. Absolute. Any of the ones helpful shorthand to where to find these churches are all prosperity churches. Most of them will make the top 50 of the largest churches in the country. All taxexempt . They are entrepreneurial in spirit. The churches themselves are taxexempt, but what they typically do if theyre famous, t. D. Jakes has t. D. Jakes kerch and t. D. Jakes enterprises. Is a great example is hes a producer, probably a writer, a film writer and, and theres all kinds of fingers in different pots. Thats the taxable side of . Thats right. They will say dont look at me necessary as an example of someone whos taking money out of the coffers. Im making my money money from this other wing. That is sometimes true for some and its less true for others. They dont really have to justify how much money they make in part because of the theological infrastructure of moving. All they had to say is look, i did it and i can show you how to do it. More is more and i can show you the way. Someone who spoke at resident bushes inaugural, kirby john caldwell. 14,000 attendance, houston, texas,. One of the big surprises of the Prosperity Movement and why it took so long to write this book is in or to demonstrate how widespread is where to take into account not just the stereotypical prosperity mega churches which are nondenominational, but some of the denominational ones that in almost every major american denomination we find at least one prosperity mega church. That could include the united methodists, adorable as they are, the disciples of christ pic which is shut up a prosperity mega church somewhere out there. When did this prosperity gospel first of all, is there a political philosophy to these churches . Do they talk politics of . They do but its a kind of subset. You can thin think of them as hg different niches. Spiritual warfare guy, you are the prophecy lady, youre the politics viewed. So this will find a john peggy, but to be a subset to overlap with the christian right. But for the most part they dont really need to talk nuts and bolts with politics because god has offered them an end run around the system. What they need to do is get serious about the fate and then doors will open. When did this start . I think the beginning of the message as bringing up the postwar revival in the 1950s. So these are pentecostals, independent survival as. These are the guys who show up in small towns, put up giant campus people that attract hundreds sometimes thousands of people. In the postwar years these have traditionally been healers, people like oral roberts, anointing in his right hand. These were usually people who came to be healed from all kinds of diseases. But after world war ii we find the number of diseases they need to be healed in this way really mass vaccinations. Those arent quite the things we need from preachers. So theres a developing conference that they have, a new book out there that springs up of miraculous bill folds that multiply or see face is a word that comes into term. Into use. Its the idea that your money is not just a concrete thing. Its a representation of what could happen. You have to so what into my ministry, and because this is good, it will multiply back to you. This offer different and language of typing which was quite discreet and concrete. Tithing was 10 of what youve already earned. Seed face asks people to give in order to receive. Money multiplies in unseen spiritual universe. This is absolutely innovative, theologically speaking. Jim and tammy faye bakker. What they prosperity gospel ministers because they were. They were the perfect embodiment of the. I like writing about the fact that they started a kind of christian wonderland instead of a church. They had a very see what god can do playful attitude. Tammy faye was always two seconds away from bursting into song at all times. She always had a he always had a powder blue suit and a heavy gold watch and a carnival like atmosphere in the own life and marriage. So because of that they were magnetic. They were so fun to watch, and it kind of had a who knows, lets throw open the door spirituals and see what god brings in. Food to these ministers appealed of . We know theres very little good data on the. The relationship to the audience, theres pretty meager resource for us to draw but we do know in the 80s those kind of televangelists such as kenneth a. Baker were attracted to this the elderly, the at home of your. But now we can see with the mega church phenomenon this really is a young middleclass phenomenon to everyone thinks this is sad, indigent poor, reaching for the last penny to drop in the cover. But really this is the kind of thing that an aspirational middleclass audience is going to see weekly in order to get practical resources to have to think about their jobs and their marriages and their parenting as the spiritual. White, black, latino . Sure. Right now and do nothing on on latino prosperity mega churches and its overwhelming how many have started in the last tenures. Like in the mega churches are the new fresh face on the same because before they were largely constrained to immigrant resources, very small, like small churches with you means but now there like everybody else. They have their own tv shows, their own media platforms. Like one of the offshoots for example, robert schullers church, the christian cathedral. That was a fabulous incarnation of prosperity. Anytime you have a church with a river i feel like you have a prosperity gospel. That the latino smaller mega church that became an offshoot called favored day, favored a church, is a latino prosperity offshoot and they have a whole host, at least between three and 5000 weekly attenders to a church like that. You teach religion here at duke. What do you teach . I teach american religious history. What is your religious background . I come from a nondenominational mennonite background. And you consider yourself a christian . I do. When you look at these mega churches, what appeals to you . I do find sometimes, i guess a sense of expectancy and possibility. Especially departure from want of the mainline churches where there expectancy is we run an excellent food program, look how robust are averages in terms of prison ministry. They are very concrete and practical and a lot of excitement but i love the enthusiasm. I love the intensive spiritualizing of details. It gives dignity to every person in a way that really interest me. What doesnt appeal to you . I think i experienced that sometimes just based on where i sit when i visit these churches. Was sitting near the choir, so inspirational to the robes are beautiful. The hands are sweating. Its such an optimistic, beautiful thing. If i sit near the wheelchair section i feel that sometimes struggle to connect to the services. You see people that are so sure that the face has let them down but the bodies are failing them, their faith has let them down. Their own spiritual inefficacy because theyre not yet healed or they are not yet rich. I want faith to be a place where people receive comfort, that we are told maybe not quite yet. And thats not always the message that they are getting. The students at the Divinity School here at duke, do they admire, do they aspire to be mega Church Pastors of . For the most part they are lovely methodists of a gentle variety, so they are largely, they are stuck with the same kind of mainline problems everybody elses. Heavy mortgage churches larger downtown that they can no longer afford to so they are struggling with their own questions of prosperity gospel. What happens if they cant prove in the ministries that things will become bigger and better . What would a decline look like in the rhetoric of faithfulness . I think its a real challenge. Mega churches are growing, arent they . They are. They are, crowded around every urban metropolis. They are a wide open spiritual market, but they really appeal to a certain kind of preacher. You have to be wildly charismatic. You have to have a fabulous head of hair, and you have to have an infectious sense that things always will get better. People are really going to attend the church where your kids might not be a smart, their marriage might falter a little. Americans want to hear that things are going to be better tomorrow, and they will avoid the churches that dont. Do politicians, are they drawn to these large congregations all in one place of . Absolutely. We see it in a kind of battleground they show up whenever theres a series of mega churches in a battleground state. Latina mega churches folks up in florida are popular with the swing vote. Pentecostals that is in a swing state. They can become incredibly effective ways of mobilizing people and getting the message out. Are the areas of the country where these are aggregated . Sure. Vermont for example, very few. The northeast is not fertile ground. Neither is the mountain west. Where there are mormons or mountains can you typically find very few. There are very few prosperity mega churches. Why . I think its in part because of demographics, urban excerpt in population. They were the churches like that at the crossroads of major highways. Where we find a big open spaces with major highways and a huge, sprawling population, albeit almost all sun belt cities will be fabulously fertile ground. Also just places where people are on the move. So places were hispanics, immigration is on the rise. Thats a great, i could tell paper right now whether they should plant churches. There will likely to in the next five years but its really about immigration, population density is your highways. Here in North Carolina nearterm, in the mega churches in this area . Yes. There are megachurches. There is one prosperity mega church in the area, world over commerce i think. Theres one from the 1980s because kind of an amazing story. One of the few prosperity mega churches that was a really urban to it was in a town that the church an had more people than e town it was in. They have a kind of jim and tammy faye appeal with had matching sparkly suit. Whats the difference between mega church and prosperity mega church . Are they teaching different gospels of . Megachurches have the reputation for being nondenominational, optimistic, things can get better, media savvy. But for the most part megachurches usually, numbers wise, many if not most belong to the nominations and a typical smoker most megachurches really are just barely getting the threshold of 202500. Prosperity mega churches on the other hand, i look for four things. I look for faith, a sense that faith is not just hope or trust but its actually a spiritual power. It is released by believers. Its that invisible thing that goes out into the universe. So how do you know your faith is working . You look for health and wealth to those with other two markers. Theres a lot of pentecostal preacher that will preach health but youre only prosperity churches can preach both. The last is victory. Victory is a thing that will put an eagle or a spinning globe in every logo but its the thing that convinces people that things are just about to get better, chin up, eyes on horizon. If they teach those four things that would separate the prosperity megachurch from just an average mega church. How important our spouses of . Extremely. They are the primary litmus test of whether the prosperity gospel is working. No one wants to see a sad man standalone. What they want is a beautiful blonde or at least voluminously haired wife standing beside him. Its also a great way to divide the ministry. The woman can do women and children, and the men into the spiritual heavy lifting of the main prosperity were. That became popular in the 1980s and has become a major trend in almost all churches today. Two ministers of these prosperity mega churches flaunt their wealth of . Absolutely. More or less in beautiful ways. There was some flak for advertising that is helicopter needed new plates and asked people to donate. I think the number was 62 per person in order to supply more for that ministry. That struck people as slightly too much. That goes to show you just how far they can go in order to demonstrate that their lives are really marked by god,s favor. Sunday mornings, joel osteen for half an hour, just his sermon. What is a full length Church Service like . It will start with some very of taking music by a Grammy Awards winning singersongwriter it will have some fog that thats been at least 20 people greeting you before you make away from the concrete parking days into the main sanctuary and a gorgeous enormous building but these buildings are designed to be the most beautiful places that people are every week. So truth and beauty has always been the main appeal of the christian method to they really going for it. How long does a fullservice last . You have about 20 minutes or so of music, and then a mini typing sermon that will typically be done by someone asked people to give with particular understandings of you give and god will reward you with more. Than the buckets come out and then the buckets go away. Joel osteen will come on and he will preach for a little less than half an hour. And then a spiritual song around it and thats the service. They are really quite efficient. I went to the Good Friday Service. It was in part because i couldnt find any other Good Friday Service at a prosperity megachurch in a decent area, which initially surprised at the if you think it through, they dont need good friday as much as they need easter. Good friday, ma what would a good friday served look like at lakewood . I was with a joyfully happy good friday. That kind of a living being, by the third song jesus had died but then was resurrected. Quite early on in the service which i think tells you quickly want to rush to the in. They want to rush to the good stuff to sure that jesus has all the cable work so that you get the kind of blessing that god wants to shower on you spent a lot of the mainline churches, some of them like you said, food banks, shutins, et cetera. To the prosperity churches have those programs as well . Fifty. Here we can see i think a spectrum of approaches. A hard prosperity is a very instantaneous view of the relationship between faith and reward. You have faith, youll find yourself almost instantaneously healed and the coffers will begin to be filled. A sauce prosper is going to have a more roundabout gentler appraisal of how the relationship works between faith and your reward. I find it with hard prosperity therethis more of an emphasis n individual social services, bootstraps kind of so this will be rather than advocating for example, for education reform, they will give every kid a school bag filled with school supplies. So something catered towards individuals at a family level. The soft prosperity is little more open, especially among black megachurches more open to housing, prison reform, wider macro level structural kind of solutions. Though for the most part prosperity gospel tells away from Structural Solutions because god has already given you everything you need in order to solve these problems. Whats been the reaction of some of the mega Church Members to your book, blessed . I think theres been, i hope that theres been some level of recognition that those are categories that they use and hold dear. I think there will always be worried that anyone is adding the word gospel, prosperity gospel before the word is naturally being skeptical of it. But for the most part the criticism ive gotten is that im too nice but i would rather have that i think that is something that people didnt recognize as themselves. Who says you are too nice . Almost everyone. Evangelicals are not thrilled with me. One called it dangerous for fear that people will read the book and accidentally convert. I just think its the work of history. Charity and humor is our goal and when we try to present things in a way that people would recognize. Are these churches not evangelical . Well, the boundaries of pentecostal are quite porous, so we have some the kind of struggle the line between pentecostal and evangelical, but more and more are just straight up evangelical. They wouldnt necessarily espouse the spiritual gift as a part of the theology. I think thats the new frontier for the prosperity gospel is why evangelicalism looks so much like prosperity gospel optimism that it will find it very hard to distinguish itself. Our prosperity churches considered antiintellectual by some . Yes, i think they are. In part because they dont want to play by the same rules. They dont want to go to the same schools or subject themselves to the same kinds of ideas historical debates of where they fall. We should think of them as an actual restoration by pimples. Where does your message come from, you ask a presbyterian and they will know. You ask a prosperity preacher and they will say it came to me in a dream, or god spoke to me. So its an erasure of history and in that moment that allows them to all kinds of creativitys. Led him to wonder maybe each member of the trinity had their own trinity. That came up tonight and got awkward. The problem was it was in his book at all result millions of copies. And subsequent things he kind of walked that back. He immediately felt sort of like people were laughing at him and that it just kind of them what you want as a kind of playful moment, other people thought of as not following the sort of rules of orthodoxy. Any of these church ideas, prosperity gospel ideas been exported to canada, mexico, europe . Absolutely. One of the genius elements, when you ask is this an american phenomena its so hard to because almost immediately it indigenous to it takes on local farm and flavor immediately. Theres a canadian version. Its a little more staid, and the lower, less dancing. Dancing. A little dancing. Its fabulously adaptable. Theres a ukrainian prosperity gospel. Theres an english prosperity gospel and theres a filipino us pretty gospel that is largely catholic. Its wonderfully variable. Kate bowler is a professor of religion here at duke at the Divinity School. Shes the author of this book, blessed a history of the american prosperity gospel published oxford. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Booktv is on facebook and twitter. Like and follow was for both industry news, schedule updates, behind the scenes look at author events and to interact with authors during Live Television programming. Here are a few of booktv suppose from this past week. We tweeted a New York Times interview with former Supreme CourtJustice John Paul stevens, author of the recently published fifth amendmen sixth amendme. We posted use of the library of congress about authors attending this Years National book festival and an article from the Washington Post about how scanning text online is creating an alternative way of reading. 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