For Richer or Poorer--Prosperity Gospel Misleads On Needs

[ck4829]

Recently several U.S. religious leaders in Christian churches have released videos on social media touting their riches or complaining about their lack of riches, while damning their congregations for their lack of wealth.

In Brooklyn, a pastor and his wife were robbed of reportedly $1 million of jewelry during a live broadcast. In Kansas City, a recording of a preacher complaining about the contributions from his congregants went gone viral on TikTok.

While many Americans bemoan this fascination of faith and riches, many fail to recognize that this has long been a part of American culture. America's religious zealotry around obtaining wealth has generated a religion of wealth that has led to individuals working to get rich or die trying.

The projection is that the sick and poor are no longer people who have been let down by the system, they are now sinners being punished for their misdeeds.

https://www.newsweek.com/richer-poorerprosperity-gospel-misleads-needs-opinion-1738387

[TheRealNorth]

1. To me, Calvinism isn't much different from "The Divine Right of Kings"

The only difference is who is God's chosen and therefore gets to lord over everyone else.

[ck4829]

2. That's a good point

[keithbvadu2]

3. The "prosperity gospel" collectors seem to do much better in the prosperity than the investors/donor

The "prosperity gospel" collectors seem to do much better in the prosperity than the investors/donors.

Judas was an early, modern-day, conservative disciple.

Judas got 30 pieces of silver, but just once, for selling Christ.

Franklin Graham, Jim Bakker, Pat Robertson, and their ilk get millions of dollars repeatedly for selling Christ.

Judas was a fool for doing a one-time sale.

[TlalocW]

4. The psychology and the "magic" behind prosperity gospel is interesting to me

They use what is called the Shotgun Method (also used by other con artists like talkers to the dead). If you have a big enough audience then the prediction, promise, or prophecy you make to them is undoubtedly going to come true for some of them. So if you tell them that God will repay you back even more if you "plant a seed" by donating to the ministry, obviously some people are going to get a bonus/raise at work; an inheritance; even someone paying back some money they owed. These people will attribute it to not only God rewarding their faithfulness but sing the praises of the minister. This will encourage other people to keep the faith and keep holding on waiting for THEIR boon. For people who get discouraged, they will keep quiet so as to not look bad in front of the minister and the rest of the congregation. It might even inspire both groups to add on to their initial seed sowing to prove their faithfulness to God.

And it works - just not the way the parishioners think. It allows their "ministers" to buy private jets, huge homes, fancy cars, etc.

The KC minister mentioned seems to me like he's either ignorant of how the con is run and is just greedy and expects his parishioners to give him fancy stuff because he's a minister, or he knows about it but is too lazy to put in the work to get the con going. The Brooklyn minister, I don't know about, but I've seen the video of the robbery and instead of saying, "... were robbed of reportedly $1 million of jewelry," it should say, "...were reportedly robbed of $1 million of jewelry." There are a lot of things that are "sus" as the kids say these days, and I think there's a good chance it was staged.