Prosperity theology: T.D. Jakes and the gospel of the almighty dollar.

There was a time when being Pentecostal meant eschewing the material blessings of the world by opting for a life of simplicity not unlike what Henry David Thoreau endorsed in his classic book Walden. Carlis Moody, a longtime bishop in the Church of God in Christ, recalled the days when Pentecostal and poor were almost synonymous:

    See, in the early times fifty years ago, much of the folk who were
    in the Pentecostal church were poor. They heard the Word of God
    gladly because it gave them hope for a better way, for a better day
    and they were looking forward to meeting Jesus. (1)

Whether it was motivated by sour grapes or otherworldly theology, black Pentecostals of the early and middle twentieth century shunned lavish living as worldiness that brought enmity from God. Even when Pentecostal pastors began to prosper beyond the socioeconomic echelons of their congregants, their avarice was rarely flaunted or swanked behind the pulpit. But with the contemporary influx of young, upwardly mobile, middle-class neo-Pentecostals, all this would change. Few neo-Pentecostals born after 1980 could possibly conceive the church world in which their grandparents grew up.

The late Kenneth Hagin Sr. was the pioneer of a small group of white ministers called "word of faith" teachers who, by the 1960s, began to challenge healing evangelists as leaders of the neo-Pentecostal movement. Their attempt was to provide a deeper understanding of the rightful place of Christians in God's kingdom, which included financial and perpetual health and positive confessions correctly. Hagin, who preached over the radio and wrote books in the 1960s, formulated a worldview that gave Christians total control over their fates and destinies. In the early 1970s, he started a Bible institute in Oklahoma that trained ministers in this new way of faith and helped the movement grow dramatically a decade later.

Word-of-faith teaching asserts that Christians have the power to control their physical well-being and financial fortunes through their faith. The underlying assumption is that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ provided Christians with the ability to live in total victory, financial prosperity, and perfect health. However, God's "hands are tied" from blessing many Christians who lack faith and misappropriate biblical principles, thus explaining why all Christians are not experiencing prosperous and healthy lives. Word-of-faith preachers argue that once believers strengthen their faith by memorizing and confessing scriptures, they are able to live in total victory and control their physical and financial fate. The prosperity gospel is a central part of word-of-faith teachings and suggests that God wants all believers to prosper financially and will bless them according to their faith.

The timely spread of the prosperity gospel in the 1980s resonated with millions of Americans already hypnotized by the burgeoning consumer culture of the Reagan era and the explosion of wealth inflamed by the rise of Wall Street, producing unprecedented financial prosperity. The rapid rise of blacks to the middle and upper classes in the 1980s happened so suddenly that they were not socialized by the rigid cultural blueprint of the black aristocracy that had been in place, prescribing Catholic, Presbyterian, or Episcopalian churches for social cachet and networking opportunities. As a result, almost every city nationwide has at least one black neo-Pentecostal megachurch where middle-class and wealthy African Americans worship, network, and put their skills and talents to use. Prosperity teachings allow them to enjoy their wealth and consumerism as their rightful inheritance as God's faithful children.

White neo-Pentecostalism gained visibility through national figures such as Oral Roberts and Kathryn Kuhlman, and black neo-Pentecostalism procured a facelift through business-savvy prosperity preachers like Creflo Dollar, I.V. Hilliard, and T.D. Jakes. These preachers have national television ministries and are not shy about their million-dollar personal portfolios and lavish lifestyles. No one played a more prominent role in promoting the discourse of prosperity as the groundwork for this new age of millionaire black neo-Pentecostalism than Frederick K.C. Price. As a pioneer of this new movement, Fred Price is one of the most important African American preachers of the twentieth century.

A friend first introduced Fred Price to word-of-faith teachings in 1970 by sharing some of Kenneth Hagin's books, as Price explained:

    I went home that night and read every single book and I was changed
    forever. It was like scales came off my eyes and I was able to see
    truths that I had never seen before even though I had read the same
    Bible passages but they never spoke to me that way. (2)

Price continued to devour Hagin's teachings and presented them to his new church, Crenshaw Christian Center in California, which grew rapidly. Price later became a cherished guest speaker at Hagin's yearly camp meetings. Many black pastors in California became disgruntled with Price's prosperity theology and began to criticize his messages publicly. Yet by 1975, while Crenshaw grew to a thousand members, Price began to consider how to promote prosperity teachings through radio and television. During this time Oral Roberts, Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, Rex Humbard, Robert Schuller, and several others developed national visibility through their television ministries. Fred Price and his church began to buy television time to promote his teachings first in Los Angeles and then in Washington, DC, Chicago, Detroit, and New York City before eventually expanding nationwide.

Price's television ministry was important for several reasons. For one, Price and Kenneth Copeland, a white disciple of Kenneth Hagin, became the first prosperity teachers on national television and therefore played dominant roles in making the beliefs become a growing part of neo-Pentecostalism. Although Oral Roberts, Jim Bakker, and other televangelists alluded to material blessings in the 1970s and 1980s, none did so with the deliberateness, intensity, and frequency as word-of-faith preachers like Price and Copeland. Price also became one of the first African American preachers on national television, promoting a new way to be black and Pentecostal. He consistently chided the emotionalism of the black church and offered a polished lecturing format as an alternative model for teaching ministries to challenge the anti-intellectualism that was prevalent in many black Pentecostal churches. (3)

Price also boasted on television about his million-dollar salary and Rolls Royce, and taught that blacks can have their blessings on earth if they confess God's word and walk in faith.

Price earned the nickname "The Godfather of Faith" because of his role as mentor to many word-of-faith African American pastors, who eventually established what are now called "word churches" in cities nationwide that teach the word-of-faith message. Instead of advocating protest marches, voting drives, and other forms of activism familiar to black church movements, word churches teach members that poverty is a curse of the devil and that the power to transform their oppression resides within their ability to appropriate their faith and take their rightful place in the kingdom of God. Prosperity theology's answer to poverty is to teach people to build up their faith and be aware of biblical promises. Such a new worldview was appealing to the growing black middle class and especially attractive to all poverty-stricken minorities stretching for a glimmer of hope.

Sociologist Milmon Harrison contends that the prosperity gospel may be especially appealing to black churches that have had to engage both the material and spiritual needs of the members in their historical struggle with oppression and discrimination. (4)

Today it would be very difficult to find an African American church with members unaffected by prosperity teachings. Creflo Dollar in Atlanta, Keith Butler in Detroit, Leroy Thompson in Louisiana, Clinton and Sara Utterbach in New York, Bill Winston in Chicago, I.V. Hilliard in Houston, Michael and Dee Dee Freeman in Maryland, Steve Parson in Richmond, and Don Shorter in Tacoma, Washington, have joined Price and a host of African American pastors of megachurches and national ministries who unabashedly teach prosperity and divine health through television, radio broadcasts, and books. Their use of mass media makes it impossible for conventional pastors to shield their members from the attractive teachings that suggest believers can control their financial destiny. Many follow Price's lead by adopting a media-savvy and professional image that resonates with the proliferation of middle-class blacks who are turned off by a perceived lack of decorum in traditional Pentecostal churches. (5)

The prosperity movement introduced a new culture of giving which convinces Christians to view their financial support to the church as investment opportunities to "sow" their way out of debt to receive God's bountiful blessings. Under such an ideology, preachers train their members to applaud when it is time to collect offerings because God "loves a cheerful giver." Even among traditional mainliners, it is difficult to find a black church in America without at least some members confessing scriptures to build up their faith, believing that God will provide a supernatural increase in finances, or reading books on prosperity such as Money, Thou Art Loosed! by Leroy Thompson, The Purpose of Prosperity by Fred Price, and No More Debt by Creflo Dollar. Even congregations that do not distinguish themselves as word churches often invite popular prosperity teachers as guest speakers, and many members are affected by these teachings. Consequently, prosperity theology has become an important facet of the black church and American Protestantism.

Prosperity preachers often have adversarial relationships with other pastors in their communities. We can attribute some of this to resentment from pastors who lose members to popular word churches every year. The offensive tone of many prosperity preachers on their television broadcasts produces more contention among local pastors. The preachers often mock traditional black churches publicly for, selling chicken dinners to raise money and for overlooking the principles of biblical faith as they see them.

However, much of the antagonism comes from strong disagreement with prosperity theology.

Prosperity theology emphasizes that God will open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing to the faithful Christian who consistently gives money to his local church. This pervasive ideology helps word churches secure more resources while allowing pastors to enjoy large salaries and unprecedented wealth.

In a sermon, "Provision for the Vision," T.D. Jakes bragged about his stable of luxury cars. His materialism resembles that of other prosperity preachers like Fred Price, who flies from coast to coast in his Lear jet, and I.V. Hillard, who wears full-length fur coats, an expensive diamond ring, and flies in his private helicopter to avoid traffic while traveling to the churches he pastors in north and southwest Houston. Prosperity preachers flaunt tremendous wealth before their congregants as validation of their faith.

Popular prosperity preachers like T.D. Jakes have not escaped the scrutiny of liberationists who believe his prosperity gospel and individualistic focus ignore the structural constraints that prevent thousands of oppressed individuals from excelling. James Cone, the chief architect of black liberation theology, explained how Jakes's conservative message avoids challenging those in power:

    T.D. Jakes represents a black man who has strong crossover appeal
    but he also represents blacks who preach a gospel that is hardly
    distinguished from the whites and that would make it very difficult
    for him to have an understanding of the gospel that would be
    conflictive and engaging politically in a sharp sense that would
    cause people to be challenged in a way that makes them feel
    uncomfortable. (6)

In an article in Christianity Today, activist preacher Eugene Rivers voiced his concern that Jakes is only promoting middle-class consumerism rather than offering a developed sense of biblical justice. A large part of Jakes's success resides in his ability to incorporate touchstones of American culture, but that skill also generates the criticism that he advocates an American gospel. Liberationists contend that if Jakes'ss prosperity gospel were universally true, it would be equally applicable to all Christians irrespective of their class, education, and social context. They contend that Jakes and other prosperity preachers are offering "fools' gold" by linking faith to financial success because many faithful Christians will always lack the ability to transcend structural constraints on their economic plight. Other critics believe the prosperity gospel transforms Christ's teachings into the ideals of consumer culture.

Supporters of Jakes, however, contend that his national prison ministry, plans for a rehabilitation and jobs complex in South Dallas, plus his economic empowerment seminars nationwide demonstrate a new kind of liberationist agenda that can address the challenges people face in the twenty-first century. Such supporters contend that Jakes's approach is appropriate for contemporary African Americans who are now more preoccupied with protected growth investments than protest marches for voting rights. Jakes's former staff member, David Yeazell, hailed him as the new voice for African Americans:

    Just from observation you've got your Jesse Jackson and others who
    are from another generation, and the message that they proclaim is a
    message from another generation, and this generation is listening
    more to someone like Bishop Jakes because he's much more where
    people are at, and the last generation's civil rights message does
    not resonate with this generation in the same way that it used to;
    the issues are different. (7)

Likewise, biblical scholar Renita Weems presented a hypothetical counter-argument against liberationsts who criticize Jakes for not having a social justice component to his ministry:

    Maybe he has gone over in another extreme to talk about agency with
    his "just pull yourself up from your bootstraps" message. Maybe
    perhaps he has gone further than I would want on that because I am
    enough of a product of the sixties and seventies to understand
    questions about social justice and speaking to the powers that be.
    But I suspect someone like him might make the argument, "but on the
    other hand, those of you who are mainline and traditional and who
    are the spokesmen for the black church, you also have made black
    people think of themselves as victimized so much that there was
    nothing that they could do except wait on God and white people to
    deliver them." (8)

Fred Price and the profusion of word churches brought changes among neo-Pentecostals that prepared the way for Jakes's message and ministry as a prosperity preacher and entrepreneur. The prosperity gospel encouraged many African Americans to view their increasing success and wealth as constituents of their Christian faith. This gave the new contingency of middle- and upper-class African Americans a religious home among neo-Pentecostals rather than with Episcopalians or other groups associated with black elites in past generations.

The prosperity gospel has a particular resonance in our culture of materialism. Black prosperity preachers continue to live like CEOs of Fortune 500 companies while encouraging their members to confess and possess the same financial prosperity. Jakes offers an American gospel that supports the status quo and sits well with bourgeois democratic American sensibilities. Time magazine's comparison of Jakes to Billy Graham is telling because liberationists like Cone have also criticized Graham for preaching an American gospel of personal salvation and for failing to challenge segregation and the Vietnam War. Like Graham and many conservative preachers, Jakes makes liberation the individual's responsibility rather than offering a sophisticated systems analysis of poverty and oppression.

The church, like any institution, grows, changes, and develops over periods of time. When the leading religious groups under perform in meeting the needs of a particular segment of the population, the opportunity emerges for new movements to transform fundamental conceptions of religion and spirituality. For example, the predominant roles enjoyed by Congregationalists and Episcopalians in the eighteenth century were lost to Methodists and Baptists in the nineteenth century, whose messages and ministries resonated more with common people. Similarly, for much of the last hundred years, it was pastors from the National Baptist Convention (NBC) and the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church who competed as the primary figures and predominant spokespersons for the black church. As the first black denomination and the largest black denomination, respectively, the AME Church and the NBC enjoyed prominent places in the black community and produced many African American leaders of the past two centuries.

But today's post-denominational religious landscape contains a host of black neo-Pentecostal preachers who have built megachurches and national ministries as part of the emergence of what I have coined the new black church. These celebrity preachers are CEOs of international ministries that reach millions of people through television, radio, the Internet, and by satellite technology; and their churches have resources rivaling denominations. These pastors take advantage of our media age by marketing their books, videos, and tapes to secure personal fortunes. These spiritual leaders compete for twenty-first-century souls among a growing black middle class and newly educated African Americans excelling in Corporate America.

Black megachurches are not an entirely new phenomenon. Since preaching was one of few progressive career options for many African Americans, blacks have always been oversaturated with churches, some of which have grown to large memberships. Some scholars may argue that Jakes and his contemporaries are therefore not doing anything new. But the notion of a new black church sheds light on a shift that most researchers tend to miss in the context of contemporary black religion, which can very well be called a "new" form. In the last thirty years the trend has been for traditional mainline churches to lose their prominent places in the market share to neo-Pentecostal churches, which have secured phenomenal growth because they encompass many of the trends in American popular religion.

The new black church demonstrates that we may be approaching an era in which lines of demarcation between the secular and spiritual world become increasingly blurred. Some, like theologian Dwight Hopkins, justifiably argue that integrating the secular with the spiritual is part of the African and slave heritage and so it is in fact as much a return to old ways as it is a recent phenomenon. (9) Rather than facing a decline, as social thinkers of the past had predicted, religion in the twenty-first century will see megachurches increasing their market share by addressing problems traditionally answered by secular institutions.

This is not to overlook the historic institutional centrality of the traditional black church and the breadth of the extra-religious traditions it has embodied. But the new black church is embodied with greater professional resources, skills, and technology than ever before, drawing new people who traditionally utilized secular organizations to address their existential needs. An African American who needs a travel agent, bookstore, record label, business loan, conference center, hotel room, theatrical production, empowerment seminar, business training, and so on, is increasingly more likely to patronize the services of one of the neo-Pentecostal megachurches in his city.

Jakes is the metaphor of a new black church that energizes audiences with ecstatic worship experiences, lively music, and prosperity preaching. Jakes and the new black church are business savvy, culture affirming, and peculiarly American. Jakes and the new black church utilize state-of-the-art technology and continue to blur denominational lines. What distinguishes Jakes and the new black church is their ability to offer a vibrant otherworldly worship experience and a this-worldly message and ministry.

It is ironic that Pentecostalism, the branch of Christendom that once harbored ardent anti-secular sentiment, transformed into a new Pentecostal movement with the strongest embrace of technology, secularism, capitalism, and popular culture. Jakes and the new black church are thriving because they are postmodern and they address the cultural tastes and existential thirsts of contemporary American society. These ministries emphasize the therapeutic benefits of the faith and offer an optimistic view of the future that embraces American ideals of prosperity. In our competitive religious landscape, churches that adjust to cultural changes are flourishing while traditional churches lag behind and lose many members.

Many ask whether this thriving postmodern church reflects a permanent shift in American religion or if it is just a fad. The resilience of these high-tech, culture-affirming, business-savvy religious suppliers will depend on their ability to continue addressing the needs and appetites of their clients. Whether or not this trend is detrimental to Christendom is a question I will leave in the hands of theologians, apologists, spiritual leaders, and the countless nameless faces that attend churches nationwide.

Notes

1. Interview with author.

2. Interview with author.

3. David Daniels, "African-American Pentecostalism in the 29th Century" in The Century of the Holy Spirit: 100 Years of Pentecostal and Charismatic Renewal, ed. Vinson Synan (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2001), 265-291.

4. Milmon Harrison, Righteous Riches: The Word of Faith Movement in Contemporary African American Religion (New York: Oxford University Press), 2005.

5. Op. Cit. Daniels, 200.

6. Interview with author.

7. Interview with author.

8. Interview with author.

9. Dwight Hopkins, "Slave Theology in the Invisible Institution" in African American Religious Thought: An Anthology, ed. Cornel West and Eddie Glaude Jr. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 790-830.

T.D. Jakes has modified his teachings since the book's publication in 2005. In his recent sermons and latest book Reposition Yourself, Jakes disassociates his teachings from prosperity theology and recalibrates his teachings under the rubric of personal empowerment.