What Do Churches Say about the Prosperity Gospel?

Christians who confess the Trinity have published contrary judgments on the prosperity gospel. The Cape Town Commitment (1) defines it, rejects what it calls its excesses, and affirms a biblical vision of human prospering. The Assemblies of God (2) defend faith for healing and provision and reject a confession that compels God. The Southern Baptist Convention (3) denounced the teaching in 2022. A Jesuit journal (4) and a morning meditation of Pope Francis (5) warn against a theology of prosperity. This page quotes those documents. It does not decide.

Key points

• Cape Town II.E.5 (1) defines the prosperity gospel as a right to health and wealth obtained by positive confessions and by the sowing of seeds. It says the teachings of many who vigorously promote it seriously distort the Bible, and it says there is a biblical vision of human prospering that includes material welfare.
• The Assemblies of God (2), on 19 August 1980, say no one will compel God to action, and they say healing and material needs are received through faith.
• The Southern Baptist Convention (3), on 14–15 June 2022, resolved to denounce the teaching, which it defines as the belief that Jesus’ death grants believers health, wealth, and the removal of suffering.
• Antonio Spadaro (4), in La Civiltà Cattolica on 18 July 2018, says the belief at its heart is that God wants his followers to be rich, healthy, and happy. That article is a Jesuit journal, not the Catechism.
• Pope Francis (5), in a morning meditation on 19 May 2016, said some people believe in the theology of prosperity, that God shows you that you are just if he gives you lots of riches, and that this is a mistake. The text is L’Osservatore Romano’s report of the meditation, on vatican.va. It is not an encyclical.
• The teachers’ own sentences are on What Is Positive Confession? and What Is Seed Faith?. The verses are on Is the Prosperity Gospel Biblical?.

The Cape Town Commitment

The Lausanne Movement’s Cape Town Commitment (1) (2010), part II, section E.5, “Walk in simplicity, rejecting the idolatry of greed,” says:

We define prosperity gospel as the teaching that believers have a right to the blessings of health and wealth and that they can obtain these blessings through positive confessions of faith and the ‘sowing of seeds’ through financial or material gifts.

The next paragraphs affirm the miraculous grace and power of God, and welcome churches that lead people to expectant faith in the living God. They deny that God’s miraculous power can be treated as automatic, or at the disposal of human techniques, or manipulated by human words, actions, gifts, objects, or rituals.

They affirm that there is a biblical vision of human prospering, and that the Bible includes material welfare, both health and wealth, within its teaching about the blessing of God. They deny as unbiblical the teaching that spiritual welfare can be measured in terms of material welfare, or that wealth is always a sign of God’s blessing. They deny that poverty, illness, or early death are always a sign of God’s curse, or evidence of lack of faith, or the result of human curses.

They say the teachings of many who vigorously promote the prosperity gospel seriously distort the Bible, that their practices and lifestyle are often unethical and un-Christlike, and that they commonly replace genuine evangelism with miracle-seeking and the call to repentance with the call to give money to the preacher’s organization. The paragraph says that for these reasons it can be soberly described as a false gospel, and it rejects the excesses of prosperity teaching as incompatible with balanced biblical Christianity. The words “false gospel” are the Commitment’s. This page does not take them over as its own name for the people who hold the teaching.

The same section tells leaders to test the teaching against Jesus, to read the texts used to support it in their full biblical context, and to replace self-interest with self-sacrifice and generous giving. It affirms Lausanne’s historic call for simpler lifestyles. What Is the Prosperity Gospel? uses this definition as the working sense of the phrase.

The Assemblies of God

The Believer and Positive Confession (2) was approved by the General Presbytery of the Assemblies of God on 19 August 1980. It is a position paper, not the Statement of Fundamental Truths. What Do Pentecostals Believe? quotes that statement.

The paper says all the blessings God has for his people are received through faith, and it includes healing and provision of material needs in that list. It says the fact that extremes are in view does not imply rejection of the doctrine of confession. People are to confess sin, to confess Christ, and to maintain a good confession.

On the extreme it is answering, the paper says the believer is told he can have whatever he says, and that faith compels God’s action. Its own sentence on sovereignty is: “No one will compel God to action. The authority of the believer exists only in the will of God.” It says the desire of the heart is viewed, in that teaching, as a binding mandate on God, and that this puts man in the position of using God rather than surrendering to be used by God. It quotes James 4:15CloseFor that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.James 4:15 · King James VersionOpen source and 1 John 5:14–15Close^5:14 And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: ^5:15 And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.1 John 5:14–15 · King James VersionOpen source, that asking is according to his will.

The paper is Pentecostal and criticizes a teaching that circulates in Pentecostal and charismatic circles. It is not an outsider’s description of the Assemblies of God as a prosperity church. The longer account of what the paper says positive confession claims is on What Is Positive Confession?.

The Southern Baptist Convention

On 14–15 June 2022, messengers meeting in Anaheim, California, adopted On the Prosperity Gospel (3). A resolution of the messengers is not the Baptist Faith and Message. The opening clause defines the teaching:

WHEREAS, The prosperity gospel is the belief that Jesus’ sacrificial and atoning death grants believers health, wealth, and the removal of suffering, sickness, and poverty.

The next clause says the prosperity gospel distorts biblical generosity, preys on the most vulnerable, solely blames people for their own sickness due to lack of faith, and corrupts a biblical understanding of suffering. The messengers resolved to denounce the teaching, that God alone is the highest good and supreme treasure, not health, wealth, or the removal of sickness, and that confidence is in the eternal inheritance purchased through Christ. The resolution cites Philippians 4:10–13Close^4:10 But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at the last your care of me hath flourished again; wherein ye were also careful, but ye lacked opportunity. ^4:11 Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. ^4:12 I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. ^4:13 I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.Philippians 4:10–13 · King James VersionOpen source and 1 Peter 1 for that last pair of claims. What Do Protestants Believe? quotes the Baptist Faith and Message on the gospel itself.

A Jesuit journal, and a morning meditation

La Civiltà Cattolica (4), 18 July 2018, published “The Prosperity Gospel: Dangerous and Different,” by Antonio Spadaro, S.J. The English page names him as the author. It is a journal article. It is not a page of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and this site did not find a conciliar document under that title. Spadaro’s opening is:

The “prosperity gospel” is a well-known theological current emerging from the neo-Pentecostal evangelical movements. At its heart is the belief that God wants his followers to have a prosperous life, that is, to be rich, healthy and happy.

He says this kind of Christianity places the well-being of the believer at the center of prayer and turns God the Creator into someone who makes the thoughts and desires of believers come true. He traces roots to E. W. Kenyon and calls Kenneth Hagin the main mentor of the Word of Faith. Those historical claims are discussed, beside Paul King’s different account, on Where Did the Prosperity Gospel Come From?. What Do Catholics Believe? quotes the Catechism. This article does not substitute Spadaro for the Catechism.

On 19 May 2016, Pope Francis preached at Mass at Santa Marta. vatican.va (5) publishes L’Osservatore Romano’s English report of that morning meditation, under the title “Modern-day leeches.” The report says Francis explained that riches in and of themselves are good things, that the Bible has many righteous rich men, and that the Lord gives wealth as a blessing. It says riches are also relative. It then reports his words on “what is called the ‘theology of prosperity’”: that God shows you that you are just if he gives you lots of riches. The report says he called this a mistake. The same meditation is mostly about exploiting workers, and it quotes James 5. It is a morning meditation, reported by the Vatican newspaper. It is not Laudato si’ or another encyclical. Matthew 6:24CloseNo man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.Matthew 6:24 · King James VersionOpen source (6), which the meditation uses, says no one can serve God and mammon.

What these documents share, and where they differ

Each of these texts says a teaching is abroad that ties God’s favor to health and wealth obtained by a technique of words or gifts. Cape Town, the Assemblies of God, and Francis’s meditation, as the newspaper reports it, also say that material good and healing are not foreign to the Bible. Cape Town affirms a biblical vision of prospering. The Assemblies of God say healing and material needs are received through faith. Francis, in that report, says riches can be a blessing and that the theology of prosperity is still a mistake. The Southern Baptist resolution denounces the belief that the cross grants health, wealth, and the removal of suffering, and it does not pause to list a biblical case for prospering.

The teachers answer that they are confessing God’s promises, not selling a technique. Their pages are linked above. Is the Prosperity Gospel Biblical? puts the verses each side cites into the chapters where those verses stand. The reader decides.

Frequently asked questions

Is this the Catholic Church’s official doctrine?

The Catechism was not the page that turned up for this teaching. What this site verified is Spadaro’s 2018 article in La Civiltà Cattolica and the 2016 morning meditation on vatican.va. Both are Catholic voices. Neither is a council. What Do Catholics Believe? is the Catechism on the faith itself.

Do the Assemblies of God teach the prosperity gospel?

Their 1980 paper describes an extreme positive-confession teaching and says it conflicts with Scripture. The same paper insists on faith for healing and for material needs. What Do Pentecostals Believe? is the Statement of Fundamental Truths, which is a different document.

Where is Lausanne’s other line, that prospering is biblical?

In the same section as the definition, Cape Town says there is a biblical vision of human prospering, and that health and wealth sit inside the Bible’s teaching about God’s blessing. The denial that follows is that material welfare measures spiritual welfare, and that poverty or illness is always a curse or a lack of faith.