What Is the Prosperity Gospel?

Christians who confess the Trinity do not agree about what is called the prosperity gospel, the health-and-wealth gospel, or the Word of Faith. The Cape Town Commitment (1) defines that 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. Teachers who use those practices say they are taking God at his word. This page names the pieces. It does not decide the dispute.

Key points

• Cape Town II.E.5 (1) uses “prosperity gospel” for a right to health and wealth, obtained by positive confession and by sowing seeds. The same section affirms a biblical vision of human prospering, including material welfare, and denies that wealth is always a sign of God’s blessing or that poverty and illness are always a curse or a lack of faith.
• The Assemblies of God (2), on 19 August 1980, said faith receives healing and provision, and that an extreme form of positive confession tells people they can have whatever they say.
• What Is the Word of Faith Movement?, What Is Positive Confession?, and What Is Seed Faith? are the three practices people meet under those names.
• Where Did the Prosperity Gospel Come From? quotes E. W. Kenyon and the historians who disagree about New Thought. What Do Churches Say about the Prosperity Gospel? quotes Lausanne, the Assemblies of God, the Southern Baptist Convention, and a Catholic journal.
• Is the Prosperity Gospel Biblical? sets 3 John 2CloseBeloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.3 John 1:2 · King James VersionOpen source (3), Malachi 3:10CloseBring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.Malachi 3:10 · King James VersionOpen source, Deuteronomy 8:18CloseBut thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.Deuteronomy 8:18 · King James VersionOpen source, Mark 11:23–24Close^11:23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. ^11:24 Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.Mark 11:23–24 · King James VersionOpen source (4), and John 10:10CloseThe thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.John 10:10 · King James VersionOpen source in the paragraphs where they stand, beside 1 Timothy 6, Matthew 6, and Hebrews 11.
• The New Age page Is Manifesting a Sin? is the cousin claim outside the churches: a thought creates the thing. That page states the Christian confession. This series stays inside the argument among churches.

What the phrase is used for

People use “prosperity gospel” and “health and wealth” for a cluster, not for one denomination. Cape Town says the teaching cuts across many denominations on all continents. The Assemblies of God paper says positive and negative confession, in an extreme form, had gained acceptance in some circles, and that the paper’s focus on extremes is not a rejection of confession itself.

The cluster, as those documents and the teachers’ own pages describe it, has three parts. One is a spoken confession: say the desired health or supply, and do not say the sickness or the lack. That is positive confession, including the phrase “name it and claim it.” One is a gift treated as a seed that returns as a harvest. That is seed faith. One is the wider movement that ties those practices to faith as a force and to the words a person speaks. That is the Word of Faith.

What the teachers are claiming

Kenneth Copeland Ministries tells readers that faith is powerful, and so are the words they speak, and to use the force of faith with the power of their words to speak to a situation and trust God to move. E. W. Kenyon’s publisher prints his line that faith holds fast to the confession of the Word, and sense knowledge holds fast to the confession of physical evidences. An Oral Roberts University journal quotes Roberts: you sow it, God will grow it, and you will reap it, if you believe.

Read in their own words, they are not saying a person is the creator of the world. They are saying God has promised healing and supply, and that faith speaks and gives in line with that promise. Churches that reject the teaching say the same verses do not mean a confession or a gift compels God. Both readings are on Is the Prosperity Gospel Biblical?.

What this is not

This is not the whole of Pentecostal teaching. What Do Pentecostals Believe? quotes the Assemblies of God Statement of Fundamental Truths and the Church of God Declaration of Faith on the gospel, the Spirit, and the last things. The 1980 paper is that fellowship’s own warning about one teaching in its wider world. It is not a claim that every Pentecostal church holds the prosperity gospel.

It is also not the New Age law of attraction. Is Manifesting a Sin? quotes Wallace D. Wattles in 1910 and Rhonda Byrne’s account of The Secret (2006). Wattles says a human thought causes the thing to be created. The teachers in this series say God does it, when faith speaks or when a seed is sown. Historians argue about whether Kenyon learned the shape of that claim from New Thought. That argument is on the history page, and this page does not settle it.

Where the series goes

The reading order is this page, then the Word of Faith, positive confession, and seed faith, then the history, then what churches have published, then the verses in context. Previous and next at the bottom of each page follow that order.

Frequently asked questions

Is the prosperity gospel a denomination?

Cape Town says it cuts across many denominations. This site does not give it a shelf of its own. The articles live on Christianity because the dispute is among churches that confess the Trinity. What Do Churches Say about the Prosperity Gospel? is also listed from the Pentecostal, Baptist, and Catholic hubs, because that page quotes those bodies.

Do these pages say sick people should not pray?

James 5:14–15Close^5:14 Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: ^5:15 And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.James 5:14–15 · King James VersionOpen source tells a sick person to call the elders, and says the prayer of faith will save the sick and the Lord will raise him up. Matthew 6:11CloseGive us this day our daily bread.Matthew 6:11 · King James VersionOpen source tells disciples to ask for daily bread. The Assemblies of God paper says the blessings God has for his people, including healing and material needs, are received through faith. The dispute is whether a spoken confession or a sown gift is what those verses require.

Where did the phrase “name it and claim it” come from?

The pages below quote teachers who say a person can have what he says, and a church paper that describes that claim. The phrase itself is the title people use for positive confession.