# Where Did the Prosperity Gospel Come From? > Paul King says E. W. Kenyon is generally recognized as the originator and that historians disagree on whether New Thought formed him. Oral Roberts’s seed-faith book is dated 1970 by an ORU journal. Kenneth Copeland Ministries still publish the spoken confession. This page quotes the disagreement and does not decide it. - Canonical: https://apologetics.wiki/christianity/where-did-the-prosperity-gospel-come-from - Religions: Christianity - Denominations: none - Beliefs: none - Tags: christianity, prosperity-gospel, word-of-faith - Updated: 2026-10-10 - Author: [Paul Ambrose](https://apologetics.wiki/author/hi-its-paul) ([GitHub](https://github.com/hi-its-paul)) The prosperity gospel, as historians describe it, is not one sermon from one year. [Paul L. King](https://pneumareview.com/theological-roots-of-the-word-of-faith-movement-new-thought-metaphysics-or-classic-faith-movements/) [(2)](#ref-2) says E. W. Kenyon (1867–1948) is generally recognized as the chief originator of the modern faith movement, and that the argument is whether New Thought formed Kenyon’s teaching or whether the Higher Life and Keswick movements did. Later names in the same conversation are Kenneth Hagin, Oral Roberts, and Kenneth Copeland. This page quotes Kenyon and the historians. It does not decide which account of his sources is right. ## Key points - [Kenyon’s publisher](https://www.ewkenyonbooks.com/catalog/the-power-of-your-words-e-w-kenyon-9780883683484) [(1)](#ref-1) prints his instruction to keep a single confession of healing and supply, and not to add that the rent cannot be paid. - King says D. R. McConnell’s *A Different Gospel* made a case for extensive New Thought influence on Kenyon and concluded that the faith teaching is derived from those sources. King says the work of Dale Simmons, Joe McIntyre, and Robert Bowman locates the primary influence in Wesleyan, Higher Life, and Keswick teachers, and he quotes Simmons: it would be going too far to say New Thought was the major contributing factor. - [Rhema](https://www.rhema.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8&Itemid=137) [(3)](#ref-3) calls Kenneth E. and Oretha Hagin founders of Rhema Christian Faith Ministry. King says Hagin draws the majority of his teaching from Kenyon. This page does not quote a Hagin book. - [Isgrigg](https://digitalshowcase.oru.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1132&context=spiritus) [(4)](#ref-4) says Roberts released *The Miracle of Seed-Faith* in 1970. [Copeland’s site](https://www.kcm.org/faith/faith-confessions/) [(5)](#ref-5) still tells readers to speak to a situation with the force of faith. - [Spadaro](https://www.laciviltacattolica.com/the-prosperity-gospel-dangerous-and-different/) [(6)](#ref-6), in *La Civiltà Cattolica* in 2018, traces the current to Kenyon and calls Hagin the main mentor of the Word of Faith. That is a Jesuit journal’s account, not a neutral chronicle, and it is quoted as his account. - [The Secret’s history](https://www.thesecret.tv/history-of-the-secret/) [(7)](#ref-7) is the New Age line from Wattles in 1910 to Byrne’s film and book in 2006. It is not a Word of Faith document. The resemblance and the difference are below. ## Kenyon’s confession [The Power of Your Words](https://www.ewkenyonbooks.com/catalog/the-power-of-your-words-e-w-kenyon-9780883683484) [(1)](#ref-1) is sold by Kenyon’s publisher as a book by E. W. Kenyon and Don Gossett, previously titled *The Power of Positive Confession of God’s Word*. The page attributes this to Kenyon: > Faith holds fast to the confession of the Word. Sense knowledge holds fast to the confession of physical evidences. If I accept physical evidence against the Word of God, I nullify the Word as far as I am concerned. The same page says a person can have everything that God says that person can have, and it tells the reader to possess what he confesses. The longer account of the two confessions, healing on the one hand and the unpaid rent on the other, is quoted on [What Is Positive Confession?](/christianity/positive-confession-and-name-it-and-claim-it). Kenyon is telling believers to say the promise and not to say the contrary evidence. He presents that as faithfulness to God’s word. ## The argument about New Thought [King’s essay](https://pneumareview.com/theological-roots-of-the-word-of-faith-movement-new-thought-metaphysics-or-classic-faith-movements/) [(2)](#ref-2) in *The Pneuma Review* (30 April 2011) says a spate of books have debated the Word of Faith. He says McConnell’s *A Different Gospel* and Hanegraaff’s *Christianity in Crisis* have claimed the movement as heretical or cultic, originating in New Thought metaphysics. He says McConnell detailed parallels between Kenyon and New Thought writers and concluded that Kenyon’s thought, and therefore modern faith teaching, is derived from non-Christian cultic sources. King then says McConnell and Hanegraaff did not weigh how similar some of those teachings are to classic evangelical writers. He writes that the scholarship of Dale Simmons, Joe McIntyre, Robert Bowman, and others has disproven many of those claims, and that the primary influence on Kenyon was leaders of the evangelical Wesleyan, Higher Life, and Keswick holiness movements, such as A. J. Gordon, A. B. Simpson, A. T. Pierson, and Oswald Chambers. He quotes Simmons’s dissertation: Kenyon is best placed within the Keswickean and Higher Christian Life tradition; some of his teaching on confession is stressed to a point comparable to New Thought; it would be going too far to conclude that New Thought was the major contributing factor in the initial development of Kenyon’s thought. King is a party in that argument. He thinks McConnell was wrong about the main source. McConnell, as King describes him, thinks the roots are metaphysical. This page has not reprinted McConnell’s book. It reports King’s description of McConnell’s case and King’s quotation of Simmons. A reader who wants McConnell’s own paragraphs has to open *A Different Gospel*. This site does not pretend a review is the book. [Phineas Quimby](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Quimby_Manuscripts/Chapter_07), quoted on [Is Manifesting a Sin?](/new-age/manifestation-and-the-law-of-attraction), had already written that disease and health follow a state of mind. [Wattles in 1910](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/59844/pg59844.txt) wrote that a thought creates the thing imagined. Whether Kenyon took his confession teaching from that world, or from holiness teachers who also talked about faith and healing, is the disagreement King records. This page does not award the point. ## Hagin, Roberts, and Copeland King says Kenneth Hagin draws the majority of his teaching from Kenyon, and also acknowledges evangelical and Pentecostal teachers, including Müller, Spurgeon, Simpson, Lake, and Wigglesworth. [Rhema’s page title](https://www.rhema.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8&Itemid=137) [(3)](#ref-3) calls Kenneth E. and Oretha Hagin founders of Rhema Christian Faith Ministry. Spadaro, in [*La Civiltà Cattolica*](https://www.laciviltacattolica.com/the-prosperity-gospel-dangerous-and-different/) [(6)](#ref-6) on 18 July 2018, calls Hagin the main mentor of the Word of Faith movement and says Mark 11:23–24 were, for Hagin, the pillars of the prosperity gospel. Spadaro is evaluating the movement, not editing Hagin’s books. This page does not own a quotation from Hagin’s own pen. Where his sentences were not opened, they are not invented. [Isgrigg](https://digitalshowcase.oru.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1132&context=spiritus) [(4)](#ref-4) says Roberts released *The Miracle of Seed-Faith* in 1970, and that sowing then became a way to reap a harvest for the giver’s own need. Roberts’s words as another ORU article quotes them are on [What Is Seed Faith?](/christianity/seed-faith-and-sowing-offerings). [Kenneth Copeland Ministries](https://www.kcm.org/faith/faith-confessions/) [(5)](#ref-5) tell readers to use the force of faith and the power of their words. Spadaro says Copeland followed in the tradition of Kenyon and Hagin, and he says Hagin anointed Copeland as his successor. That succession sentence is Spadaro’s. It is not a sentence this page found on Copeland’s site. Copeland’s own instructions are quoted on [What Is the Word of Faith Movement?](/christianity/what-is-the-word-of-faith-movement). Spadaro also names Norman Vincent Peale’s *The Power of Positive Thinking* in the same history. Peale’s sentence as Guideposts prints it, and Hill’s sentence as the Napoleon Hill Foundation prints it, are on the [manifestation page](/new-age/manifestation-and-the-law-of-attraction). They are business and pastoral positive-thinking lines. They are not Word of Faith catechisms. ## The Secret, beside this history [Byrne’s site](https://www.thesecret.tv/history-of-the-secret/) [(7)](#ref-7) says that near the end of 2004 her daughter gave her Wattles’s 1910 book, and that the film and the book *The Secret* were both released in 2006. Wattles’s creating act is a human thought on a formless substance. Kenyon’s act, in the lines his publisher prints, is a confession of what God has said, held against the senses. Roberts’s act, in Thorpe’s quotation, is a seed God grows. The practices can sound alike to a person who only hears “say it and receive it.” The accounts of who does the creating are not the same sentence. Churches that reject the prosperity teaching say the Christian versions still turn God’s promises into a technique. Their documents are on the [next page](/christianity/what-do-churches-say-about-the-prosperity-gospel). ## Frequently asked questions ### Did New Thought produce the Word of Faith? King says McConnell argued that it did, and that Simmons, McIntyre, and Bowman argue that Kenyon’s primary home is the Higher Life and Keswick tradition, with a confession teaching stressed in a way comparable to New Thought. This page quotes that disagreement. It does not decide it. ### Is Oral Roberts the start? Isgrigg says the prosperity gospel is most often linked to American Pentecostal Christianity, particularly to Roberts and seed faith, and he dates *Miracle of Seed-Faith* to 1970. King puts Kenyon a generation earlier, as the originator of the modern faith movement, with Hagin as the popularizer. Both can be true of different layers: a confession teaching from Kenyon, a seed-faith teaching from Roberts, a broadcast teaching from Copeland and Rhema. This page does not collapse them into one founder. ### What do the churches say? [What Do Churches Say about the Prosperity Gospel?](/christianity/what-do-churches-say-about-the-prosperity-gospel) quotes the Cape Town Commitment, the Assemblies of God, the Southern Baptist Convention, *La Civiltà Cattolica*, and a morning meditation of Pope Francis. [Is the Prosperity Gospel Biblical?](/christianity/is-the-prosperity-gospel-biblical) is the verses. --- ## Sources Numbered to match the HTML References list. Item 1 is `#ref-1` under `#references`. Scripture links to the King James Version on this site. 1. [The Power of Your Words](https://www.ewkenyonbooks.com/catalog/the-power-of-your-words-e-w-kenyon-9780883683484) (Kenyon’s publisher prints the sentences and attributes them to E. W. Kenyon.) 2. [Theological Roots of the Word of Faith Movement](https://pneumareview.com/theological-roots-of-the-word-of-faith-movement-new-thought-metaphysics-or-classic-faith-movements/) (Paul L. King, The Pneuma Review, 30 April 2011. He quotes Dale Simmons’s dissertation and describes D. R. McConnell’s A Different Gospel. A signed essay, not a church confession.) 3. [Kenneth E. and Oretha Hagin, Founder of Rhema Christian Faith Ministry](https://www.rhema.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8&Itemid=137) (Page title on Rhema’s site.) 4. [Daniel D. Isgrigg, “I Tried Poverty”, Spiritus 5.1 (2020)](https://digitalshowcase.oru.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1132&context=spiritus) (Cites Oral Roberts, Miracle of Seed-Faith (1970). This page did not open that book.) 5. [Faith Confessions](https://www.kcm.org/faith/faith-confessions/) (Kenneth Copeland Ministries.) 6. [Antonio Spadaro and Marcelo Figueroa, The Prosperity Gospel: Dangerous and Different](https://www.laciviltacattolica.com/the-prosperity-gospel-dangerous-and-different/) (La Civiltà Cattolica, 18 July 2018, by Antonio Spadaro, S.J. A Jesuit journal article, not a council or a catechism. The English page names Spadaro as author.) 7. [History of The Secret](https://www.thesecret.tv/history-of-the-secret/) (Rhonda Byrne’s site on Wattles and the 2006 film and book.) ## See also - [Is the Prosperity Gospel Biblical?](https://apologetics.wiki/christianity/is-the-prosperity-gospel-biblical) — Teachers cite 3 John 2, Malachi 3:10, Deuteronomy 8:18, Mark 11:23–24, and John 10:10. Other churches cite 1 Timothy 6, Matthew 6, and Hebrews 11. This page reads each sentence in its chapter. It does not decide the dispute. - [What Do Churches Say about the Prosperity Gospel?](https://apologetics.wiki/christianity/what-do-churches-say-about-the-prosperity-gospel) — The Cape Town Commitment, the Assemblies of God, the Southern Baptist Convention, and a Jesuit journal each publish a judgment on prosperity teaching. Cape Town also affirms a biblical vision of human prospering. This page quotes them and does not decide. - [What Is Positive Confession?](https://apologetics.wiki/christianity/positive-confession-and-name-it-and-claim-it) — Kenneth Copeland Ministries says Jesus said believers can have whatever they say. E. W. Kenyon tells a sick or broke believer not to confess the lack. The Assemblies of God say that extreme is contrary to Scripture. This page quotes them and does not decide. - [What Is Seed Faith?](https://apologetics.wiki/christianity/seed-faith-and-sowing-offerings) — Oral Roberts, quoted by an Oral Roberts University journal from his book Is God Your Source?, says you sow it, God will grow it, and you will reap it. The Cape Town Commitment names the sowing of seeds in its definition of the prosperity gospel. This page quotes both and does not decide. - [What Is the Prosperity Gospel?](https://apologetics.wiki/christianity/what-is-the-prosperity-gospel) — The Cape Town Commitment defines the prosperity gospel as a right to health and wealth obtained by positive confession and by sowing seeds. Teachers describe the same practices as faith in God’s promises. This page quotes both and does not decide. ## History [View history on GitHub](https://github.com/Apologetics-Wiki/apologetics-wiki/commits/main/src/content/articles/where-did-the-prosperity-gospel-come-from.md)