A common critique of the prosperity gospel, and one I’ve been delving into a bit this week, is that it presents the gospel in a human-centric way: have faith in God and get all this great stuff. Someone once said, never has so much been offered for so little! There’s […]
At TAFES Bible study this morning we looked at Proverbs 28. I was struck by how many of the verses were about the rich and not at all complimentary. For example: v.6 Better the poor whose walk is blameless / than the rich whose ways are perverse. v.8 Whoever increases […]
I had the privilege of attending Stretch Women’s Summit this weekend, presented by Soaring Women International which was founded by Luphurise Mawere. The name Stretch comes from the idea that many women remain in the situation they are because they don’t step outside of their comfort zones or think flexibly; […]
After church on Sunday, a friend of mine mentioned that the kind of prosperity teaching I’ve been blogging about, which doesn’t neatly fit the western stereotype of prosperity gospel and which conceives of itself quite differently, is somewhat new in Tanzania. Often we hear of the prosperity gospel itself as […]
The service leader at church joked that today’s preacher should be called ‘Engineer’ as well as ‘Professor’ and ‘Pastor’. It was the first time I’d heard this guy preach and I didn’t catch his name. It was definitely a different kind of sermon from normal, both in style (much more […]
Today at church we had Faraja Hamuli speak. She is the national leader of the women’s wing of our denomination in Tanzania and in the whole of Africa. She spoke on the woman at the well from John 4, “Give me this water.” For keen students of African prosperity theologies […]
In my previous post I compared the American prosperity gospel as presented in American Gospel: Christ Alone and the teachings I have heard here in Tanzania about prosperity. There was significant overlap both with the American prosperity gospel and with the American critics of it. Then there were some teachings […]
Meet Jesus at uni 