Afro-Pentecostalism: Black Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in History and Culture

8. Pentecostal Ethics and the Prosperity Gospel: Is There a Prophet in the House?

| 141 8 Pentecostal Ethics and the Prosperity Gospel Is There a Prophet in the House? Cheryl J. Sanders Introduction A dominant theme of modern Pentecostal preaching has been the promotion of the prosperity gospel, which emphasizes God’s will for the believer to become wealthy. But how many pastors who nurture their flocks with this message also embrace the social ethical role of the biblical prophets as advocates for the rights of the poor? Many Pentecostal preachers are abandoning the AfricanAmericanstruggle againstwhite racism, acceptingfaith-basedgovernment funding for their community development programs with all the strings attached, and buying into the divisive family values discourse crafted by political conservatives to attract the votes of white evangelicals. Are there any signs of a resurgence of prophetic activism among those who are willing to call forth the fires of Pentecost as the struggle for the souls of black folk rages on? To be sure, there are Pentecostal preachers who do not buy into the prosperity perspective. Instead, they offer prophetic ministries with an emphasis upon activism informed by a keen awareness of social concerns beyond the acquisition and accumulation of wealth. In Streets of Glory, a study of black Pentecostal pastors and congregations in Boston, Massachusetts, Omar McRoberts labels as “activist” those churches with food pantries and shelters for survivors of domestic abuse, those that build homes and run welfare-towork programs, or whose leaders organize marches and protests: This understanding of religious activism is partly the legacy of the civil rights movement, during which African-American churches transmitted a powerful normative message about the ability and necessity of religious institutions to work in some way for social change.1 142 | Prophetic Ethics McRoberts’s book examines the thought of activist Christians who see themselves as called to fight against sin in all its forms, especially social injustice and inequality. Among these Christians are Pentecostals, Charismatics, and Evangelicals, whose religious ethos relies heavily upon the Holy Spirit and the Bible. This ethos fuels liberatory struggle and community development work as well as the priestly and personal functions of congregational ministries.2 In his article “Preaching the Spirit: the Liberation of Preaching,” William Turner offers a general critique of the theological and ethical shortcomings of Pentecostalism in this regard. He notes that Pentecostals have historically taken a definite posture against elements of culture involving destructive personal morality, but “stopped short of showing the procession of the Spirit in liberative praxis and prophetic witness against structures of oppression.”3 This chapter addresses the ethical, political, and ecclesiological significance of Pentecostal preaching with particular attention to two perceived polarities among Pentecostal preachers: the social gospel and the prosperity gospel. The Pentecostal Social Gospel Reflecting on the Holiness roots and precedents of Pentecostal social activism in his recent book Thy Kingdom Come, the historian Randall Balmer offers this observation: The most effective and vigorous religious movements in American history have identified with the downtrodden and have positioned themselves on the fringes of society rather than at the centers of power. The Methodists of the nineteenth century come to mind, as do the Mormons. In the twentieth century, Pentecostalism, which initially appealed to the lower classes and made room for women and people of color, became perhaps the most significant religious movement of the century. A counterculture identifies with those on the margins.4 In my own work, I have devoted considerable attention to the role played by marginalized populations such as the black urban poor in the emergence and formation of the countercultural dimensions of Pentecostal religion.5 An important but ambiguous expression of this ethos of marginalized counterculturalism is the testimony of being “in the world, but not of it.” In “An Introduction to Pentecostalisms,” the dean of Pentecostal studies, Walter Hollenweger , laments the loss and denial of the initial revolutionary, pacifist, and political drive of early evangelicalism, including the antislavery movement, Pentecostal Ethics and the Prosperity Gospel | 143 female pastors, and noncapitalistic forms of production. Citing Donald Dayton ’s reprint series “The Higher Christian Life,” with a characteristic note of sarcasm, Hollenweger asserts that although “the Holiness and early Pentecostal movement stood at the cradle of all modern pacifist, emancipatory, and feminist movements, Pentecostals and their antagonists, the Evangelicals, are united in forgetting their past.”6 According to Hollenweger, political and social texts were actually purged from the first editions of the works of pioneers of the Holiness movement in order to create...