Prosperity gospellers and environmental sustainability

What is it about?

The preponderance of various forms of liberation-oriented gospels among Africa’s neo-Pentecostals, particularly prosperity “gospelling,” should not be surprising when one considers the contexts within which they emerge. However, their narrow focus on the accumulation of wealth and material things as that which liberates from poverty is rather bewildering. Drawing on data collected from neo-Pentecostals, this article examines the definition of prosperity and the theological basis for such teachings, probes the environmental sustainability of the narrow wealth-seeking attitudes of these prosperity gospellers, and examines the ecological adequacy of the theology of salvation upon which prosperity gospelling is founded. The article concludes that the option available to the prosperity gospellers is a quest for liberation from poverty that correlates with the Christian vision for both human welfare and the health of the natural world

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Why is it important?

This article is about the environmental theological analysis of a seeming liberation which is sought by neo-Pentecostals from poverty and challenges of life lived here and now. The understanding that our attitudes and beliefs matter in how we respond to life and developments around us means that that attitudes of believers must be informed largely by beliefs of God and what is expected of humanity in response and how they become relevant to our world., in this case the co-crisis in which we find ourselves.