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Word of Faith is a movement within
charismatic Christianity
Charismatic Christianity (also known as Spirit-filled Christianity by its supporters) is a form of Christianity that emphasizes the work of the Holy Spirit, spiritual gifts, and modern-day miracles as an everyday part of a believer's life. Pract ...
which teaches that Christians can get power and financial prosperity through prayer, and that those who believe in Jesus' death and resurrection have the right to physical health.
The movement was founded by the American
Kenneth Hagin
Kenneth Erwin Hagin (August 20, 1917 – September 19, 2003) was an American preacher. He is known for pioneering the Word of Faith movement.
Biography Personal life
Kenneth E. Hagin was born August 20, 1917, in McKinney, Texas, the son o ...
in the 1960s, and has its roots in the teachings of
E. W. Kenyon.
History
The Baptist minister E.W. Kenyon (1867–1948) is generally cited as the originator of Word of Faith's teachings. Kenyon's writings influenced Kenneth Hagin Sr., the recognized "father" of the Word of Faith movement.
Hagin, who had founded a
ministry known as the Kenneth E Hagin Evangelistic Association, started disseminating his views in the ''Word of Faith'' magazine in 1966, and subsequently founded a seminary training Word of Faith ministers.
[Jesus
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label= Hebrew/ Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religiou ...]
meant when he said in that believers shall have whatsoever they say and pray with faith. The term ''word of faith'' itself is derived from which speaks of ''the word of faith that we preach''.
Healing
The Word of Faith teaches that complete healing (of spirit, soul, and body) is included in Christ's atonement and therefore is available here and now to all who believe. Frequently cited is , "by his stripes we are healed", and , which says Jesus healed the sick so that "it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the Prophet, 'Himself took our infirmities, and bore our sicknesses'."
Because Isaiah speaks in the present tense ("we ''are'' healed"), Word of Faith teaches that believers should accept the reality of a healing that is already theirs, first by understanding that physical healing is part of the New Testament's promise of salvation. It is reinforced by confessing the Bible verses which assert this healing and believing them while rejecting doubt. This does not deny pain, sickness, or disease, but denies its right to supersede the gift of salvation in Isaiah 53:5 and many other passages. According to adherents, sickness is generally
Satan's attempt to rob believers of their divine right to total health.
Prosperity
Word of Faith teaching holds that its believers have a divine right to prosper in all areas of life, including finances, health, marriage, and relationships.
Word of Faith preachers such as Creflo Dollar and Kenneth Copeland claim that Jesus was rich, and teach that modern believers are entitled to financial wealth.
Faith and confession
In Word of Faith teaching, a central element of receiving from God is "confession", often called "positive confession" or "faith confession" by practitioners. Practitioners will claim and affirm they have healing, well being, prosperity, or other promises from God, before actually experiencing such results. They do so in demonstration of their faith, which they believe will ultimately result in the fulfillment of their words. While similar, it should not be confused with
Norman Vincent Peale's
positive thinking theology focusing on the individual, as evidenced by the motto, "Faith in God and believe in oneself". Noted Word of Faith teachers, such as
Kenneth E. Hagin and
Charles Capps, have argued that
God
In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...
created the universe by speaking it into existence (), and that God has endowed believers with this power. Thus, making a "positive confession" of God's promise and believing God's word stirs the power of resurrection which raised Christ from the dead ( ), and brings that promise to fulfilment. This teaching is interpreted from . A more recent variant of positive confession is "decree and declare". Word of Faith preachers have called
faith
Faith, derived from Latin ''fides'' and Old French ''feid'', is confidence or trust in a person, thing, or In the context of religion, one can define faith as " belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion".
Religious people ofte ...
a "force".
Conversely, "negative confession" can harm, so believers should be conscious of their words. This is argued on the interpretation of , "Life and death are in the power of the tongue, and they that love them will eat the fruit thereof", also , "...saith the Lord, as you have spoken in my ears, so will I do", among other scriptures.
Criticism
Many of the movement's essential beliefs are criticised by other Christians. Christian author
Robert M. Bowman, Jr. states that the word of faith movement is "neither soundly orthodox nor thoroughly
heretical
Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. The term is usually used in reference to violations of important religi ...
".
One of the earliest critics of Word of Faith teaching was
Oral Roberts University professor
Charles Farah, who published ''From the Pinnacle of the Temple'' in 1979. In the book, Farah expressed his disillusionment with the teachings, which he argued were more about ''presumption'' than faith.
In 1982, one of Farah's students, Daniel Ray McConnell, submitted a thesis, ''Kenyon Connection'', to the faculty at Oral Roberts University, tracing the teaching back through Hagin to Kenyon and ultimately to
New Thought, and calling the distinctive Word of Faith beliefs a heretical "
Trojan Horse
The Trojan Horse was a wooden horse said to have been used by the Greeks during the Trojan War to enter the city of Troy and win the war. The Trojan Horse is not mentioned in Homer's ''Iliad'', with the poem ending before the war is concluded, ...
" in the Christian church. McConnell's repeated this argument in his book, ''A Different Gospel'', in 1988.
One of McConnell's classmates, Dale H. Simmons, published his own doctoral research at
Drew University
Drew University is a private university in Madison, New Jersey. Drew has been nicknamed the "University in the Forest" because of its wooded campus. As of fall 2020, more than 2,200 students were pursuing degrees at the university's three sch ...
, arguing that Kenyon was influenced by
heterodox
In religion, heterodoxy (from Ancient Greek: , "other, another, different" + , "popular belief") means "any opinions or doctrines at variance with an official or orthodox position". Under this definition, heterodoxy is similar to unorthodoxy, w ...
metaphysical
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
movements and the Faith Cure movement of the nineteenth century. In 1990, ''The Agony of Deceit'' surveyed the critiques of Word of Faith doctrines. One of the authors, Christian Research Institute founder
Walter Martin, issued his personal judgment that
Kenneth Copeland
Kenneth Max Copeland (born December 6, 1936) is an American televangelist associated with the charismatic movement. The organization he founded in 1967, Eagle Mountain International Church Inc. (EMIC), is based in Tarrant County, Texas. Copelan ...
was a false prophet and that the movement as a whole was heretical.
Milder criticisms were made by William DeArteaga in his book ''Quenching the Spirit''. He concedes some
New Thought influence in Kenyon's teaching, but argues that Kenyon's views helped the church rediscover some biblical truths. Arguing similarly but in an opposite direction is
Robert M. Bowman, Jr., formerly of the Christian Research Institute. His book ''The Word-Faith Controversy'' is more sympathetic to Kenyon's historical background yet more critical of his doctrine than is DeArteaga's work.
Baptist evangelist Justin Peters, an outspoken critic of the Word of Faith movement, wrote his Master of Divinity thesis on
Benny Hinn
Toufik Benedictus "Benny" Hinn (born 3 December 1952) is an Israeli Christian televangelist, best known for his regular "Miracle Crusades"— revival meeting or faith healing summits that are usually held in stadiums in major cities, which are ...
and has appeared frequently as an expert on Word of Faith pastors in documentaries and TV news stories. In his seminar "A Call for Discernment", he traces the movement's origins to the
Phineas Quimby's New Thought Movement and
Mary Baker Eddy
Mary Baker Eddy (July 16, 1821 – December 3, 1910) was an American religious leader and author who founded The Church of Christ, Scientist, in New England in 1879. She also founded ''The Christian Science Monitor'', a Pulitzer Prize-winning se ...
's
Christian Science in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In contrast, Pastor Joe McIntyre, now head of Kenyon's Gospel Publishing Society in
Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
, argues that the primary influences of Kenyon were
A.B. Simpson and A.J. Gordon of the Faith Cure branch of the Evangelical movement. McIntyre's version is told in the authorized biography, ''
E.W. Kenyon: The True Story''.
That same year, Pentecostal scholar
Gordon Fee wrote a series of articles denouncing what he called ''The Disease of the Health-and-Wealth Gospel''.
In 1993,
Hank Hanegraaff
Hendrik "Hank" Hanegraaff (born 1950), also known as the "Bible Answer Man", is an American Christian author and radio talk-show host. Formerly an evangelical Protestant, he joined the Eastern Orthodox Church in 2017. He is an outspoken figure wi ...
's ''Christianity in Crisis'' charged the Word of Faith movement with
heresy
Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. The term is usually used in reference to violations of important religi ...
and accused many of its churches of being "
cults." He accused the Word of Faith teachers of "demoting" God and Jesus, and "deifying" man and
Satan. Hanegraaff has focused a significant portion of his anti-heresy teaching since the 1990s on addressing and refuting Word of Faith teachings.
Other critics, such as
Norman Geisler
Norman Leo Geisler (July 21, 1932 – July 1, 2019) was an American Christian systematic theologian and philosopher. He was the co-founder of two non-denominational evangelical seminaries ( Veritas International University and Southern Evange ...
,
Dave Hunt and Roger Oakland, have denounced Word of Faith theology as aberrant and contrary to the teachings of the Bible. Critics have also condemned the teachings on wealth, arguing that the Bible condemns the pursuit of riches.
John Piper points out that Christ warned the apostles that they would suffer great persecution for his sake: except John, all eleven, after Judas Iscariot, suffered martyrs' deaths. In a January 2006 sermon entitled "How our Suffering Advances the Gospel," Piper stated bluntly that "the prosperity gospel will not make anybody praise Jesus; it will make people praise prosperity."
'Little gods' belief
Many Word of Faith teachers use phrases such as "little gods" to describe believers. Kenneth Hagin wrote that God had created humans "in the same class of being that he is himself," and reasoned that if humans are made in God's image, they are "in God’s class",
[E. W. Kenyon, The Father and His Family (Lynnwood, WA: Kenyon’s Gospel Publishing Society,
32nd printing, 1998 916, 1937, p.34] and thereby ‘gods’.
This teaching has drawn sharp criticism from adherents to other Christian denominations. The
LDS
LDS may refer to:
Organizations
* LDS Hospital, Salt Lake City, Utah, US Religion
* Latter Day Saint movement (LDS movement), a collection of independent church groups
**The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the largest group within t ...
scholar
Stephen E. Robinson declared the "little gods" teaching heretical, , and many Evangelical critics have condemned the "little gods" teaching as cultic.
Hank Hanegraaff
Hendrik "Hank" Hanegraaff (born 1950), also known as the "Bible Answer Man", is an American Christian author and radio talk-show host. Formerly an evangelical Protestant, he joined the Eastern Orthodox Church in 2017. He is an outspoken figure wi ...
, for example, contends the 'little gods' doctrine is on a par with the teaching of the
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and
Jim Jones
James Warren Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was an American preacher, political activist and mass murderer. He led the Peoples Temple, a new religious movement, between 1955 and 1978. In what he called "revolutionary suicide ...
.
See also
*
Full Gospel
*
Chris Oyakhilome
Christian Oyakhilome (also known as "Pastor Chris") (born 7 December 1963) is the founder and president of LoveWorld Incorporated, also known as Christ Embassy, based in Lagos, Nigeria.
Ministry and theology
Oyakhilome's ministry holds me ...
*
Abundant life
"Abundant life" is a term used to refer to Christian teachings on fullness of life. It is not an organized movement or a unique doctrine, but a name applied to the teachings and expectations of the groups and people who follow the teachings. Abund ...
*
Margaret Court
Margaret Court (''née'' Smith; born 16 July 1942), also known as Margaret Smith Court, is an Australian retired former world No. 1 tennis player and a Christian minister. Considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time, her 24 maj ...
*
Sam P. Chelladurai
*
Word of Faith Ministries
*
Word of Faith Fellowship
Word of Faith Fellowship is a Protestant non-denominational church in Spindale, North Carolina. It has been the subject of several allegations describing it as a cult and accusing it of abuse.
History
Word of Faith Fellowship began in 1979, ...
Bible passages
# Romans 12:2
# Matthew 11:25-30
# Galatians 5:1
# Mark 11:12-25
# Colossians 2
# Hebrews 6:1-2
# 1 Corinthians 3
# Galatians 3
# Romans 7:1-6
# Matthew 18:1-6
# 1 Corinthians 2:6-16
# Matthew 17:14-20
# Matthew 20:1-16
# Matthew 8:5-18
# Matthew 25:14-30
# Luke 19:11-27
# 1 Corinthians 13
# Matthew 22:36-40
# John 21:15-19
# Matthew 16:13-20
# Matthew 6:5-14
# Matthew 7:15-23
# 1 John 4:6
# 2 Peter 2
# Jude
# 1 Corinthians 5
# Hebrews 11-13
Notes and references
External links
Kenyon's Gospel Publishing SocietyKenneth Hagin Ministries
{{DEFAULTSORT:Word Of Faith
Christian personal development
Christian theological movements
Christian terminology
Heresy in Christianity
Pentecostalism