Emerging from the Americas and now appearing in Europe, the Philippines, Nigeria and South Africa, today’s narco-evangelists share an increasingly popular strand of Christianity: Pentecostalism. It’s the fastest-growing religion in the world, already with around 650 million followers. A branch of evangelical Protestantism, in recent decades Pentecostalism has become the faith of the world’s poor. In large part, this is because of its particular focus on the Holy Spirit’s role in health and wealth, but there is also the significant lure of the faith’s deep authenticity, rooted in local cultures. Much of this is due to the fact that there is little in the way of authority structures and pastoral oversight. Not only is there no Pentecostal pope, but all you really need to be a preacher is followers.
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The prosperity gospel emerged among a group of syndicated evangelists in the United States following World War II, when America was on the rise and anything other than stars and stripes capitalism was blasphemous. Equally, this new cohort of preachers, like Oral Roberts and Kenneth Copeland, knew how to speak to the concerns of everyday people. Fairly soon, the idea of a God who is interested in how much you have in your wallet at the end of the week — not to mention how much of that you are tithing to your church — became a feature of televangelism.
The way I see it, it’s nothing new.
In practice, they’re like Italian mafia. In spirit, they’re the usual Christian settler/crusader/colonizer who believes that God promised them the world and they just have to take it and own it.