ABSTRACT

One of the most significant points to make about thornier questions and responses is that they show how many researchers and lay people, including Christians, tend to converge on their intense dislike of Prosperity Christianity. Parallel concerns have come together most recently and strikingly in a fresh set of worries over this branch of Christianity. Reflecting the latest moral panic, some commentators have suggested that Prosperity Thinking lies at the root not merely of foolish actions of individuals or ministries, but of the global credit crisis itself. Here again, worries over the irrational and the inauthentic come together, in the sense that Prosperity Christianity is presented as a new' kind of faith theological matter out of place that promotes unreasonable optimism. In her introduction to The Anthropology of Christianity, Fenella Cannell refers to some of the ways in which an ascetic stereotype of Christianity remains influential in anthropological circles.