Prosperity Gospel Research Articles

The Prosperity Gospel: Debating Modernity in Africa and the African Diaspora

Abstract Debates over the role of Pentecostalism in effecting modernity through its widespread “prosperity gospel” remain inconclusive. Though Weber's Protestant Ethic has been persistently invoked, sociological analyses reveal that the prosperity gospel challenges dominant Weberian conceptualizations of modernity. On one hand, the doctrine refutes Weber's central claim of modern societies by its pervasive “enchantment.” On the other hand, the prosperity gospel shares modern traits of human autonomy and entrepreneurship. Does the prosperity gospel demonstrate simultaneously modern and antimodern themes? Using cases from Africa and the African diaspora, this essay critically reviews how modernity has functioned as a complicated category for analyses of the prosperity gospel and for Pentecostalism. Showing that modernity is mediated irreducibly by the historical and cultural backgrounds of the society it encounters, the essay argues for the potency of the “multiple modernities” paradigm as an analytical framework that better captures realities of Africana contexts, notably Pentecostalism and the prosperity gospel.

‘Middle-class’ Africans in Australia: choosing Hillsong as a global home

ABSTRACT Much of the literature on Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity (Pc/C) and African diasporas in the Global North has focused upon African-Majority or -Initiated churches that are either branches of African churches or were created in the diaspora. This focus often frames the appeal of Pc/C to African migrants in terms of: a) its emphasis upon the ‘Prosperity Gospel’ offering a path not only to salvation, but also to earthly riches; b) its opportunities for achieving status among church hierarchies, which is attractive to socially marginalised groups, and; c) the practical assistance it provides to support settlement. However, African diasporas have diverse histories of migration, and settlement experiences. This article considers the appeal of Pc/C to a group of professional African migrants in Australia, who self-identify as ‘middle-class’. It argues that professional African migrants have consciously favoured the Australian megachurch Hillsong over Australia’s African-Initiated churches. They have done so in pursuit of a process of an imagined class-mobility, and as a result, their choice of church can be understood as largely strategic.

Latinx Agencies: Emerging Histories of Politicians, Religious Leaders, and Undocumented Migrants

Latinx Agencies:Emerging Histories of Politicians, Religious Leaders, and Undocumented Migrants Kris Klein Hernández (bio) Benjamin Francis-Fallon , The Rise of the Latino Vote: A History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019. 494 pp. Notes, bibliography, acknowledgments, and index. $36.00 Geraldo Cadava , The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity, from Nixon to Trump . New York: Ecco Books, 2020. 418 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $17.99 Tony Tian-Ren Lin , Prosperity Gospel Latinos and Their American Dream. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. 202 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $24.95 Benjamin Francis-Fallon, The Rise of the Latino Vote: A History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019. 494 pp. Notes, bibliography, acknowledgments, and index. $36.00 Geraldo Cadava, The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity, from Nixon to Trump. New York: Ecco Books, 2020. 418 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $17.99 Tony Tian-Ren Lin, Prosperity Gospel Latinos and Their American Dream. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. 202 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $24.95 Michael Fortner's 2015 Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment put forth a controversial thesis: "black middle-class morality" and "members of the black silent majority" compelled this particular Black socioeconomic group to "prioritize public safety over economic and racial inequality. It drove them to rally and rail against 'hoodlums' instead of seeking reform of society." 1 Fortner's analysis of late 1960s and 1970s drug laws and ethnic-racial identity provided a different interpretation into mass incarceration's origins that would continue to proliferate under President Ronald Reagan's "war on drugs." 2 Fortner asked scholars to take "black agency seriously" when considering an African American history that did not reflect Black people simply as victims or as interlocutors in a declension narrative or narrative of dominance. 3 Furthermore, he wrote that specialists could acknowledge Black agency while not maintaining that African Americans had complete control over political outcomes. 4 Historians such as Donna Murch, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, and Heather Ann Thompson have all disputed Fortner's reconstitution of Black agency for false structural agency, arguing that there are not sufficient sources to reframe one of the origins behind mass incarceration to a Black middle class. 5 Yet Fortner's book leaves its reader with a particular question: if scholars place agency onto racialized communities, [End Page 599] how have people of color contributed to conservative, and at times, racist legislation? I start this review essay with Fortner's consideration of agency for a myriad of reasons. The three books under consideration all examine groups of people who have been understood within the lens of conservativism, traditional (white Euro-American) values, and at times, religious exclusion. Framing an analysis of these monographs through the lens of structural agency helps move past political and cultural attitudes to grapple with the everyday choices that Latina conservatives, Hispanic Republicans, and Pentecostal Mexicans have made over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first century. Like Black Silent Majority, some of the content in these monographs illuminates the lives of people of color who helped forge federal policies that have been characterized as exclusionary or conservative. Benjamin Francis-Fallon's 2019 The Rise of the Latino Vote: A History is one of several recent introductions to post-1960s U.S. politics that detail how Latinos and Hispanics contributed to and ultimately helped shape American government. Francis-Fallon illustrates how scholars of political science and history must reconsider the role that Latinos played within the federal administrations of presidents such as John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and even into the Bush eras (both George H.W. and George W.) In eleven chapters, the author demonstrates how Latino politics even "transformed the [U.S.] Republican Party as well," providing the reader a bird's-eye view into American politics (p. 5). In short, the monograph is a good entry into the growing field of Latinx political history, and will no doubt help spawn further regional studies into Latinx political science and Latinx history. I appreciate how Francis-Fallon begins his monograph with a quick overview into early Cuban, Mexican American, and...

The Hay Baler

The Hay Baler Tracy Thompson (bio) A Lie of Stupendous Omissions In 1961, the summer before my grandfather died, my father got the idea to bale kudzu. He was a city boy who grew up in Gadsden, Alabama, and had little experience with hay balers, but he knew a plentiful and cheap resource when he saw it. I think he had some idea that kudzu could be baled and sold as winter fodder for livestock. Paw Paw, my grandfather, had grown up on a farm, and it might have occurred to him that if anybody could make money selling kudzu, they would have already gotten rich doing it, but he was evidently game to try. So one Saturday morning they dragged the hay baler out and set it up in the dirt road that led past the barn to the tenant’s shack. I would have been about five. I have a fragmentary memory of standing by with my mother, my sister, and my grandmother while the men sweated, hooking the baler motor up to the generator and threading the baling twine. In my memory, my grandmother is in her usual Saturday attire: her hair pinned up in pink foam curlers [End Page 653] and covered with a hair net for church the next day. She wears a faded housedress, an apron, and an expression of disapproval. I bet she knew they were about to wreck the hay baler; I bet she knew it was useless to say so. The generator came on, the baler started to vibrate, and my dad dumped a load of kudzu into the hopper. For a few moments, the leaves fed into the machine the way they were supposed to. Then we heard a metallic groan as the sinewy vines wrapped themselves around the baler’s inner parts and tied themselves in knots. Kudzu one, hay baler zero. My past is like kudzu: it defeats all efforts to package neatly. I grew up in the cloistered world of a Fundamentalist white girl in the Deep South of the 1960s, and I cannot stop trying to make sense of how I got from there to here — from the hermetically sealed bubble of Jim Crow to the urgency of #BlackLivesMatter. Why do I keep trying? Partly it is just growing older, the way we all try to make sense of our lives. Partly it is because most of my past has been literally erased. I lived on the side of Atlanta that the money left behind on its way north. Almost every residential area or open land I knew growing up has morphed into an ugly industrial site, a strip mall, a slum, a parking lot, a waste dump — all of it mute testimony to rampant consumerism and the degradation of our planet. My childhood home is gone. Of the grove of towering oak trees that sheltered my house, exactly one survives; the rest have been replaced by asphalt. My elementary school is an abandoned ruin; in what used to be piney woods near my old high school sits Creflo Dollar’s temple to the prosperity gospel, with overflow parking and shuttle bus service available for the suckers who arrive late. The rural world I knew is now ugly, polluted, and strewn with trash — or cultivated by monster machines operated by tiny humans [End Page 654] who work for Big Ag, planting seeds they do not own to grow genetically modified crops. Mostly, though, it is because the world I knew was defined by a version of history that turned out to be a lie of stupendous omissions. Historian Arnold Toynbee recalls watching Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 and thinking that he was a citizen of a country that ruled the world and would forever, and that history was something unpleasant that happened to other people. But he added, “Of course, if I had been a small boy in 1897 in the Southern part of the United States, I should not have felt the same; I should then have known from my parents that history had happened to my people in my part of the world.” History happened to my people, in my part...

The Prosperity Gospel: A Distortion of the Fundamental Evangelical Tenets

Prosperity Gospel is a problematic issue for the Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity, and it is so in at least two perspectives. First, it influences the teaching of many preachers who employ this approach to capture new believers on the one hand, and it is sharply criticised by many prominent Evangelical theologians who regard it as a serious heresy, a deception of many Christians, on the other. Second, it is a matter of profound theological question raised from the very core of Christian faith and asking how to find a delicate balance between Jesus' calling to bear the cross and his blessing from the Sermon on the Mount. The most frequent framework is the one that considers the prosperity gospel as the distortion of the substantial Evangelical tenets, and that stems from the various ideological and sociological processes in the 19th United States. The article offers a brief outline of the prosperity message and answers the following research questions: What is the prosperity gospel? What are the roots of it? What are the most critical theological points of the prosperity teaching? What charges are raised by the critics from the Evangelical background? The literary analysis of Evangelical literature is the primary method used to solve the problem.

Globalization and Asian Pentecostalism in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract This article aims to explore the development of Pentecostalism in Asia under the tide of globalization since the beginning of the twenty-first century. It will do so in three sections. First, it investigates megachurches and the prosperity gospel in Asian countries and regions that enjoy a greater extent of liberty and where neo-capitalism has emerged. Second, the article discusses the situation of Pentecostalism in countries ruled by totalitarian regimes. Pentecostalism cannot grow freely there, but it is relatively safe for Pentecostals to provide humanitarian relief and social services. Third, the article illustrates how migration as a major phenomenon of globalization has influenced pentecostal mission. It focuses on African Pentecostals who engage in trades in China and the Filipino/a Charismatics who are migrant workers. In the conclusion, the article discusses how the coronavirus pandemic has been reshaping globalization and Pentecostalism and offers a possible way to see the future.

Selling ‘hot air’: An Analysis of the Perceived Media Influence on Prosperity Gospel Related Gullibility in Zimbabwe

Selling ‘hot air’: An Analysis of the Perceived Media Influence on Prosperity Gospel Related Gullibility in Zimbabwe

Lin, Tony Tien-Ren (2020) Prosperity Gospel Latinos and Their American Dream

In this nuanced ethnography of Latinx migrants in the United States, Tony Tian-Ren Lin presents a thick description of those drawn to Prosperity Gospel Pentecostalism (PGP). The monograph opens with thorough yet concise introductions to the origins of the PGP movement in the US and its contours among Latinx communities. Readers are given a crash course in the primary assumptions and patterns of praxis espoused by PGP adherents, which are oriented around the formulaic pursuit of blessing via a combination of faith and action.

‘Me I no go suffer’: Christian songs and prosperity gospel among Yoruba Pentecostals in Southwest Nigeria

ABSTRACT Songs are used to enshrine social and religious ideologies among members of any society whether traditional or modern. In the Christian domain, there exist varieties of theologies and doctrines through which Christian values and virtues are taught and propagated. The prosperity gospel is one of such doctrines and it has received growing interest among scholars in African Pentecostalism, especially in Nigeria. While extant literature has focused largely on the religious, social and economic contributions to the growth and spread of prosperity gospel, the role of music, particularly songs, in the discourse of prosperity theology is yet to be explored. Hence, this paper discusses how Christian prayer songs are used to circulate the prosperity gospel among Yoruba Pentecostals in Nigeria. Data for this study were collected from selected popular Christian prayer songs in southwestern Nigeria which were then analysed. This article submits that Yoruba Pentecostals, in addition to diverse biblical engagements on prosperity themes, have always creatively employed Christian prayer songs in their hermeneutics of prosperity gospel within their cultural praxis.

Selling salvation, selling success: neoliberalism and the US Prosperity Gospel

Abstract Neoliberalism relies on optimism. Without faith in meritocracy—unwavering belief that rewards will eventually and justly come to those who work hard enough—support for the capitalist system and belief in neoliberalism would unravel. How that optimism is perpetuated in the face of persistent income inequality and exploitation within the workplace requires an examination of those cultural institutions which reinforce and reproduce optimism over practical experience. This research focuses on one particular religious institution of the USA—the Prosperity Gospel. The Prosperity Gospel is a modern, neoliberal variation of Pentecostalism that is premised on the belief that a Biblical covenant between the individual believer and God guarantees that believer blessings of health and wealth, provided she demonstrates adequate faith. Accordingly, for those who are less adept at navigating the business world, financial success is still available for those believers who can dedicate themselves with the same frenzied ambition to the spiritual world. The Prosperity Gospel thus supports and sustains neoliberalism; the Prosperity Gospel is an institution which provides refuge to individuals from the exigencies of the market as well as a social practice which reinforces individual responsibility and fault. The Prosperity Gospel is the spiritual articulation of neoliberalism as well as a reinforcing institution.

The Prosperity Gospel of Coronavirus Response

AbstractThe sweep of the coronavirus pandemic across the world and the United States offers an almost unparalleled opportunity to study how social systems cope with the threat and opportunities for collective action. In this paper, we draw on survey data collected as the United States flailed in response and before a general consensus among executive officeholders developed in the following weeks. In particular, we assess how holding prosperity gospel views strongly shaped perceptions of the virus and reactions to state responses to the virus. Research on the prosperity gospel is slowly expanding and this paper helps to highlight some missing dimensions. At a time when concerted action for the social good could be uniting the country, prosperity gospel beliefs systematically undermine that possibility by augmenting threat, raising outgroup barriers, and decreasing social trust.

Black Religious Belief Systems and Political Participation

Political science research has shown that attending religious institutions promotes Blacks’ political participation by developing civic norms, skills, and networks. Fewer studies, however, examine what role religious beliefs play in promoting the political participation of African Americans. Inasmuch as religious beliefs are at the heart of what binds people to their religious institutions, it is also important to examine how variations in the way people conceptualize their religious duties affect their willingness to engage the political system. Thus, this article adds to the existing research by examining two religious belief systems prominent in Afro-Christianity: the Prosperity Gospel, which emphasizes individualism and divine favor; and the Social Gospel, which emphasizes working to achieve a just society. Using original survey data, the analyses find that the Social Gospel is associated with higher levels of political engagement and participation among Blacks, while the Prosperity Gospel is associated with lower levels.

The gospel of prosperity and its concept of development: A Ghanaian Pentecostal-Charismatic experience

ABSTRACT The prosperity gospel, a doctrine in the global Pentecostal-Charismatic movement, characteristically demonstrates the nexus of the Christian faith and wealth. This article analyses Mensa Otabil, a Ghanaian prosperity preacher’s ‘20-year personal development plan’ for members of his church, the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC). It explores whether or not, why and how the members are aligning their lives and visions to his vision of how to achieve a better, prosperous community. Using ethnographic data obtained from selected members of the ICGC, this article investigates the idea and the implementation of the development plan, in order to understand the plan as Otabil’s conscious effort to change society through the transformation of individuals. It argues that Otabil’s efforts can be analysed as a form of religious engineering, where, the individual members are invited to act as engineers of their own life and subjectivity.

The Undercurrent Coming to the Surface

This paper explores the convergence and divergence in the development of Chinese Christianity and the global surge of Pentecostalism by focusing on the evolution and expansion of an indigenous Pentecostal sector in Chinese Christianity. Drawing on extended ethnographic fieldwork among prosperous urban church communities in coastal southeast China and the growing Chinese merchant diaspora in Europe, I show that the Pentecostal undercurrent sustained by mostly charismatic women and their rural networks has come to surface and been increasingly transformed by an entrepreneurial male-dominated prosperity gospel. The surfacing of this Chinese Pentecostal undercurrent under the current context of China’s state-led modernization and global business outreach has resulted in a combination of entrepreneurial logic, spiritual renewal, and emotional nationalism in a self-envisioned Chinese-led global mission movement, contributing to the growth of a neo-Pentecostal sector of post-Mao, globalizing Chinese Christianity.

The Fate of Prosperity Gospel in Kenya

The prosperity gospel Pentecostalism is relatively new on the religious landscape which is swiftly expanding at breath-taking speed and now is a force to be reckoned with in Kenya. It has a greater chance of outliving the 21st century in view of the fact that it is widely and readily being accepted by all classes of people for its claim of physical and spiritual empowerment. The methodology adopted for this study was a phenomenological approach. The study uncovered that there are so many in favour of the expansion and consolidation of the prosperity gospel in Kenya. The paper affirmed the point that prosperity gospel in its entirety is not bad but what is needed is a change in the right focus of prosperity message. Even though there are aspects of negativism in prosperity preaching, the paper believes and concludes that God will eventually change the focus of prosperity message as preached by prosperity preachers to something more positive and rewarding for it to continue being relevant in Kenya.

Implications of Hegel’s Dialectical Evolution of the Spirit to the Problem of Shortcut Mentality in Nigeria

This article focused on Hegel’s dialectical evolution of the spirit and its implications to shortcut mentality in Nigeria. Hegel’s evolution of the spirit is a process of change and human development, which moves from the individual to the state and then to the absolute. This process identifies and represents the world’s civilization as a gradual realization of the absolute. The fundamental questions are: What actually is Hegel’s dialectical evolution of the spirit? What is shortcut mentality? Has Hegel’s dialectical evolution of the spirit any implication for shortcut mentality in Nigeria? This article argued and insisted that Hegel’s dialectical evolution of the spirit has remarkable implications for shortcut mentality in Nigeria. A critical look at Nigeria today simply portrays a country beset by shortcut mentality in her quest for civilization. This is evidenced in many contemporary issues menacing our country today. The issues of get rich quick syndrome, quick fixes, examination mal-practice, Ponzi schemes, betting sites, corrupt practices, utopian prosperity gospel etc. are easily noticeable in almost every part of Nigeria. All these ills which have led to the malfunctioning of the economic, religious, educational, agricultural, and administrative sectors of Nigeria, are certainly the offspring of shortcut mentality. This shortcut mentality presupposes people not following the right and gradual path of change and development. It entails abhorrence of labour as well as suffering. Hence, the researchers employed analytical and hermeneutical methods to explore the implications of Hegel’s dialectical evolution of the spirit to shortcut disorder in Nigeria. This article argued that application of Hegel’s dialectical evolution of the spirit contributes enormously in combating the problem of shortcut mentality in Nigeria. Hence, the researchers recommended creativity, mutual recognition as well as positive attitude to labour and suffering as solutions to the issue of shortcut mentality in Nigeria.
 Key Words: Hegel, Spirit, Shortcut, Change and Nigeria

Ritual, myth and transnational giving within the Zimbabwe Assemblies of God Africa in Johannesburg, South Africa

This article interrogates how rituals and myths may reshape Pentecostal ideology and practice in ways that resonate with the practical concerns of born-again congregants in an exclusive foreign labour market. It draws on a series of field observations conducted in Johannesburg, at two congregations of the Zimbabwe Assemblies of God Africa (ZAOGA) – a born-again movement with roots in Zimbabwe – between 2009 and 2016. The authors critically examine the shifting architecture of the ritual of Working Talents and its contradictory use of myths. The authors consider the intended consequences of both the ritual of Working Talents and often contradictory myths used to bolster it, for the transnational growth of the church and its involvement in the development of the nation. A phenomenological observation qualitative research was utilised to establish the experiences, feelings and behaviours of the ZAOGA congregants regarding the gospel of Working Talents at two of their assemblies in Johannesburg. A key finding was that Working Talents contains ethical action and empowerment narratives, and it aspires to create Pentecostal congregants with collective cultural identities, disposed to give money to support the causes of the church. In doing so, myths and rituals have reshaped the ZAOGA Pentecostal ideology into a nuanced version of the Prosperity Gospel, one that emphasises notions of indigenisation, empowerment and self-propagation.

"I Tried Poverty": Exploring the Psychological Impact of Poverty and Prosperity in the Life of Oral Roberts

The origin of the prosperity gospel is most often linked to the influence of American Pentecostal Christianity, particularly to Oral Roberts and his concept of “seed faith.” In light of this, this study seeks to understand Oral Roberts’ concepts of poverty and prosperity by exploring the psychology of his own experience of poverty. It will suggest that the biology of inequality he experienced as a child shaped the development of his prosperity theology.

신자유주의 시대의 자기계발과 복지: 한국 개신교 공간의 번영복음을 중심으로

이 논문은 IMF 사태 이후 한국 개신교 공간에서 등장한 번영복음이 개신교의 복지의식과 실천에 어떠한 영향과 효과를 미쳤는가를 규명한다. 한국에서는 외환위기 이후 ‘신자유주의적 복지국가’가 등장하면서 전 사회적 차원에서 자기계발이 권장되고 개신교 공간에서는 ‘신비적 자기계발’에 속하는 번영복음이 부상하였다. 번영복음을 운반한 대표적인 자기계발 서적은 베스트셀러에 오른 《야베스의 기도》, 《긍정의 힘》, 《4차원 영성》, 《왕의 재정》이다. 《아베스의 기도》는 ‘야베스의 기도’를 일종의 주문처럼 활용하여 부와 사회적 성공에 이르는 길을 제시하고, 《긍정의 힘》은 긍정 이데올로기를 통한 현세적 욕망 실현의 길을 제시하며, 《4차원 영성》은 생각, 믿음, 꿈, 말을 변화시키는 강력한 자기계발의 테크놀로지를 통해 건강과 부를 얻는 방법을 가르치고, 《왕의 재정》은 ‘배가의 법칙’을 활용하여 ‘거룩한 부자(성부)’가 되는 방법을 알려주는 텍스트다. IMF 사태 이후 한국 보수 개신교는 다양한 형태의 구제사업과 봉사활동에 참여하였지만 시혜적 차원의 자선사업에 머물렀다는 평가를 받아 왔다. 이러한 구제사업과 활동이 시혜적 차원을 넘어서지 못하도록 만드는 배후에는 번영복음이 주요한 요인으로 자리잡고 있다. 번영복음은 IMF 사태에 의해 초래된 대규모 실업과 빈곤, 양극화의 심화, 노숙자와 자살률의 급증과 같은 심각한 문제를 사회적 차원이 아니라 개인적 차원의 문제로 접근하는 경향이 있기 때문이다. 번영복음은 사회적 위기와 고통의 문제에 대한 해법을 구조적 차원에서 모색하기보다는 개인의 책임과 능력에서 찾는다. 요컨대 각자도생의 논리를 취하는 것이다. 주술적 기도나 시각화 작업과 같은 ‘신비적’ 자기계발의 테크놀로지를 통한 심리적 차원의 해결이 대표적인 예다. 이처럼 개인적 차원의 부의 축적과 성공을 위해 신비적 자기계발의 테크놀로지를 활용하는 ‘번영복음의 길’과 연대성의 원리에 근거하여 모두가 함께 잘 사는 사회를 목표로 하는 ‘사회복지의 길’은 양립하기 어렵다. 번영복음은 사회복지의 대립물이자 장애물인 것이다. 따라서 지금까지 민간복지의 선두 주자로 간주되어 오면서도 시혜적 차원을 넘어서지 못했다는 평가를 받아온 한국 개신교가 연대성의 원리에 기초한 사회복지의 길로 나아가기 위해서는 무엇보다 먼저 번영복음으로부터 해방되어야 할 것이다.

Las huellas ocultas: La Teología de la prosperidad en América Latina a la luz de sus orígenes ideológicos en el movimiento del Nuevo pensamiento

In the last three decades, Christian groupings have managed to project andinstall themselves gradually in the political structures of several Latin Americancountries, managing to occupy diverse governmental instances in orderto promote their own agendas. Given this phenomenon, it is important tocritically and investigatively address the theological discourse that many ofthese congregations and political parties promote, which is known as theProsperity Gospel. In the present article, a historical survey is carried outto trace what its ideological origins are, one of its main sources being thephilosophical and spiritual movement of the New Thought, which emergedin the mid-nineteenth century in the United States. In this way, a questionarises about whether the Prosperity Gospel is really theology, by discussingand contrasting its main slogans from a theological and critical perspective.