I Am Concerned For My Sister

[PhuturePriest]

I've never heard of the Prosperity Gospel, but I'm not sure how people believe in it seeing as all all Apostles but one were brutally martyred, as were many other early Christians.

It seems to me that this is a theology aimed to prey on vulnerable people. Has anything really bad happened to your sister? Anything from having bad luck with work to being sexually assaulted could lead to having such an emotional reaction against you, and for such zealous belief in a very obviously flawed theology. Perhaps it might be better if you avoided the theological argument for now and focused on listening to whatever is so deeply bothering her.

[ChristinaTherese]

I've never heard of the Prosperity Gospel, but I'm not sure how people believe in it seeing as all all Apostles but one were brutally martyred, as were many other early Christians.

It seems to me that this is a theology aimed to prey on vulnerable people. Has anything really bad happened to your sister? Anything from having bad luck with work to being sexually assaulted could lead to having such an emotional reaction against you, and for such zealous belief in a very obviously flawed theology. Perhaps it might be better if you avoided the theological argument for now and focused on listening to whatever is so deeply bothering her.

It's a Protestant thing. It basically posits that since God wants good for you he wants you to be healthy and wealthy. At least, I think that's what it is. It just sticks in my head with the disapproving term of "health and wealth." I was raised Protestant, but not with that, hence both the disapproval and lack of explanation.

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

It's a Protestant thing. It basically posits that since God wants good for you he wants you to be healthy and wealthy. At least, I think that's what it is. It just sticks in my head with the disapproving term of "health and wealth." I was raised Protestant, but not with that, hence both the disapproval and lack of explanation.

 

Are you sure it's protestant or is it non denominational ?

[ChristinaTherese]

Are you sure it's protestant or is it non denominational ?

Non-denominational does not mean not Protestant. The only defining characteristic of Protestants is that they are Christian but not Catholic.

[Lilllabettt]

nooooo

non-denoms are not Protestants

Anglicans are not Protestants

Orthodox are not Protestants

Protestants descend from Lutheran,Presbyterian and Anabaptist elements in German-speaking parts of Europe.

[Basilisa Marie]

Like Lilllabettt said, Protestants are really only Christian groups that specifically were protesting against Catholicism.  Non-denoms are groups that spring up on their own, without any kind of denominational heritage or systematic theology.  "I just read the Bible" types of Christians are almost always non-denoms.  

 

Prosperity Gospel did grow out of some Protestant thought, but is especially popular among non-denoms (in my experience) that are like mega churches with televangelists.  Yeah, prosperity gospel is about how God wants his faithful followers to be "healthy and wealthy," but also says that if you pray to God and follow the "rules" God will certainly "favor" you and make you healthy and wealthy, and the wealthier you are the more God likes you.  It also says that if you donate to whatever church-like organization you participate in, you'll definitely get blessed by God in monetary terms as a result.  Charistmatic Christian movements have been especially critical of prosperity gospel, so even a lot of Protestants don't like it. 

 

More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology

[ChristinaTherese]

In my experience in a "non-denominational" church (that wasn't really non-denominational anyway, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms and it claimed to be non-denominational) we thought of ourselves as Protestants. More specifically, I thought of all who were Christians and not Catholics or Orthodox and maybe not Anglican/Episcopalian as Protestant. Why? Because we weren't Catholic and it had originated in somebody protesting Catholicism. If nobody had protested, we would have been Catholic or something. Orthodox are a whole different variety because they came from a different time period, but with the possible exception of Anglicans we thought of everything who came out of the Reformation as Protestant. And even if we didn't come from one of the groups you mentioned directly, we descended back there somehow.

 

My point: You can define words however you want. I can say that I'm typing with my noses. All ten of them. That doesn't make fingers into noses. (Not meaning to mock so much as not pull out the "You can call a horse's tail a leg, but that doesn't make it have five legs." example again. I'm tired of it.) However, I do only have the experience of one non-denominational church. But in that one church that is the way that I think we were. Same, I think, with the Charismatic church in which my school resided and practically everywhere else I can think of.

 

ETA: Oh, and :offtopic:

Edited October 28, 2013 by Christina Thérèse

[ChristinaTherese]

As a comment about the above: I read it to my brother and he said it might come off as annoying/acidic. If you read it that way, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be obnoxious. That is also why I generally avoid talking about Protestantism: I can get way more annoyed and therefore annoying than I should be. Oh, and as a linguistics major it's just kind of annoying anyway to read people saying dogmatically that a word that has always been defined in a particular way in my experience does not mean what it has meant to me and those I know (who matter more to the definition of the word) for the last twenty years. And my dad can be a bit acidic...it probably wears off and comes into me a bit without my noticing and definitely against my desiring. So, basically, sorry if I was annoying!