Abstract

At the heart of contemporary megachurch Christianity is well-being. In this talk, I will explain how the therapeutic culture of well-being has taken shape over the years and show how it is also evolving. It has three dimensions: healing, material prosperity, and personal fulfillment. The first two—healing and prosperity—characterize earlier forms of the prosperity gospel. But as I will argue in this chapter, the third—self-fulfilment is a more recent development. Underpinning it is personal drive to become a much better person by acquiring “useful” skills. Its rise in megachurches is explained by the marketization of religion, a process in which the logic of neoliberalism increasingly shapes religious life. But as I will also show, it gains traction among megachurches in the Global South because of the rise of the aspirational middle class, even if many of them may be in precarious situations. In this light, the older form of the prosperity gospel, which focused only on believing and confessing, has evolved into a prosperity ethic, involving the acquisition of skills for upward social mobility. The talk will end with some critical reflections. By displacing the theology of suffering, does the therapeutic culture ultimately make poverty a lonely problem of the individual?

About the Speaker

Jayeel Cornelio is Professor of Development Studies at the Ateneo de Manila University where he holds the Faura Research Foundation Professorial Chair. He is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Louisville’s Center for Asian Democracy. He has written extensively on religion and public life in the Philippines and is a regular contributor to Rappler’s Thought Leaders section.