Most Christians know or have heard of the prosperity gospel, a take on the Gospel that overreads into passages about wealth and blessings from God. It takes these verses and focuses on self-accomplishment, prosperity living, and how we can even demand blessings from God.
To quote Hope Bolinger from Christianity.com, “In essence, the prosperity gospel asserts God will reward faithful giving with financial, familial, and entrepreneurial blessings… Many messages will run along the same thread of ‘living your life now,’ and ‘being the best you can be,’ and ‘your suffering now will turn into a harvest later.’”
While the prosperity gospel is better known, another type of false gospel is just as dangerous: the poverty gospel.
As Bolinger mentioned, prosperity preachers control people by making false promises and questioning why those promises are not being realized. The preachers often use lines like, “You lack faith.” or “You aren’t trusting God enough.”
What does this have to do with the poverty gospel? Well, a lot. The prosperity gospel takes the same approach but works from the opposite message. Iran Nicodemus explains that the poverty gospel “is the belief that being poor is holy, wealth should be avoided because it is dangerous to our faith, or material belongings are inherently bad. It is usually accompanied by a fear of not having enough, demonstrated through hoarding and guilt over spending.”
Like the prosperity gospel, it takes specific passages and overreads them to argue that there are specific things we can do to earn God’s favor and abundance. In this case, the specific thing is to maintain poverty.
I should highlight what poverty means. We often associate poverty with extreme examples like homelessness. However, lacking resources is often subtler than that. It is a family where parents can’t find stable work to provide food and education for their kids. It is the person who encounters a life-threatening disease and is drowning in medical bills. It is the single parent who lost their spouse and is barely making it by. It is the person who has an invisible disability (i.e., autism, chronic depression) who can’t get the necessary accommodations to hold down a job. It is parents whose child has a developmental disability who can’t get the right accessibility for their child because they lack resources. Even in a prosperous Western context, poverty shows up in many ways among Christians.
Poverty gospel preachers will tell these impoverished people they “just need to trust God” or that accepting help is not relying on God enough. Even worse, those in poverty need to be content to the point of not praying for deliverance.
This is not how Christ called us to live.
Now that we have a definition of the poverty gospel and an emphasis on what poverty can mean, let us look further at where this belief may come from.
We don’t know exactly who coined the phrase poverty gospel. It’s possible that it evolved from the term “gospel poverty” that Thomas Dubey uses in his book Happy You Are Poor.
However, we can say that while it’s been a popular position at various times in the church, it has become especially popular since the early 2000s as a response to the prosperity gospel.
One of the most important lessons we learn from church history is that every generation swings from one position to the opposite. We rarely see one generation make a moderate correction to what the previous generation believed. Humans tend to swing from one extreme to another. To give a recent example, when the sexual revolution and the AIDS epidemic occurred in the 1960s-1980s, many Christians responded by pushing for purity culture: strict dating structures and a strong emphasis on proving every relationship choice action with scripture became the order of the day. As the deconstruction movement came in the early 2020s, many Christians argued for a stronger emphasis on love rather than proof-texting when discussing dating and marriage.
Similarly, as we’ve moved from the heyday of the prosperity gospel, many churches seek the extreme opposite position: the poverty gospel.
Poverty gospel advocates will use scripture to justify their claims, using passages like:
“Blessed are the poor, for their inheritance is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 5:3)
“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you thought he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.” (2 Cor. 8:9)
“ . . . Truly I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God . . . With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matt. 19:23-24, 26)
They may also cite stories about notable Christians who did much with few resources:
As Christianity.com covers in great detail, George Mueller was born into a wealthy nineteenth-century Prussian family but lost his inheritance when he became a Christian and aspired to become a missionary. Relying on deep prayer, God provided for George’s Bristol pastorate and orphanage through acts of charity. Poverty gospel advocates highlight how he lived and relied on prayer to receive generously from other people.
As Annette Griffin from Christianity.com highlights, St. Francis of Assisi was a 12th-century Italian monk. Raised wealthy, he sold all his possessions after receiving a vision from God and devoted himself to extreme poverty and preaching the Gospel. His simple lifestyle generated a following, which became the Franciscan Order.
So, what do we think about these arguments? Is there something deeper in these passages and these famous Christian figures’ lives?
While these stories are wonderful examples of faith, prayer, and surrender during uncertainty, we oversimplify them if we read them as hard rules about living in the most powerful poverty.
For one thing, Mueller and Francis had specific reasons for avoiding wealth. Francis felt he had to give up his past to follow God—and, in a culture where being rich meant being part of the family business, he may have had to make a dramatic break from the family estate. Mueller turned down a larger income because he would have gotten the money from a practice called pew rent—people paying for the best church seats, which he worried created church inequality.
More importantly, not every Christian is called to give up everything on the spot. Of course, Christ calls us not to have treasures of this world nor to rely on the materials and wealth. But this does not mean we automatically give up all our blessings.
Consider the rich young ruler in Mark 10. This young Jewish man held to the laws given, and Jesus loved him as he showed dedication. But he walked away in tears when asked to sell his possessions and follow Christ. Wealth is not the problem; it is the attachment to wealth. As Paul says in 1 Timothy 6:10, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.”
We may also consider certain kings of Israel. King David and his son Solomon ruled the throne of Israel, which included security, protection, abundant food, clothes, and even wives/concubines (although God did not approve of polygamy). Solomon chose wisdom over wealth when God told him to ask for anything (1 Kings 3:1-15). Solomon was blessed with more through his humility and longing to serve God despite his imperfections.
Wealth was not wrong, but how they used it was wrong. We see this most notably with David falling for Bathsheba to the point of murdering her husband (2 Samuel 11-12) and Solomon worshiping false idols over God (1 Kings 11), resulting in a line of kings that would rebel against God.
So, what does the Bible say then about poverty?
Throughout the Old Testament, specifically in the Proverbs, God is mentioned in how much he loves and looks out for the poor. Case and point:
“Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him.” (Proverbs 14:31)
“It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor than to divide the spoils with the proud.” (Proverbs 16:19)
“Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay his needs.” (Proverbs 19:17)
I want to hone that last verse because, as Christians, we are called to give to the poor and minister to them. Let’s look at what the disciple James says in his Epistle.
“If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” (James 1:26-27)
He further cements this in the following chapter.
“What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?” (James 2:14-15)
He discusses how faith without works is dead (2:16-26). It is not enough to have faith but to do what Christ calls us to do in our works, especially with the poor. The case and point are the parables of the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:31-46) and the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). In both stories, we are called to live out our faith and go above and beyond by ministering to those in poverty and suffering.
In other words, you cannot give the poor half-hearted encouragement such as, “Well, God’s in control, so you will be okay,” or “Just continue to have faith because God sees your suffering.” We're not doing much if we encourage poverty instead of helping people suffering from it.
Christians must be mindful of how their church ministers to the poor around them. Is it setting funds aside for charities? Is it ministering to people in the pews who are hurting? Does it help congregants as well as church leaders? Does the church speak harshly about poor people behind closed doors? Or are their hearts and actions reflective of Christ? The church must help the poor, minister to them in prayer and community, and help them carry their burdens.
Yes, we must be mindful of how much we give and why. We must be mindful of when helping hurts because we aren’t helping in the best ways.
Nor are we meant to give everything we have and neglect our own families. The Gospel calls us to help people carry their burdens, which we can only do if we have resources.
We can minister in many ways. It can be as simple as making meals, buying coffee, or sitting with people in their grief.
Give what you can and what you are called to.
Photo Credit:©GettyImages/Stas_V
This article is part of our Christian Terms catalog, exploring words and phrases of Christian theology and history. Here are some of our most popular articles covering Christian terms to help your journey of knowledge and faith:
The Full Armor of God
The Meaning of "Selah"
What Is Grace? Bible Definition and Christian Quotes
What is Discernment? Bible Meaning and Importance
What Is Prophecy? Bible Meaning and Examples