“God Gave Me My Money”: The Prosperity Gospel and the Latinx Context with Rev. Daisy L. Machado, Ph.D.
We are excited to co-host Hispanic Summer Program’s October Exchange, “God Gave Me My Money”: The Prosperity Gospel and the Latinx Context with Rev. Dr. Daisy Machado on Wednesday, October 12, 2022 from 7:00 pm – 8:15 pm EST. This event will take place via Zoom.
If you would like to be part of this event, please RSVP by Monday, October 10, 2022.
Dr. Machado’s Exchange presentation will begin with the words of John D. Rockefeller: “God gave me my money.” This phrase characterized how this figure understood his wealth was amassed. But even more interesting is the sentence that followed this one where he says, “I believe the power to make money is a gift from God…” Mr. Rockefeller was not inventing any of these ideas, instead, he was giving voice to ways of thinking about wealth that were already present in U.S. society. With each passing decade of the early 1900s, these ideas become more solidified becoming what we know today as the “prosperity gospel” in which a person’s relationship with God is transactional. This lecture will provide a short history of the beginnings of the prosperity gospel in the U.S., focusing on the rise of prosperity leaders in Latin America beginning in the 1980s.
Rev. Daisy L. Machado, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of the Hispanic Summer Program and Professor Emerita of American Religious History at Union Theological Seminary.