Where did the Word of Faith movement come from, and what shaped its theology?
Question 60082
The Word of Faith movement is one of the most widely diffused streams of popular Christianity in the world today, with roots in mid-twentieth century America and branches now extending across every continent. Its central teachings about health, wealth, confession, and the power of spoken faith are encountered across television networks, megachurches, and online ministries that collectively reach hundreds of millions of people. Understanding where these ideas came from, and how they came to be presented as biblical Christianity, is necessary for anyone who wants to evaluate them honestly.
The New Thought Connection
The theological genealogy of the Word of Faith movement does not begin in evangelical Christianity. It begins in the nineteenth-century American metaphysical movement known as New Thought, which taught that the mind has the power to create material reality, that illness and poverty are the products of wrong thinking, and that correct mental affirmation can bring health and prosperity into existence. New Thought was deeply influenced by transcendentalism, mesmerism, and various currents of idealist philosophy, and it gave rise to movements like Christian Science (Mary Baker Eddy), Unity School of Christianity, and Religious Science (Ernest Holmes). These were not Christian groups in any orthodox sense; they rejected the physical reality of matter, denied the atoning significance of Christ’s death, and located salvation in the correction of false thinking.
The bridge figure between New Thought and the Word of Faith movement is Essek William Kenyon (1867-1948), a Christian minister who absorbed New Thought ideas while studying at the Emerson College of Oratory in Boston, an institution steeped in the metaphysical tradition. Kenyon went on to teach a form of Christianity that retained orthodox language while filling it with New Thought content. He wrote extensively on themes of positive confession, the authority of the believer, the spiritual rather than physical nature of Christ’s atonement, and the power of the name of Jesus as a formula that could be deployed to claim healing and blessing. Whether Kenyon consciously imported New Thought ideas or independently arrived at structurally similar conclusions remains debated among scholars; what is not debated is the remarkable resemblance between his teaching and the metaphysical tradition that surrounded him.
Kenneth Hagin and the Development of the Movement
Kenneth Hagin (1917-2003) is the figure most responsible for the Word of Faith movement as it exists today. Hagin drew heavily on Kenyon’s writings, in some cases reproducing substantial portions of Kenyon’s work with minimal attribution, and developed them into a coherent teaching system that he disseminated through his ministry, the Rhema Bible Training College in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, and his extensive written output. Hagin claimed a series of dramatic visions and personal encounters with Jesus, through which he said he received direct revelation of these teachings. He presented faith as a spiritual force that, when activated by positive spoken confession, could compel both God and the physical world to respond.
Hagin’s teaching introduced several distinctive elements. The “positive confession” principle held that what a believer confesses with their mouth will become reality, and that speaking doubt or illness aloud gave the devil legal ground to bring those things about. The teaching on healing maintained that it was always God’s will to heal and that failure to receive healing was invariably the result of insufficient faith or wrong confession on the part of the sick person. The prosperity gospel extended these principles to finances: God’s will was always for believers to be financially prosperous, and poverty was a sign of spiritual failure.
Kenneth Copeland and Further Developments
Kenneth Copeland studied under Hagin and extended his teachings further, developing what critics have called the “little gods” doctrine: the idea that believers are themselves divine in some sense, that Adam was a god-being before the Fall, and that redemption restores believers to godlike status and authority. Copeland’s teaching also elaborated on the “spiritual death” of Jesus, the claim that Christ’s atoning work involved not merely physical death on the cross but spiritual death and suffering in hell, where Satan had to be defeated before the resurrection could occur. This is a serious Christological heresy that distorts both the person and the work of Christ, and it must be named as such.
The movement expanded through television ministries, reaching global audiences through the Trinity Broadcasting Network and similar platforms. Figures like Benny Hinn, Jesse Duplantis, and Creflo Dollar extended its reach further. In the Global South, particularly in Africa and Latin America, Word of Faith teaching has been adopted wholesale by large and growing church movements, where its promises of material blessing have obvious appeal in contexts of genuine poverty.
The Theological Problems
The doctrinal problems with Word of Faith teaching are not peripheral; they touch the central affirmations of the Christian faith. Its understanding of faith as a creative force rather than a relational response to a personal God represents a fundamental category error. Its prosperity gospel contradicts the consistent biblical witness that suffering, hardship, and material difficulty are normal and even formative dimensions of Christian life (Romans 5:3-4; 2 Corinthians 12:7-10; Hebrews 11:35-38). Its Christology, in the forms developed by Copeland and others, falls into the same category of error that the early church condemned when it encountered teachings that denied the physical sufficiency of Christ’s atoning death.
Perhaps most pastorally damaging is the guilt it places on the sick and the poor. If healing is always God’s will and prosperity is always the believer’s inheritance, then the person who remains ill after prayer, or who continues to struggle financially despite faithful giving, is implicitly told that their suffering is the product of their own spiritual failure. This is not only unbiblical; it is cruel. It takes Paul’s declaration in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness,” and stands it entirely on its head.
So, now what?
Understanding the Word of Faith movement’s origins in New Thought rather than in orthodox Christianity explains why its teachings feel simultaneously religious and alien to Scripture. It did not develop through careful biblical exegesis; it developed through the importation of metaphysical ideas into Christian language. Believers who have been shaped by Word of Faith teaching deserve patient pastoral engagement, not dismissal, but they deserve honest biblical truth rather than accommodation to ideas that have caused considerable damage in the name of the gospel. The remedy is patient, careful engagement with what Scripture actually says about faith, healing, suffering, wealth, and the nature of God.
“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” 2 Corinthians 12:9
