Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel

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I'm on a quest to understand the roots and logic of the respect/worship/devotion some varieties of Christianity have for capitalism. This is not quite about that, but it's certainly about a related phenomenon. And it helped me understand that I was right to find the shirts and mugs and wooden household decor items that say "Blessed" to give off a whiff of smug self-righteousness. Tradition-bound Christians scraped by with barely enough while true believers drilled deeper to tap into the abundant lives that God promised . . . Everyone possessed the God-given potential to sow and reap their financial harvest with plenty to spare. Poverty marked a spiritual shortage. . . Outsiders called it baptized materialism,. Followers called it living in the overflow." (95).

However, I think the reading of Bl. Carlo Acutis’ life is not complete without taking into consideration his simple spirituality. There are a good number of Italian publications about Carlo’s life and his spirituality, yet not many, if any titles in English until now, that speaks of his spirituality. It therefore and excitement for me to know in early 2021 that Mgr. Anthony Figueiredo, a monsignor currently serving in the Diocese of Assisi wrote Blessed Carlo Acutis – 5 Steps to Being a Saint and published by the Catholic Truth Society.

Vern S. Poythress, Distinguished Professor of New Testament, Biblical Interpretation, and Systematic Theology, Westminster Theological Seminary It is possible to allow our difficulties to make us better and to live in such a way that we will end up better off than we were before the trouble began. We should never waste our pain. Through the wisdom distilled in this book, we can learn how to gain something from our messes, use what we've learned to stay out of trouble in the future, and allow our newfound wisdom to help other people mind blessing in the mist of their messes.

Andrew Sach , Pastor, Grace Greenwich Church, United Kingdom; coauthor, Pierced for Our Transgressions and Dig Deeper Transformative Personal Application:Every chapter asks and answers the question, What does it mean to hear and keep this part of Revelation and thereby experience its promised blessing? The story of Bl. Carlo Acutis is truly a remarkable one. If you want to read more about the life of Carlo, I suggest you go online and do a Google Search… you will be able to get much of his biographical details. However, what I was more excited after Carlo’s beatification was the fact that there was now a young model of holiness, close to my generation that I can relate to and ask for his intercession and I pray for the day of his canonization. I thank Monsignor Anthony Figueiredo for this truly beautiful, agile, and inspiring book. It is historically well documented. It is theologically profound. Here he offers us not only a biographical profile, but a “road map” of holiness in the footsteps of Carlo. We are not all called to the charismatic choices of Francis of Assisi, but we can all follow the simple way of Carlo. It takes nothing away of what makes life beautiful, but everything hinges on Jesus, in particular on the Eucharist, the “highway to heaven.””

On Saturday October 10, 2020, in the Upper Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, Italy, the Venerable Carlo Acutis was beatified, the second last step before canonization. Days prior to Bl. Carlo’s beatification, I kept seeing news stories of him on my Facebook news feed. I knew a little bit about who Carlo was prior to his beatification, but never bothered to read up much about him. The book then goes on to list and outline the practice of that fivefold path. Towards the end of the closing reflections is that same quote from the first picture of Carlo. This is then followed by a series of Carlo’s sayings. And a prayer. Devotion to the Blessed Mother through recitation of the Rosary and discovering the lives of the saints Second, although its prosperity angle is different, it's not charismatic, and it has no paid parish ministry, as I see it, Mormonism is a part of the prosperity gospel, too, with the same ultimate Second Great Awakening roots as the rest of the movement. Nowhere mentioned.

In some ways, this review hasn’t even touched upon what Dr. Bowler describes as the four themes of the prosperity gospel: faith, wealth, health, and victory. But I have chosen to highlight what stood out most to me, perhaps because it was less familiar until I actually read Blessed. A Focus on What Is Clear and Uncontroversial:Highlights Revelation’s call for a costly allegiance to Christ and a refusal to compromise with the world rather than focusing on interpretive approaches and disputes Bowler notes the recent emphasis in soft prosperity churches upon cultivating healthy bodies through diet and exercise versus the obesity which has crept into mainstream American society. The church doesn’t want to blindly follow after the rest of popular mainstream culture in idolizing health, but in too many Christian communities there is little to no emphasis being placed upon our need to be actively cultivating physically-healthy bodies. Yet, what is this spirituality of Bl. Carlo? Right from the start of the book, Mgr. Figueiredo made it a point that Carlo was a very normal young man. For me and for many young people, Carlo is someone who you can picture walking down the street with a sweater and jeans. Yet, what was extraordinary in this ordinary young man was his holiness and how he constantly strived towards it in the setting that he was living in. He was able to be holy, while maintaining his hobbies and pastimes that made him original. Based on Carlo’s life, Mgr. Figueiredo presents the reader five steps to holiness:Bowler does find something of a story merely by tracing the history of the prosperity gospel from the New Thought of the 19th century through to the Hillsong, Joel Osteen, and Creflo Dollar of today. But this is a movement which doesn't take its own ideas seriously enough to ground them in anything but the flimsiest appeals to the Bible and the flagrantest appeals to telegenic charisma—what do I expect? Bowler approaches this topic as an ethnographer, which means she is much more interested in describing the movement than taking a position on it, but I certainly would have welcome some insights from her into how she feels this highly popular stream of Christianity fits with her own personal theological views. We are shown how Carlo’s love for God, mary and the ssaints drew his own family and later others deeper in their faith: