Quote of the Week

"As believers we will want to do all we can to ensure genuine freedom for all persons. . . . No matter how uneducated and uncultured, unkempt and unclean, vile and course, wicked and immoral, every person is something wonderful and of importance to God, for he has made all of us in his own image."

Millard J. Erickson (1932- )
Distinguished Professor of Theology
Western Seminary

Julius Scruggs on Prosperity Theology

From Ethics Daily's interview with the Rev. Dr. Julius Scruggs, newly elected president of the National Baptist Convention.

"I think that the prosperity gospel is a threat to Christianity. Period," said Scruggs of the belief system that God shows favor to believers through wealth and material possessions.

Such teaching is "a subtle distortion of biblical truths," he said.

"I'm one who believes that God will take care of all of us … But I'm not one who believes that that means that the pastor ought to drive a Bentley car or live in a million dollar house or fly on a corporate jet," said Scruggs, who has been pastor of First Missionary Baptist Church in Huntsville for 32 years.

"That kind of prosperity is influencing the pulpit and the pew in American life today, and that's unfortunate because it takes us far and away from the Jesus who talked about foxes have holes and birds have nests but the son of man doesn't have anywhere to lay his head," said Scruggs. "There is always a tension between that aspect of Jesus and the Jesus who brought the abundant life to everybody."

Warning of the allure that money had for clergy, he said, "One has to be grounded in what Christianity is all about to not allow that temptation to get them."

Click here to read the rest of the interview.