Review: Confessions of a Prosperity Gospel Preacher

The beginnings of my inquiries into the prosperity gospel

When he was 13, Costi W. Hinn’s family lived in a 10,000-square-foot mansion in British Columbia, with a swimming pool, gate, steam room and indoor hot tub. Hinn’s parents weren’t big-shot business people. Nor had they inherited a fortune. In fact, Hinn’s dad was a prosperity gospel preacher and charismatic faith healer.[1]

I don’t care if someone is rich, and if Hinn’s dad and his uncle[i] (who started this whole thing and is Benny Hinn) made their dough in any other way, I wouldn’t care at all. But they made it through the espousal of the prosperity gospel, which in part holds that God rewards people in return for their active giving to the preacher’s church. The more you give, the more you get. Or as Costi Hinn terms it, the prosperity gospel “exploits the poor and ruins the lives of some of the world’s most vulnerable people.”[2]

Hinn walked away in shame from the prosperity gospel he and his family preached a few years ago, and he wrote a book about it, God, Greed, and the (Prosperity) Gospel. It’s an easy read, and I read it over the course of two evenings. It was an interesting book, yet I wanted so much more. Hinn could have given readers so much more. But more on that later.

I’ve found the prosperity gospel preachers of today and the televangelists that I grew up with in the 1970s and 1980s endlessly fascinating. I’ve found their followers fascinating too. I am enthralled with their stories and the sheer chutzpah of them pulling it off.

This type of preaching and religious practice I find abhorrent, and I always have. When I was a kid and Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart had their public falls from grace, I certainly felt plenty of righteous indignation. The highly unfortunate part of this was that I found Christianity by extension abhorrent. And I suspect many people felt the same as me, particularly those of my generation. Christianity was all a scam, a delusion, selling hope for a price. These TV preachers in large part, colored my view of the faith I grew up with, but didn’t feel connected with at all. I was too afraid to ask questions of people who might know something or be able to answer my questions. I had a good idea of what their answers would be to any questions I had: “who’s been feeding you that garbage?” In my era, in my school and upbringing, questions weren’t OK, or at least that’s what I thought. In the end I just gave up and put Christianity and religion in a pile of what I thought was hogwash.

Back to Costi W. Hinn. His conscience and the troubles his then fiancé had with his family resulted in him leaving his family’s ministry. Those factors wore him down to the point where he walked away from fame and riches in the tawdry world of the prosperity gospel.

Hinn does a good job with describing what life was like before he left his family’s church empire. Where the book breaks down is its lack of discussion of what his relationship was like with members of his family specifically after he left the family business. All Hinn offers is a summary paragraph of how relations are with his family now: “A mixture of victories and challenges. Some family members have been walking in the truth, while others remain convinced that their theological positions and behaviors are justified by their special anointing.”[3]

What has the reaction been from his father? From his mother? His sisters? His famous uncle? There is nothing from them.

Ultimately the book couldn’t decide what it wanted to be and Hinn admitted as much. “The truth is, there is theology in this book, and there are stories,” Hinn writes. “But neither side will be fully satisfied, which is why we’ll always need more books on the topics at hand.”[4]

Amen. I was not satisfied. His writing on the theology is solid and he could have stuck with that. Or, it could have been an autobiography. Or a memoir of what happened leading up to and after he left the family business. Unfortunately, the reader only gets appetizers of both.

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[1] Hinn, Costi W.. God, Greed, and the (Prosperity) Gospel (p. 30). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

[2] Hinn, Costi W.. God, Greed, and the (Prosperity) Gospel (p. 15). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

[3] Hinn, Costi W. God, Greed, and the (Prosperity) Gospel (p. 213). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

[4] Hinn, Costi W.. God, Greed, and the (Prosperity) Gospel (p. 15). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

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[i] Benny Hinn is Costi Hinn’s uncle. Benny Hinn renounced his espousal of the prosperity gospel in 2019, according to a report in Christianity Today. https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2019/september/benny-hinn-renounces-prosperity-gospel.html