Reporting in this month’s Atlantic about a growing trend in Pentecostal Christianity, Hanna Rosin focues on Pastor Fernando Garay of Charlottesville’s Casa del Padre church, who preaches that riches can come in this life — not the afterlife, as centuries of Christianity would have it — if you believe.
"In Garay’s church," Rosin reports, "God is the ‘Owner of All the Silver and Gold,’ and with enough faith, any believer can access the inheritance. Money is not the dull stuff of hourly wages and bank-account statements, but a magical substance that comes as a gift from above. Even in these hard times, it is discouraged, in such churches, to fall into despair about the things you cannot afford. ‘Instead of saying "I’m poor," say "I’m rich,"’ Garay’s wife, Hazael, told me one day. ‘The word of God will manifest itself in reality.’"
