Kenneth E. Hagin (1917—2003)
Country of Origin
-
United States
Countries/Regions of Ministry
- United States
Traditions
- Pentecostal
- Charismatic
Ministries
- pastor
- teacher
Kenneth E. Hagin is best known as the father of the “Word of Faith” (or “Positive Confession”) movement. Born and raised in Texas, in a Southern Baptist community, Hagin’s interest in health was not just theoretical; he had a congenital heart malformation and blood disease that prescribed a childhood of sickness. At age fifteen, Hagin committed his life to Christ. One year later, however, was dramatically healed from a bedridden state after focusing on Mark 11:23-24 (KJV)—“For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." In years to come, Hagin would quote these verses repeatedly.
Before his twentieth birthday, Hagin founded a nondenominational church. After learning about Spirit baptism at a Pentecostal tent meeting, he pastored several Assemblies of God congregations throughout the 1940s. In 1949, he began to travel as a teacher and evangelist, headquartering in Garland, Texas before relocating to Tulsa in 1966. By then, Hagin had a daily radio program called “Faith Seminar of the Air.” It articulated his signature message that God would respond to what believers declared in faith, resulting in all manner of goodness and blessing. His emphasis on "the power of the tongue" (e.g. Prov 18:21) was evident, as was a theology of declaration and authority over aspects of life equated with fallenness--sickness, poverty, calamity of all kinds. A theological pillar was the divine will always for human flourishing, expressed simply, for example, in the apostle John's statement that “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth” (3 John 2)?
Over many decades, Hagin wrote and taught prolifically. He would pen and self-publish more than a hundred brief books with such titles as How to Write Your Own Ticket with God and How God Taught Me about Prosperity. To some, the teachings of the mild-mannered folksy Texan opened the gates to a fuller life of spiritual, physical, and material abundance. To others, his "health and wealth" gospel was seriously flawed. His most popular work, The Believer’s Authority (1985), taught that the Spirit baptized Christian has authority they do not know about, or do not use reliably. It declares on the back cover:
… A few of us have barely gotten to the edge of that authority, but before Jesus comes again, there’s going to be a whole company of believers who will rise up and with the authority that is theirs … they will do the work that God intended they should do.
In XX, he initiated Rhema Bible Training College to help foster that "whole company." He mentored others, including Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, Joyce Meyer, Creflo Dollar, Frederick K. C. Price, to name just a few—not to mention his own son and daughter-in-law, Kenneth W. and Lynette Hagin, who continue to lead Rhema ministries.Today, there are more than 26,000 graduates of Rhema Bible Training College in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, in addition to more than 60,000 from parallel schools on 253 campuses in 51 nations. The annual Rhema Camp Meeting continues; many more watch the weekly “Rhema Praise” TV program and share videos with one another. Nearly every city in America has one or more local churches in the Word of Faith vein.
Questions, however, still circulate about Positive Confession teaching as Hagin and founding fathers initiated it, particularly the focus on health and prosperity. One of the first theologians to speak up was Charles Farah, Jr., of nearby Oral Roberts University, who in 1979 wrote From the Pinnacle of the Temple, cautioning against "name-it-and-claim-it" mentalities stemming from a human presumption that God will do whatever we say. Another ORU alum, D. R. McConnell, produced a substantive challenge in his book A Different Gospel (1988). New Testament scholar and Bible translator, Gordon D. Fee, whose background is Assemblies of God like Hagin’s, wrote a series of articles entitled “The Disease of the Health & Wealth Gospels.” These called readers to remember the Bible’s predisposition toward the poor and humble. In one conclusion, Fee wrote: “Any ‘Gospel’ that will not ‘sell’ as well among believers in Ouagadougou, Upper Volta or Dacca, Bangladesh … as in Orange County, California or Tulsa County, Oklahoma is not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Over the years, such critiques influenced Hagin, who wrote his last book at age eighty-three, entitled The Midas Touch—A Balanced Approach to Biblical Prosperity. The introduction states:
During my more than sixty-five years of ministry, I have … observed many teachings and practices that have both helped and hindered the Body of Christ….
It has been my experience that with virtually every biblical subject, there is a main road of truth with a ditch of error on either side of the road. The Church has not always been a very good driver, often having great difficulty staying in the middle of the road….
The topic of money and prosperity is no exception. There are those in the ditch on one side of the road who teach that Jesus lived in abject poverty, that money is evil, and that biblical prosperity has nothing at all to do with material things. And in the other ditch, there are people who are preaching that getting rich is the main focus of faith, that God’s main concern is your material well-being, and that money is the true measure of spirituality. Where is the truth? It’s found far away from both extremes, on much higher ground.
The book further condemned specific iconography of the Word of Faith movement, such as:
- Those who “try to make the offering plate some kind of heavenly vending machine…. There is no spiritual formula to sow a Ford and reap a Mercedes.”
- Those who ask audiences to “name your seed” (a specific amount of money they will give in order to get a larger return blessing)... which “corrupts the very attitude of our giving nature.”
- The notion of “a hundred-fold return," saying if the math were true, “we would have Christians walking around with not billions or trillions of dollars, but quadrillions of dollars!”
- Those who preach manipulative offerings or “supernatural debt cancellation” via giving. He concludes, “There is not one bit of Scripture I know about that validates such a practice. I’m afraid it is simply a scheme to raise money for the preacher."
While controversial in many ways, Kenneth E. Hagin experienced a divine healing himself and sincerely wanted Christians to be able to live more abundant lives on every level. He died on September 19, 2003 in Tulsa, Oklahoma as a result of natural causes and with a clear legacy of faith in the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement.