The prosperity gospel holds that God intends abundance rather than poverty or sickness for the faithful, and that a believer secures that abundance through three linked practices: positive confession, speaking one's desired outcome aloud in faith so that it is activated; seed faith giving, treating a financial gift, often to a ministry, as a seed that God is obligated to multiply back to the giver; and a reading of Christ's atonement as extending beyond spiritual salvation to guarantee physical healing and material prosperity in this life.
Proponents ground the teaching in a specific cluster of biblical texts, read together rather than individually: 3 John 1:2, a greeting wishing a traveling companion good health and prosperity; Malachi 3:10, on tithing and the opened windows of heaven; Mark 10:29 to 30, on receiving a hundredfold return for what is given up for Christ; and 2 Corinthians 8:9, on Christ becoming poor so that believers might become rich. Historian Kate Bowler, whose academic history of the movement remains the standard scholarly reference, traces this cluster of teachings to a fusion of nineteenth century American metaphysical religion and early twentieth century Pentecostal healing revivalism, carried forward by E. W. Kenyon and later systematized by Kenneth Hagin's Word of Faith movement.
The doctrine is not a formal teaching of any historic Christian denomination; it circulates instead through independent Pentecostal, charismatic and neo-charismatic ministries, and through softer, non-Word of Faith versions preached in some mainstream megachurches.