Talk:Prosperity theology/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Cerebellum (talk · contribs) 02:49, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Hello! I will be reviewing this article. --Cerebellum (talk) 02:49, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Wow, you guys have done a great job with this article! It is well-written, well-referenced, and highly informative. I have a few nitpicks, outlined below, but they are quite minor and I do not hesitate to promote this article to GA status. The comments below are meant as suggestions for further improvement; in my opinion, the most serious issue is that of the inordinately detailed Reception section. Thank you again for your work on this article! I enjoyed reading it and I learned some new things. --Cerebellum (talk) 03:49, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Comments

• Lead: When you say it has been linked with other movements, could you say what those other movements are?
• Lead: The connection to dominion theology in the third paragraph of the lead is not really followed up on in the article body. Nothing should be in the lead that is not in the body.
• Postwar Healing Revivals: and the laws of divine reciprocity ('give and it will be given back unto you')". There is a closing parenthesis here, but no initial parenthesis.
• Prose: The second paragraph of "Postwar Healing Revivals" repeats the word prominent. Can we replace one of these uses with another word?
• Word of Faith: a new prosperity-oriented teaching would develop in the 1970s that differed from deliverance evangelism. I'm not sure what deliverance evangelism is - when you introduce the term, it would be helpful to define it, or else use a different term.
• Practices: Catherine Bowler of the Duke Divinity School has criticized the advice offered. Rosin argues that prosperity theology contributed to the housing bubble that caused the financial crisis of 2007–2010. Who is Rosin? Perhaps you mean Bowler?
• Reception: Apologists for the movement note its ethnic diversity and argue that it encompasses a variety of views. This sentence seems almost out of place, coming immediately after a discussion of suffering. Would it be more appropriate elsewhere?
• Broadness of coverage: The reception section, which is mostly negative, is very long in comparison to the rest of the article. To help promote a neutral point of view, I recommend shortening it and lengthening the rest of the article, especially the "theology" section. Specifically, the three paragraphs devoted to Jones could perhaps be condensed into one, as could the two paragraphs about the positive confession paper. On the expansion side, you could talk about how prosperity theology interprets the list of scriptures given in the Theology section, and how this differs from the traditional interpretation. To me, one of the most interesting aspects of prosperity theology (or Word of Faith at least) is the idea that it is not God's will for us to suffer, and any suffering we experience is our own fault. If there are reliable sources for this idea, maybe you could discuss it, and also it would be nice to have more detail on positive confession. Finally, in the History section, you could expand the World of Faith subsection to two or three paragraphs, since it is arguably the most significant prosperity theology organization.

• Awesome, thanks for the review and comments! This article really was a team effort. I'm glad to hear that you liked it, quality research was tricky to pin down on this. The article suffered from a lot of POV pushing in the past, so it has come a long way. Your comments are well thought out, I'll try to fix those up in the next day or two. Mark Arsten (talk) 04:02, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Ok, I think I fixed bullets 1 through 7, balancing out the coverage will take a little more effort than I have energy for right now. Mark Arsten (talk) 04:37, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
    • Thanks for your review, Cerebellum. And a huge thank you to Mark & Ltwin for continued efforts on this article. ItsZippy ^{(talk • contributions)} 12:25, 21 December 2011 (UTC)