The political and the economic decisions to partition the entire continent of Africa into the different European colonies were taken by the then European powers that were present at the Berlin Conference of 1884. The primary goals of these colonial powers in Africa was primarily economical in nature.
After the breaking up of the entire Africa continent into the many different colonies. The nations of Germany, Great Britain, Portugal and France played the major role in these new political arrangements or experiments. Simultaneously at the same time, the European Churches and their missionaries also came to Africa alongside with the European colonialists to introduce Africans to a type of Christianity that was practiced all over Europe for centuries.
The European type of Christianity that was given to Africans had no single element of the today's prosperity gospel in it. This gospel from the European missionary Churches pointed Africans to eternal salvation through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. The new African converts into Christianity were never promised wealth or high finances for being a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ, a faithful tither of their personal incomes and a regular offering giver. These missionaries focused their energy on soul winning, evangelism, church establishment, education and health care. Christianity was never presented to Africans as a way of quickly getting rich. Education, employment, financial prudence and hardwork were the focal points of these European Church missionaries in Africa.
At the close of the 19th century, Africans across the African continent started to demand for political independence and freedom from these European powers. Their political struggles continued into the middle of the 20th century and started to yield results in the 1950s and 1960s respectively. Many colonies got their political independence from these colonial masters and the European type of Christianity was the primary order of the day at that time all over the new independent nations of Africa.
Shortly after the great American economic depressions of the 1930s and the second world war were both over. A group of American Christian preachers in the southern United States (Bible-belt region of America) in the middle of 1940s started the "Faith and Healing Movement", a new form of Christianity that promises healing and wealth to its followers and givers. The pioneers of this new form of Christianity were the late Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagin Sr respectively. This strange form of Christianity that is generally known as the "Prosperity Gospel" became popular in the southern United States with tens of thousands of new followers or converts embracing this new Christian doctrine.
In the middle of 1950s and 1960s respectively, these American prosperity preachers and pioneers saw the new nations of Africa as a fertile and untapped land for their prosperity gospel. Many of them came to Africa in the 1960s and introduced the traditional African Christians or Churches to this new form of Christianity through their crusades and church meetings or programs. Their books, pamphlets, monthly magazines and radio programs also flooded the new nations of Africa.
By the middle of the 1960s into the 1970s, this unbiblical form of Christianity had won tens of thousands of new followers across many African countries. The unbiblical teachings of these American prosperity preachers became the sound doctrine for the many new African Christian converts. Many new Churches were then established by these new African Christian converts to this prosperity gospel after the patterns of their American prosperity gospel teachers, mentors and their foreign ministries.
Today in the 21st century human universe, this new form of Christianity that started in America and had been successfully exported to the poorest nations of Africa has produced the two major mixed results (the super-rich preachers and their poor followers). The false hope of wealth and good health that this prosperity gospel promises that can never solve the present massive continental problems of poverty and underdevelopment in Africa. The answers to the political, economic and social problems confronting the African continent in the 21st century that have continued to elude the many mineral-rich nations of the Africa can only come from good democratic governance, solid economic policies, effective social services and not from the so called "Prosperity Gospel".
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