St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Why a Church Gave Away Cars for Mother’s Day

A Mother’s Day car give-away reflects a St. Louis church’s prosperity gospel, Richard Flory told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Here’s an excerpt of the article:

“I honestly have never heard of anything this big being given away,” said Richard Flory, the senior director of research and evaluation at the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture.

There are often giveaways of some sort as a symbolic gesture to mothers on Mother’s Day, he said. A car “ratchets it up” and could help attract more congregants, especially important to a large church with four locations.

“That’s a lot of overhead, and when you’re running that many physical locations, you do need people in the seats,” he said.

However, the car giveaway seems to fit into Faith Church’s message, which Flory said appears to have shades of so-called “prosperity gospel” teaching. Under that doctrine, the church teaches that God rewards the faithful and those who give to the ministry with physical returns “as distinct from spiritual returns,” Flory said.