Father Divine diagnosed the cause (negative thinking) and the cure (positive thinking) for the Great Depression.

In it, he folded Christian and psychological categories into a New Thought theme: God’s power could be harnessed by “a spirit and method by which we can control and even determine” life’s circumstances.

Oral Roberts’s cheerful reminder to “Expect a Miracle” reconciled two opposing poles—predictability and otherworldliness—that Hagin codified in his law of faith.

Good Americans were good consumers and (so it seemed) good Christians. This nascent culture of acquisitiveness fixed in people’s minds the connection between America’s fortunes and their own spending power.

Self-mastery became an art and occupation, as people sought to consolidate the era’s advances with improvements to their own lives.

The 1950s saw the first financial miracles creep into testimonies and sermons as a patchwork message of competing and complementary explanations about how faith made belief work.

Soon a flurry of “Prove God” campaigns encouraged believers to test their financial faith and earn their own proof. Gene Ewing, known as a financial troubleshooter for fellow evangelists, published Prove God testimonies like that of M. M. Baker, photographed beside his late model Lincoln:

Right thinking would open the floodgates to the abundant life: “See yourself in a prosperous condition. Affirm that you will before long be in a prosperous condition.… You thus make yourself a magnet to attract the things that you desire.”

Jesus’ death and resurrection had shifted believers’ ontological status, making them legal shareholders of certain rights and privileges.