Essek William Kenyon

Essek William Kenyon (also EW Kenyon ; born April 24, 1867 in Hadley , New York , † March 19, 1948 ) was an evangelical pastor of the New Covenant Baptist Church and president of the Bible Institute in Spencer, Massachusetts. He is considered the forerunner of the Word of Faith movement .

Life

Kenyon was born into a poor family. Although he rarely went to church in his youth , he became a member of a Methodist church in Amsterdam (New York) when he was in his early twenties , where he also gave his first sermon . He made his living at the time as a piano and organ seller. In line with his desire to become an actor, he attended the Emerson School of Oratory in Boston from 1892 , but dropped out of his studies after just one year. During his time at the Emerson School he came into contact with the so-called New Thought Movement , which significantly shaped his understanding of Christian doctrine. When he was young, Kenyon referred to himself as an agnostic .

In 1893 Kenyon married Evva Spurling, who also saw herself as an agnostic. Shortly after their wedding, the two attended a Baptist service together and became devout Christians - then Kenyon gave up his plan to become an actor and became pastor of a small church in Elmira (New York) .

In 1898 he opened the Bethel Bible Institute in Spencer (Massachusetts), which he headed as president until 1923, then after a short time as pastor of a Baptist church in Pasadena (California) in 1931 he set up the New Covenant Baptist Church in Seattle . There he also started a radio preaching program, Kenyon's Church of the Air .

Although Kenyon was not very well known during his lifetime, his teachings - especially in relation to healing and faith - have shaped many preachers of the following times to the present. His ideas are widespread to this day, especially among representatives of a so-called prosperity gospel . Although Kenyon himself - like many who still follow his teachings today - always denied a substantive connection to the New Thought Movement , this becomes apparent on closer examination of his theology.

theology

Kenyon emphasized the idea that the nature of God and the human mind can unite so that the divine becomes part of the believer's consciousness. Through the knowledge of divine revelation one can exceed the limits of the senses and the understanding, and thus act "in faith". For Kenyon, putting one's own needs and desires into words - that is, the "inside" of a person - is a kind of mediation between physical and spiritual areas. He also wrote the phrase, which is still widely used in the Word of Faith Movement today: "What I confess, I own".

Daniel Ray McConnell deals extensively with Kenyon in his publication "Another Gospel" . He sees a dualistic epistemology in Kenyon's teachings , which for him in turn is derived from the New Thought Movement: The spirit forms the basic, ideally all-powerful, divine identity of a person. The assumption that Kenyon repeatedly emphasized that healing first takes place on the spiritual level before it manifests on the physical level results in a hierarchical structure of reality : The spiritual, spiritual realm is both the design and the anticipation of events in the physical world . The individual is thus in constant competition between the forces of limitation (e.g. human fallibility) and transcendence (the limitless of divine identity).

Publications

• The Wonderful Name of Jesus . Westcoast Publishing Co., Los Angeles, 1927
• Jesus the Healer . Kenyon's Gospel Publishing Society, 1940
• The Two Kinds of Faith . Seattle, 1942
• New Creation Realities . Seattle, 1945
• What happend from the Cross to the Throne . Seattle, 1945
• In His Presence . 14th edition, Lynnwood; Washington, Kenyon Gospel Publishing Society, 1969
• The Bible in the Light of Our Redemption . Kenyon's Gospel Publishing Society, Our Redemption, 1969
• The Hidden Man . Kenyon's Gospel Publishing Society, 1970
• Two Kinds of Life . Kenyon's Gospel Publishing Society, 1971
• Identification: A Romance in Redemption . Kenyon's Gospel Publishing Society, 1986
• The Father and His family; or, A restating of the plan of redemption . Reality press, Spencer (Mass.), 1916
• Power of Your Words . Whitaker Distributors, 1995, ISBN 0883683482 (with Don Gossett )
• The Power of Spoken Faith . Whitaker House, 2003, ISBN 0883686759 (with Don Gossett)
• The two questions of justice. The most important message the church has ever been offered. Shalom Verlag, Runding. Without a year.

literature

• Joe McIntyre: EW Kenyon and His Message of Faith: The True Story . Creation House, 1997, ISBN 0884194515
• Dale H. Simmons: EW Kenyon and the Postbellum Pursuit of Peace, Power, and Plenty . Scarecrow Press, 1997, ISBN 081083264X
• DR McConnell: Another Gospel? . Verlag CM Fliß, 1st edition 1990.
• Geir Lie: EW Kenyon, Cult founder or evangelical minister ?: An historical analysis of Kenyon's theology with particular emphasis on roots and influences . Refleks Publishing, 2003.
• Simon Coleman, The Globalization of Charismatic Christianity: Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity, Cambridge University Press, 2000 (p. 43ff).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Randall Herbert Balmer, Encyclopedia of Evangelism, article "Kenyon, E (ssek) W (illiam)", Westminster John Knox Press, 2002 (p. 317).
2. ↑ Simon Coleman, The Globalization of Charismatic Christianity: Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity, Cambridge University Press, 2000 (p. 44).
3. ↑ Simon Coleman, The Globalization of Charismatic Christianity: Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity, Cambridge University Press, 2000 (pp. 44f).
4. ↑ In the original: "What I confess, I possess." EW Kenyon, The Hidden Man, Kenyon's Gospel Publishing Society, 1970.
5. Jump up ↑ Simon Coleman, The Globalization of Charismatic Christianity: Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity, Cambridge University Press, 2000 (p. 45).

Web links

• kenyons.org - Homepage of the Kenyons Gospel Publishing Society
• eaglerocks.de - Comparison of Kenneth Hagin and EW Kenyon
• nationmaster.com - encyclopedia entry about Kenyon