How Manifesting Is Infiltrating Christian Culture
Every generation in the American church has had its own shiny, marketable theology trend — something that promises an easier, flashier version of faith.
In the 1980s, the prosperity gospel swept across TV screens, promising believers health, wealth and success in exchange for big faith (and often bigger donations). By the 2000s, that theology found an even wider audience, thanks to celebrity pastors and charismatic personalities who often carried shallow or fickle theology beneath polished branding and stadium tours.
In the years that followed, many Christians who had grown up during the peak of the prosperity gospel began to critique its empty promises and materialistic focus. But now, a new version has quietly resurfaced among young adults, mixing New Age ideas about manifesting with Christian language — and offering the same seductive promise of control and self-fulfillment.
Manifesting — the belief that visualizing and declaring what you want can bring it into reality — has become a cultural phenomenon. In Christian circles, it’s often framed as “speaking things into existence” or “claiming God’s promises,” blending New Age self-help language with cherry-picked Bible verses.
Whether it’s writing down dream jobs, praying for a specific relationship or envisioning a perfectly curated life, many believers now see manifesting as a spiritual strategy for achieving personal success.
Dr. Michael Horton, professor of theology at Westminster Seminary California, says this isn’t entirely surprising.
“The prosperity gospel was always about using God as a means to an end — health, wealth or success,” Horton said. “What’s changed is that now it’s more personalized and repackaged as individual empowerment.”
The concept of manifesting has exploded on social media, where hashtags like #Manifestation have billions of views. In a 2022 Pew Research Center study, 47 percent of Americans said they believe in some form of manifestation or “positive energy” as a way to shape their future.
While these ideas were once considered fringe or purely New Age, they’re now presented as tools for “living your best life,” even in Christian contexts.
A quick search on Christian TikTok shows creators encouraging followers to “declare” a new job or “claim” a future spouse by writing it down and visualizing it daily. The method mirrors secular manifesting practices — like vision boards and daily affirmations — but is dressed up with Bible verses taken out of context, like Matthew 7:7 (“Ask and it will be given to you”) or Proverbs 18:21 (“Death and life are in the power of the tongue”).
The problem isn’t that Christians shouldn’t pray boldly or hope for good things. Scripture encourages both.
The real danger comes when believers begin to adopt the mindset that God is somehow obligated to give them exactly what they want if they just believe hard enough. This isn’t faith — it’s spiritualized entitlement, and it can easily distort a relationship with God into a transactional arrangement rather than a posture of trust and surrender.
In her book Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel, historian Kate Bowler explains that the original prosperity preachers in the 20th century promised physical and financial blessings in exchange for faith and donations. Today’s version is less about overt wealth and more about “wellness,” “alignment” and “vibes.”
The language is softer, but the underlying message is the same: if your life isn’t picture-perfect, you must not be believing hard enough.
While it’s common to hear messages that you can achieve anything if you just believe, Bowler reminds us that faith was never meant to be a tool for self-empowerment at all costs.
“Everything is not possible—the sooner you figure that out, the better off you will be,” Bowler writes.
The Christian life includes limitation and surrender, not just endless possibility and control.
She also observes that while prosperity theology promises agency and empowerment, it often turns quickly into blame.
“The prosperity gospel offers people a guarantee: Follow these rules, and God will reward you, heal you, restore you,” she writes. “The problem is, if you’re not blessed, you’ve failed.”
This cycle can create crushing spiritual shame, isolating believers when their reality doesn’t match the dream they’ve been sold.
Beyond that, Bowler also describes how prosperity thinking can transform God into a transactional figure.
“You begin to view God as a cosmic vending machine: put in your faith, and out pops whatever you want,” she writes.
This image perfectly captures the mindset that underlies much of the manifesting language now creeping into Christian spaces — the idea that if you think the right thoughts, speak the right words and maintain the right energy, God will owe you the life you envisioned.
This once fringe thinking has quietly found its way into churches across the country. A 2023 Lifeway Research survey found that 76 percent of Protestant churchgoers agreed with the statement, “God wants me to prosper financially.” While this doesn’t explicitly endorse manifesting, it shows a widespread belief that God’s primary goal is personal success.
“This is a dangerous shift,” Horton warns. “It reduces God to a personal assistant for our dreams. It also sets believers up for spiritual crisis when life doesn’t turn out the way they envisioned.”
Celebrity pastors and Christian influencers have amplified this mindset, often unintentionally. Clips of sermons featuring phrases like “your breakthrough is coming” or “if you can see it, you can seize it” rack up millions of views. The language sounds inspiring, but it subtly conditions believers to equate faith with personal success.
This isn’t to say Christians shouldn’t pray expectantly or set goals. Scripture encourages bold prayers and trust in God’s provision.
But there’s a line between faith and manipulation, between hope and hubris. The language of manifesting encourages us to focus inward and prioritize our desires rather than seek God’s will, even when it leads us into hard or uncomfortable places.
The modern manifestation trend also has implications for community. By focusing so heavily on individual outcomes and personal success, it sidelines the communal, sacrificial nature of faith. The Christian life is meant to be lived in service to others, not as a solo pursuit of perfection.
Perhaps the most sobering consequence is the spiritual disillusionment that follows when the “manifested” blessings never arrive. Instead of deepening faith, unmet expectations can breed resentment and even lead people to abandon faith altogether.
As Christians navigate this new cultural landscape, we must return to the foundational truth that God is not a tool for personal advancement. He is not obligated to fulfill our every wish, no matter how strongly we believe or how beautifully we visualize. Faith, at its core, is about trusting God’s character and sovereignty, not about bending reality to match our Pinterest board.
If we want to follow Jesus authentically, we have to trade the illusion of control for genuine surrender — a far harder, but ultimately more fulfilling, path.
