That latter group is well known to me, particularly the leadership of the "Word of Faith" movement. These are the pastors with the Gulfstreams and the Bentleys, the massive sprawling mansions and...in some cases...their own international airports, built on the dime of their church, tax-free, of course. Those folk have gotten called out in my sermons on the regular, because their warped version of Christian faith is...well, it's an abomination.
I know these pastors. And I know the most influential leader of that movement.
Which is why it was a little odd reading an article about the rise of right-wing Christian nationalism and finding...Kenneth Copeland?
In today's print version of the Washington Post (which you might have missed if you cancelled your subscription), I read the following, describing a pro-Trump rally at a Louisiana megachurch:
"We have every right there is to tell the Devil: 'You take your hands off this nation!'" roared televangelist Kenneth Copeland, who put on a U.S. flag jacket and red MAGA hat when he took the stage.The scene could have come from any of the hard-right Christian road shows now barnstorming the country, with a focus on swing states in a razor-close election. Extremism analysts say the tours serve as both a get-out-the-vote juggernaut and power flex for a Christian supremacist movement that aims to transform the church the same way MAGA did the GOP: by forcing out moderates.Ministers like Copeland preach that Christianity is the bedrock of American identity and should influence all aspects of society, ideas central to Christian nationalism."
This is a new game for Kenneth, and in focusing on the political extremism, the Post did kinda miss that angle. Copeland has, for decades, been most notable for both his wildly flamboyant preaching and the brazenness of his grift. "Christian hard-liner?" Hardly. He's the capo dei capi of the Word of Faith Prosperity Gospel movement, owner of that international airport, possessor of multiple jets, and lives in an estate that sprawls even by Texas standards. Because, again, private jets need room to land, baby! He is the worldliest of the worldly, the alpha wolf of that pack of wolves. Politics? Nationalism? Those were the realm of the actual fundamentalists, the Jerry Falwells of the world, whose battle was against modernity and liberalism. Copeland was...and is...in a wholly different business. There was a time when conservatives had issue with the Word of Faith movement, when they called it out as heretical, unbiblical, and a blatant con. There was a time when a Republican Senator led an investigation into Copeland, concerned that he was just a scammer hiding behind a Jesus mask.
Now, though, it's Kenneth Copeland we find front and center as the face of right wing Christianity, wrapped in the stars and stripes and wearing a MAGA hat. Like the rest of the Prosperity Gospel movement, he's been all in with Trump from day one...birds of a feather, and whatnot...but that's got nothing to do with Christian Nationalism, or a country governed by Christian virtues.
He's in it for the same reason that Elon's in it: there's money to be made. Because freedom of religion means freedom to believe anything you want, eh? What right does anyone have to say that getting rich off of the Gospel is a bad thing?
It's pure predatory Mammonism from a high priest of AmeriChrist, Inc., being packaged in the flag, injected straight into the veins of the gullible and the desperate, and bears precisely zero resemblance to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
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