A Little Mammon Ruins the Whole Loaf

It only takes the slightest change to make a very, very large difference.

For example, there's the human genome.  My genetic material, the basic information written into our DNA?  It's what makes us human, and what makes each human being different from every other human being.  The tiniest tweak, and we're a different person.

Larger variances make us not human at all.

Eighty percent of our fundamental genetic makeup is identical to that of cattle.  Eighty five percent, we share with mice.  So only a fifteen percent variance, and we're scuttering around beneath the floorboards and leaving little rice-sized poop pellets on the kitchen counter.

We become something categorically different.  A cow is not a human is not a mouse, eh?

I've been meditating on difference and Christian faith lately, as I lead the adult ed class of my little church through reflections on race, difference, and what binds us together as Jesus folk.  One of the great strengths of Christian faith, as I see it, is its ability to exist polyculturally.  The Gospel speaks in every language, and can adapt to the forms and norms of every human culture.

Not that we haven't squabbled over everything and anything, including a single vowel in a single Greek word in one statement of faith.  But Christian unity is formed and shaped by the grace of the Spirit, and our willingness to care for one another despite our manifold differences.  I see Jesus in Methodist and Mennonite, in Catholic and Charismatic, in Orthodoxies both Slavic and Amhara.  We're progressive and conservative, plain and erudite, and all of it can be truly Christian.

Still, there are areas where I'll admit I have always struggled, particularly where the Gospel becomes focused on wealth and prosperity.  

That's kind of a problem right now.

The Prosperity Gospel is ascendant in our culture, the dominant form of the faith, to the point where it's really the closest thing America has to a state religion.  As acolytes of Kenneth Copeland's Word of Faith movement now sit at the heart of power, there's never been a moment when this movement has been as prominent as a form of Christian expression. 

The language of Prosperity Preachin', as I've noted numerous times over the years, about 80 percent comprised of recognizable Christian theology.  Read through the writings of Creflo A. Dollar, or endure one of Paula White's surprisingly listless sermons, and you'll find most of it almost kinda sorta works.  

But that twenty percent variance makes a difference, enough so that it is no longer reflective of the teachings of Jesus.

Money money money, gain gain gain, ever bigger ever more?  There's no version of Jesus who pointed us towards material wealth and social influence. There's no version of the Jesus we know from the Gospels that tolerated venality and indulgence as a marker of spiritual blessing.   You can bowlderize him into a shambling FrankenChrist golem that makes that case, sure, but a plain reading of the Nazarene's intent just won't get you there.  It's uncanny valley Jesus, Jesus shifted and warped to serve the demands of our endless capitalist avarices.

Wealth, as Jesus taught about it, is a dangerous thing for the soul.  The wealthier you are, the more likely it is that you're in some serious spiritual mess.  You have built your house on the sand of human imaginings.  Our material gain is, at best, a dishonorable thing that must be bent to the use of grace with cunning and intention.  

You cannot, said my Lord and Savior in a very declarative way, serve God and wealth. 

What's the Frequency, Kenneth?

I have developed, over time, a mental frame-set for understanding the fabric of American Christianity, and the place of most Christian public figures in that frame-set.  There are progressives and conservatives, public theologians and writers, activists and mystics, fundamentalists and liberals.  There are a wild array of denominations and theological perspectives.  On top of that, there's a healthy dollop of send-me-your-money charlatans, name-it-and-claim-it hucksters who live lavish lives fleecing their flocks.

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.

When Terrible Theology Makes Good Christians

It was the strangest thing.

I was heaving my way through a book by Dr. Creflo A. Dollar, one of the most potent purveyors of prosperity preaching in the United States.  Like Joel Osteen, he's an evangelist for the health-and-wealth Jesus, the Jesus who gets you ahead and gets you rich.  Also like Joel Osteen, he's managed to get rich as Croesus from the many blessings he receives from his teeming throng of congregants and the folks who buy his stuff.

That's multiple Rolls Royce, multiple mansion, private jet rich.  CEO rich.  Oligarch rich.

He's a brilliant, able, wonderfully entertaining public speaker, who can cast out a spell of words and play a crowd like nobody's business.  He's gotten better over the years, too, way better than when I would watch him pitching out magic prosperity prayer napkins on late night tee vee twenty five years ago.  Blessings, yours for a love offering of only a hundred dollars!  What a bargain that was!  Now, he's sharper, tighter, and smarter.  And so very much richer.

Having referenced dear brother Creflo several times recently in my preaching, I felt obligated to delve a little bit more into his public thinking.   I picked out one of his books from the library, 'cause I find thrift lends itself to prospering.

It was a semi-recent tome, one that dated back from the beginning of the Great Recession, and it did not disappoint. Winning in Troubled Times was a wild, bold expression of the values of that peculiar strain of modern Christian expression.  It opens with the confident assertion that we follow Jesus because we want to win.  We want victory.

Faith is all about using supernatural power to win, or so Creflo tells us, again sounding just like Joel going on about one's best life.  Now!

On the one hand, sure.  It's victory.  But "Jesus-winning" is not victory in the rat race, or in our consumer striving to have and to own.  It's victory over those things, and over the will to power, over that fundamentally broken part of our souls that insists on ruling and owning and having.  The warnings against the dangers of wealth that are such a vital part of Christ's teachings are nowhere to be found.

I forced myself to keep reading.

And in the reading, I found myself struck by strangeness.  For all of my eye-rolling about the absurdity of name-it-and-claim-it hucksterism, much of what Creflo writes is actually not so wildly different from the type of moral advice I would give.

There's a tremendous amount of focus on trust, and self-sacrifice, and kindness.  There's encouragement to recognize and strive towards unrealized potential, and to embrace possibility and reject negative sinkholes of self-hate and addiction.  "Don't expect things to just magically happen," he says.  "You've got to work for it.  Push for it.  Believe it."

Over and over again, there is the call to be generous and giving and open-hearted towards all those around you.  It's a clear theme.

And it struck me: if you actually did all of this stuff, and took this gifted huckster's advice, there's a very real chance you might...be a pretty good person.  A faithful person.  You'd pray a whole bunch.  You'd give generously of yourself to charities and to neighbors and to strangers.  You'd view it as your responsibility.  You'd strive to improve yourself, both viewing success as a gift and having the hope-fueled resilience to hold up under adversity.  You'd be helpful, gracious, and giving.

This, of course, is part of the careful calculus of prosperity preaching.  On the one hand, it plays off of the human desire for wealth and power.  It taps our yearning for some selfish magic, something supernatural that gets us ahead and makes us wealthy.

But if you go too deep down that route, suddenly you've created a mystic Ayn Rand, selfish and grasping and as giving as a stone.  Or you've made a Sith Apprentice, who's all primed and ready to slay their master.

Neither of these ethics would build a ministry.

What you want is to teach an ethic that creates people who are hardworking and generous, hopeful and giving, who earnestly believe that they are blessed, and who are willing to trust that their sharing of their blessings with others is a good thing.

Good Christians, in other words.

So. Very. Peculiar.

Fake It 'Til You Make It

A few days ago, I found myself sitting around with a bunch of Jesus folks, talking about the impact of the prosperity gospel on folks who are struggling.  If being "blessed" is best understood in terms of material prosperity, then if you aren't visibly and materially prosperous, there must be something wrong with you.

We shared about folks we'd known who'd been presenting themselves as wealthy, when in fact they were financing their apparently comfortable lifestyle through credit card debt and an endless string of ever more punitive loans.

"Yeah," said one of my good sisters.  "You got to fake it 'til you make it."

The others in the group laughed and nodded.  The idea, as it got bandied about, is that if you project the image of prosperity, you are much more likely to prosper.  People will assume you're successful, and from that assumption, will treat you as if you were.  Work will come your way, and connections will be made, and you'll be in like Flynn.

That's the idea, anyway.  What happens with greater frequency is that our expectations of how we must appear to others drives us to make decisions that are ultimately our downfall.  Our debt-financed lives crash down around us.  The lies we tell the world about who we are back up into an unsustainable mess, and we crumble into nothing.  The only people this mindset serves are the folks who own us.

If the appearance of wealth and material prosperity are our goal, then our efforts to "fake it" will destroy us.  Just ask former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell about how that whole "fake it" thing worked out for him.

Then a day or so later, I found myself sitting around with another bunch of Jesus folks, talking about how we struggle our way through the relationships we have with those around us.  Those people who make themselves really hard to love, who are hateful and hurtful to us, who betray our trust and beat us down?  How are we supposed to deal with them, if we're serious about how Jesus taught us to love our enemies?

We all shared stories, about other church folks who'd done everything in their power to tear us down. How could we love those people?  How could we forgive those folks, when we don't really even want to try?

"Yeah," said one of my good sisters.  "You've got to fake it 'til you make it."  At which the others in the group laughed and nodded.

It was an interesting conjunction.

And I wondered, in those times where I've dealt respectfully with human beings I would really much rather have punched full on in the face in that moment, whether I was faking it.

I don't think so, not really.  In those exchanges...and I have had those exchanges...I recognize that my rage and my anxiety are a legitimate reaction to a broken thing.  I also recognize that the actions of the person in question aren't to be justified or glossed over.

But I also recognize that my primary allegiance is to my faith, and to the path that Jesus taught.  Even if I am required to discontinue relationship with someone, I cannot allow myself to imagine that they are irredeemable or that the possibility of their restoration is impossible.

If I rage at them, not just articulating my anger but being ruled by it, then I am acting in a way that would impede their healing and their growth.  I am reducing the probability of their transformation.

And given my commitment to the Gospel, I just can't do that.

It's hard, but it's not false, any more than duty is false, or faith, hope, and love are false.

The Consumer Gospel

This morning as I bustled around preparing for my day, I found myself thinking about the prosperity gospel, likely an echo of some social network chatter and mass media articles over the last few days.

That gospel..the name-it-and-claim-it, Word Faith, to-meet-your-need-gotta-plant-a-seed movement...is perhaps best known for it's tendency to emphasize material rewards as the fruits of faith.  If you have faith, you will prosper.  Your car will be large.  Your shoes will be fancy.  You will have all the best toys.

That emphasis is, of course, utterly alien to the teachings of Jesus.  But that doesn't stop folks from pitching it out there, because it resonates with a pretty basic primate desire.   We want the tastiest fruit for our young.  We want that female to be so awed by our abundantly padded nest that she can't help but approach us with the cooing sounds that mean we're going to get some serious...nitpicking...on.  Ooooh. Yeah.  Right there...

That desire is strong enough that it has spawned functionally identical versions of the prosperity gospel across world religious traditions.  It exists in basically the same form and with entirely the same purpose in Buddhism, Hinduism, and all manner of pagan and neopagan traditions.

Over the past few years, as the health-and-wealth stream has grown and swollen, I've heard some folks defend it as  the 21st Century variant of the Protestant work ethic.   It encourages work, they say.  It's good for pulling people out of poverty, and getting them focused on remaking themselves.

This morning, it occurred to me that this is entirely and completely hooey.

The Protestant work ethic focused on worldly labor as an expression of God's purpose in your life.  It was oriented towards vocation, the utilization of our gifts and talents in labor as a sign of blessing and grace in life.   To fulfill your created purpose involved actions and a life lived towards that purpose.  That wasn't a guarantee of prosperity, or of material blessing, or of escape from hardship.  But it was the mark of a faithful, meaningful life.  As John Calvin put it:

It will also be no small alleviation of his cares, labours, troubles, and other burdens, when a man knows that in all these things he has God for his guide. The magistrate will execute his office with greater pleasure, the father of a family will confine himself to his duty with more satisfaction, and all, in their respective spheres of life, will bear and surmount the inconveniences, cares, disappointments, and anxieties which befall them, when they shall be persuaded that every individual has his burden laid upon him by God. Hence also will arise peculiar consolation, since there will be no employment so mean and sordid (provided we follow our vocation) as not to appear truly respectable, and be deemed h'ghly important in the sight of God"

This is not the Prosperity Gospel.  The prosperity gospel is not about vocation, or "inconveniences, cares, disappointments, and anxieties."  It's not about production.

It's about consumption.   It's about instant gratification. It's not about giving, unless that giving happens to be either 1) to your megachurch so's Pastor can be blessed with another Lexus or 2) to your credit card company, at 21.5% interest, compounded 'till Jesus returns.  It's about taking, about devouring, about seeking the needs of the self-flesh above all else.

It's the consumer gospel.  It's the gospel of debt.  It's the gospel of endless hungers.

If this is our faith, then no wonder things are such a mess.

Buicks Are Part of Chairman Christ's New Five Year Plan

This morning over coffee, I was reading a review of a new book entitled God is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World. The review was written by a good sort, the estimable Diana Butler Bass, and it articulated what she saw as the core theme of the book: the mesh between religious liberty and progress.

It's a valid connection, and a hopeful theme in human society, but one particular quote jumped out at me as a wee bit off. Maybe I'm just oversensitive, so let me share the quote in question:

The book opens with an American evangelical-style Bible study in Shanghai, where the pastor proclaims: "In Europe the church is old. Here it is modern. Religion is a sign of higher ideals and progress. Spiritual wealth and material wealth go together. That is why we will win." These words echo the American view that economic prosperity meshes with religious freedom. This vignette supports the book's main point: that religion and modernity are not at odds, that, in the American mode, they can function together to create prosperity and individual freedom.

While I may be projecting a bit, I don't think what the Chinese evangelist is saying and what the book is arguing are the same thing. When an evangelical says: "Spiritual wealth and material wealth go together," they generally don't mean "religious liberty and material wealth go together." In fact, they pretty much never mean that.

They mean that being spiritual gets you material blessings. Period. You should be spiritual, because the 2010 Buick Lacrosse is a really fine looking car and Jesus can get it for you if you ask real nice. And given the choice between a brand new Buick and religious freedom for Muslims, I'm not quite sure how many Chinese evangelicals would choose door number two.

I agree that religious liberty is absolutely necessary, and a sign of a culture in which progress is possible. But religious liberty and evangelical Christianity worldwide have a somewhat interesting relationship. On the one hand, Christians value the freedom to worship and to share the Gospel. But when you believe that every other faith is a one way ticket to eternal damnation, your motivation level to support the rights of other faiths has to be somewhat impacted.

As the global marketplace becomes a stronger force, the danger for the integrity of Christianity is that it will become increasingly co-opted into the values and norms of the marketplace. The Gospel of Prosperity and the Word Faith movement are powerful, powerful forces in the developing world. The spread of a consumerist "Christianity" in which individual material prosperity is the goal is a real, and I would argue spiritually dangerous, eventuality.