“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” (Brazilian theologian Dom Helder Camara.)
In browsing my newsfeed this morning I was startled (ok – stunned) to read about how during the UAW negotiation of new contracts with the Big-Three automakers Shawn Fain, the union’s President “got personal”, invoking what is called Social Gospel. I like to consider myself a student of history and am rather ashamed I’d long ago forgotten about this concept and it’s one-time positive influence. However, as this article from CNN illustrates Social Gospel has been a force for good in the past and it’s making a comeback. The quote at the top is an illustration of the difference between the better known (these days) Prosperity Gospel and Social Gospel. However the former was once a force in our country and did a lot of good for a lot of people, and it seems there’s a growing list of people with influence who are trying to repeat that feat.
If you’re reading this you’ve heard (and learned) more than you want to about Evangelicals and their leaders (both mega-church pastors and heads of “Christian” lobby groups) and the whole Prosperity Gospel doctrine:
Prosperity theology (sometimes referred to as the prosperity gospel, the health and wealth gospel, the gospel of success, or seed faith)[A] is a religious belief among some Charismatic Christians that financial blessing and physical well-being are always the will of God for them, and that faith, positive speech, and donations to religious causes will increase one’s material wealth.[1] Material and especially financial success is seen as a sign of divine favor.
To me it’s always seemed to be a perverted, bastardized version of Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth. Carnegie believed wealth came from (or should) through hard work and those who attained it should look for ways to use their wealth to the benefit of others and society at-large. That’s quite the contrast with what conservative “Christians” spout and advocate. They believe wealth or at least financial security is awarded to those who are “faithful” enough and that poor people are “undeserving.’ Personally I find the cynicism of these Prosperity Gospel “Christian” leaders promoting giving to their mega-churches as the way to prove one’s faith and wind up being “rewarded by God with financial security) disgusting. The lavish lifestyles, the mansions (multiple ones), private jets and so on of the Franklin Graham’s and Jerry Falwell’s of the (mostly white) Evangelical and/or White Nationalist “Christian” movements is, at least according to the scripture I learned growing up not at all what Jesus taught.
No, I remember stuff like Jesus saying what people did for “the least of these” (the poor, the sick/infirm) “you do for me” and later on the concept of “faith through works.” The latter meant it’s not enough to pronounce what a great Christian one is and go to church every week, but rather to work to, as much as one is able to find and help those less fortunate. Seeking out ways to help others, ones community and society at-large by helping those in need was (and is) faith through works, and in addition to doing such works ourselves we should band together with others to advance the collective good.
That’s at the root of Social Gospel which rose in prominence/influence back during the gilded age of robber barons in our nation’s history. In the late 19th century the industrial revolution had given rise to a relative handful of individuals with obscene wealth (and a massive belief in their entitlement to it no matter how exploitive they were of others) and inequality. Hence the emergence of Christian’s Social Gospel movement. From CNN:
Its adherents took on the exploitation of workers and unethical business practices of robber barons like oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, who, when once asked by a reporter how much money he needed to finally have enough, purportedly said, “Just a bit more.”
“A bit more?” Rockefeller, like his cronies and our modern group of robber barons want a whole lot more than a “bit” more. They want a LOT more. They want it all and never in our history has more wealth been concentrated in fewer hands. It’s still not enough for them. These are people addicted to wealth and for many that includes flaunting the trappings of that wealth. For “Christian” leaders spouting their Prosperity Gospel it’s a selling point to flaunt what their flocks have provided. It’s a “Look at me. If your ‘faith’ is strong enough you too can have what I have. Oh, and a good way to prove your faith is to donate to me…” Sadly, that load of bullshiite works all too well. Worse, it’s morphed into the leaders not just suckering people into giving money but poisoning their minds with a truly vile belief – that the poor and working poor are unworthy. That they deserve their difficult station in life and deserve “god’s punishment” for not being well-off. Their attitude towards those who don’t believe in their version of Christianity and worse, work to help all the “other”, those undesirable/undeserving people is less than charitable as well.
Ivy League professor Matthew Desmond is a Pultizer prize winning author. He has two important works on the subject, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, and also Poverty, by America:
In his books Desmond argues that poverty is not the result of an individual’s moral failures but the result of a system in which “keeping some citizens poor serves the interests of many.” He also has said the US government has the resources to eliminate poverty.
I have long felt that the “Prosperity Gospel” was a scam perpetrated by greedy evangelicals to keep the money flowing from their sheeple.
An most excellent thought provoking snd clearly written article. It resonates well with
that biblical instruction about not idolising false gods. The greed fuelled enablers of a particular type of blasphemous profit driven charismatic sect leader that sucker-punches their adoring but conned brethren, and slow-drip blind them of their resources, capacities and abilities to understand what they truly are and what they do – they con their misled brethren into idolising them with the promise and message of a false faith. These charismatic con artists hide behind their version of ‘the book and its message’ to promote and secure their ongoing and shameful charade of insatiable perverse one-way-street of greed, primarily setup to stiff a conned ‘fan club’ out of their limited resources, with no reciprocated promise or giving of benefit, thanks, love or gratitude. It’s hollow and ugly con artist politics, too.
Thank you. It got more involved than I’d intended so I’m glad it turned out “readable” after all. I developed (admittedly with justification sometimes) a reputation going back to my days on Daily kos of getting to “in the weed”, convoluted, boring etc. and using up too much of people’s time with long articles even when well received. I tried with varying degrees of success to address all that. Believe me when I tell you there is lots more i wanted to say but I felt I was already crossing over into “too long and involved” territory. So again, thanks for your compliment. And reassurance that I “shut down’ in time to make what I wanted to say clear enough that the point got through.
I remember a Country & Western song “Would Jesus wear a Rolex on his own TV Show?”
I’ve been of the belief or many years now (yep – we also have fundamental born again flat earth idiots in Ireland) that if Jesus returned, either to Norn Iron or the US ‘Bible Belt’, he’d be run out of town on a rail as a pinko communist libtard
Either that, as you say, or dealt with for being a Chinese Buddhist.
He was reportedly run out of his hometown after they intended to kill him early in Luke 4, because he refused to do any miracles as they heard he had done in another town. The gospels may not have been an accurate chronology, as they borrowed from earlier works and oral tradition. That being said, they are spot on concerning human nature. When Jesus went to the temple he must have visited numerous times growing up in Nazareth, the people praised his reading of Isaiah because they were anticipating big miracles. When that didn’t happen, they became enraged. Boy the shallow fickleness and selfish violence are spot on. One thing is sure…we haven’t changed much over 2000 years.