The economy has moved on and so has Protestantism. Today the
largest and fastest growing Christian churches in America espouse a new
type of Christianity called prosperity theology, also known as Gospel
prosperity or Christian materialism, which does for 21st century
corporate capitalism what early 20th century Protestantism did for
regular capitalism: connect economics to God's blessing.
Today prosperity theology is
promoted by mega-churches and televangelists. Its message is, if you
tithe and attend church, God will bless you with material wealth. Some
of the best known prosperity theology televangelists are Joel Osteen,
the late Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson and Creflo Dollar.
Osteen is head
of the largest church in America, the Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas,
and today's most prominent televangelist. He is quoted as saying, "God
didn't create you to be average or poor," and "God wants you to live in
abundance."
Dollar has stated, "Some people
say it's about peace, joy and love. No. It's about money." Wealth has
become a manifestation of the sacred.
Mega-churches catering to middle
and upper-middle class parishioners are the core of prosperity churches.
The surface message may be born-again salvation, but the theological
back-story is material wealth.
The most prominent prosperity theology church
in Alaska is the Anchorage Baptist Temple headed by Rev. Jerry Prevo. In
a May 15, 2011, "Judgment Day" sermon posted on YouTube, Rev. Prevo
concluded, "I've got a lot ... God's blessed me (materially), ... I
don't apologize for that ... God says, 'Seek you first the kingdom of
God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you'
(paraphrasing Matthew 6:33). I've just tried to do what God says to do
and he's added (wealth to me)."
Were he alive today, Max Weber
would almost certainly point out that prosperity theology is much more
than the delusion of the blessing of wealth. Prosperity theology is the
religious basis of corporate capitalism, promoting the sacrament of
consumption and unsustainable development for the material benefit of
the very rich (who may or may not be religious at all).
The thinking goes: God has chosen
people, both in human and corporate form, to be wealthy. We should seek
wealth to seek God's blessing. We should honor that blessing by
reducing taxes and other restrictions on the rich and their
corporations. It's God's will people are rich and secular governments
should not impede God's will. Taxation is tantamount to sin. Poor folks,
meanwhile, must be nonbelievers or at least back sliders because they
aren't rich and aren't worthy of God's blessing. The sacred becomes the
profane.
In Alaska the multinational oil
companies' wealth is a sign to prosperity theology adherents of God's
blessing, and the demand for lower oil taxes has God's blessing as well.
Resource development, if not sacred, is close to it. By implication,
those who would channel Alaska's wealth into public use such as roads,
schools, and communications infrastructure via oil taxes must be the
devil's consorts.
Many prosperity preachers also
endorse a pre-tribulation rapture which they believe is coming soon. The
combination of consumerism, resource extraction and end times does not
bode well for sustainable conservation. The recent change in the mission
statement of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources promoting the
oxymoron of maximum sustainable development of natural resources is in
line with this type of theology.
That Anchorage's most prominent
prosperity theology church, the Anchorage Baptist Temple, hopes to erect
a cross 100 feet taller than the Captain Cook Hotel would clearly brand
Anchorage as the northern capitol of Christian materialism. That, of
course, may be true.
Some of the harshest critics of
prosperity theology are Pentecostal fundamentalists who call the idea
that God blesses through wealth blasphemy. They would note, for example,
that a few paragraphs before the passage cited above by Rev. Prevo is
Matthew 6:19-21: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth ...
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
Traditional Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox churches are also critical of prosperity theology.
But prosperity churches will
continue to expand as long as materialism is the dominant value of our
culture and the corporation's sole purpose is wealth for shareholders.
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