Tom Saler

Special to the Journal Sentinel

Can a uniquely American brand of theology known as the prosperity gospel explain a uniquely callous form of American economic policy known as the reverse Robin Hood effect?

No single explanation can account for why many Americans consistently vote against their economic interests through candidates who would finance tax cuts for already well-off groups and individuals by cutting benefits for poor students, educational institutions and cancer patients.

But with a convoluted history that dates to the economic inequality of the first Gilded Age in the late 19th century, one modern strain of the prosperity gospel asserts that material wealth is a sign of divine favor, and that material poverty indicates moral or personal failings.

“Adherents to the Prosperity Gospel believe that wealth is a sign of God’s blessing and the poor are poor because of a lack of faith,” wrote Bradley A. Koch in the Journal of Ideology.

Or because they bought into the wrong spiritual brand.

“Put simply, the prosperity gospel is the belief that God grants health and wealth to those with the right kind of faith,” Kate Bowler, an assistant professor at Duke Divinity School and the author of “Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel,” wrote in a New York Times op-ed. Bowler told me in a recent email that “there are deep resonances between neoliberal ideologies, Republicanism, and the prosperity gospel."

That might explain why some people think it’s appropriate for government to reward those tagged by the gospel as righteous at the expense of those considered negligent.

“God helps those who help themselves,” affirmed the economist Max Weber in his 1905 book, “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.” In other words, if you haven’t done enough to gain God’s favor, don’t expect the government to do you any favors, either.

Illusion of control

Few lawmakers would be so crass as to suggest that the poor and middle class should fund unneeded tax cuts for the wealthy because the wealthy outdid them in earning God’s blessing.

Yet by claiming that you can feed the birds by giving more oats to the horse, to paraphrase John Kenneth Galbraith’s description of trickle down economics, politicians carry out the prosperity gospel’s essence without having to explicitly endorse it.

Donald Trump won the presidency by appealing to the material longings of evangelical Protestants, a group that once mocked prosperity preachers but who now increasingly embrace their message, perhaps because the message implies control in an out-of-control world.

In his youth, Trump began attending Marble Collegiate Church, which was led by Norman Vincent Peale, an early prosperity preacher of considerable repute. Trump reportedly claimed that Peale considered him “his greatest student of all time.” Well, of course.

The prosperity movement sometimes tacks into the tacky. In 1987, televangelist Oral Roberts warned followers that if they didn’t send him $8 million, God would “call me home.”

The money was raised and the call was not placed.

Beyond its questionable theological premise — was Jesus really into capitalism? — the prosperity gospel rests on a hollow definition of prosperity. The corporate honchos who drove the U.S. economy into the ground a decade ago should not be viewed as morally superior to the cancer researcher, nurse, teacher, firefighter or any worker serving a cause greater than themselves but who might earn less in a lifetime than some ineffective CEOs earn in a month.

Bread upon the waters

While it may be comforting to equate income with God’s favor, the bottom line on a W2 is mostly a reflection of a person’s profession. As the Samuel Bernstein character in the movie "Citizen Kane" told the ever-acquisitive Kane, “it’s no trick to make a lot of money if all you want is to make a lot of money.”

Many people want their lives to be about more than making a lot of money. Choosing meaning over money and purpose over possessions should not make a person seem spiritually deficient in the eyes of lawmakers. Quite the opposite, actually.

The prosperity gospel is, at best, a kind of pop theology. If it provides hope to some in an arduous world, fine. But it deserves no role in setting economic policy, spoken or otherwise.

Tom Saler is an author and freelance journalist in Madison. He can be reached at tomsaler.com.