"francis who?" asked martin luther

[rone]

Time's cover story this week is titled Does God Want You To Be Rich? and talks about megachurches who rake in the dough and, essentially, try to justify it with doctrine.  Pop quiz, Protestants: what is apostolic poverty?  It's somewhat comical to see certain mistakes being repeated centuries later.

This New Prosperity is scary, a way to wrap up bourgeois goals in spiritual garments.  Speaking as an agnostic who has a raving asshole atheist somewhere inside that keeps slipping out for joyrides, reading about this crap is like waving bacon in a dog's face.  It's taking charismatic preachers and sprinkling elements of a cult and a pyramid scheme.  Hmm, it's like Mormonism.  I imagine suggesting to these people that they're just like Mormons would be guaranteed fireworks.

Comments

[omarius.livejournal.com]

I self-identify as Christian, but I agree with you very much, rone. I would not say that riches and Christianity are incompatible, but I feel that they have at the very least nothing to do with each other. Between "render unto Caesar," the instructions to the apostles to go out with nothing, and the early Church's tendancy to hold all posessions "in common," these people are either making up their own religion with a familiar name, or are merely hucksters.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

It seems to me to be symptomatic of a sort of magical thinking that pervades a lot of these churches. Oddly enough, fundamentalism seems to be particularly prone to it—in fact, I wonder at times if that isn't the reason for their obsession with the occult.

(Yeah, sure, modern Craft does have spells for prosperity, money, a new job, whatever. Just as magic has done throughout history. Look at a catalog of curse tablets or requests left at an ancient Greek shrine and they're all about health, wealth, and love. Human nature being what it is and all. The difference is, we don't pretend that that isn't what we're doing.)

[pennyhill.livejournal.com]

Oooo! Granny Weatherwax in a Pointy Hat?

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

OK, now that i've talked myself down... it's intensely ironic that Protestantism denounces Catholicism because they liken praying to saints as idol worship. And what is up with Pentecostalism calling glossolalia "speaking in tongues", anyway? I've read Acts, and at no point do i read about any of the apostles going into convulsions and babbling. God damn it, i'm getting angry again.

[thedarkages]

In the Vulgate, the original in Acts 2:4 is "loquebantur in variis linguis" -- "they spoke in diverse languages." The Greek is "glossais" -- again, "languages." Glossolalia has nothing to do with the Pentecost as attested in these sources.

[tarian.livejournal.com]

It's a little more effective, though, as crowd control: "do this now and (heh) you'll get rewarded after you're dead" just doesn't have the same motivational power as "do this, and get rewarded NOW". I understand that it works, but some basic element at the core of my personality doesn't really want to think about the fact that humans really *are* that stupid and gullible.

* contemplates writing a book entitled, "The Power of Negative Thinking," just because.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

See, but that makes it even worse. It's bad enough that most religions say, "Believe in my god or you'll have no salvation." When this flavor of religion says, "Believe in my god and you'll experience material success now," it makes itself immeasurably more pernicious and divisive than your garden-variety faith. Are these preachers so blinded by their ego and their greed— [LAUGH TRACK] etc.

* contemplates writing a book entitled, "The Power of Negative Thinking," just because.

It'll never sell.

[tarian.livejournal.com]

I get the frothing-at-the-mouth thing from religions that have "ignorance of physics and biology" as a basic tenet of faith. Also the ones that consider particular subsets of humans (like, oh, women) to be lesser beings. Ones that merely exploit human nature out of greed? Relatively benign. Wrong, of course, but not in a way that makes me want to create a designer virus that only infects believers. Unfortunately there's a lot of overlap between the evangelicals and the "conservative values" crowd; it seems that the "you are the chosen ones" rhetoric works better if you can point at a group of people and say they're the ones that are doing it wrong.

The critical question: how does one combat the ideology? Given that we already know we're talking about the same people who can probably still be convinced that eclipses are a sign of God's anger, I am thinking that the only way to have an effect on their behavior is to adopt the same crowd-control tactics to which they've already succumbed. It's not at all clear that there's a benefit to (un?)converting them, however, so it's mostly a matter of academic interest.

not to mention

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

already been done. (http://www.amazon.com/Positive-Power-Negative-Thinking-Pessimism/dp/0465051391)

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

do this, and get rewarded NOW

I keep falling for it when my employer tells me stuff like this. I can't believe I'm that gullible, either.

Whew!

[skipernicus.livejournal.com]

It's like waving bacon in a dog's face.

Truer words were never spoken, my heathen brother!

[mskala.livejournal.com]

What about Terry Pratchett's Yen Buddhists?

Their belief is that money is evil... so it is their sad duty to acquire as much of it as possible in order to reduce the danger to the innocent.

[cheesetruck.livejournal.com]

Well, as a guy who's dad didn't make more than minimum wage while he was a minister, because the law says you don't have to pay more than that since they get a parsonage...

Which, in our cases, tended to be slightly above firetraps...

I just go with Suicidal Tendencies "Send me Your Money."

Oh, and, flip them off.

Cuz we know who's actually going into the neighborhoods, talking to the folks there, and helping them with their issues, and getting fired for bringing the wrong colored people into the church.

And who's taking the name of the lord in vain.

(Yeah that one hit me the other day, just how many folks are doing that these days. It's got more than one definition, really. And. Wow. I mean, I don't wanna be them... I don't wanna be ME, either, when I'm up there under judgement, cuz I got some shit I'm gonna be in deeeeeeep over. But. Still. I'm going "wow. yeah. um. NOT even close to broiling like... ow, I felt that over HERE, and it ain't even HAPPENED yet."

[mrbalihai.livejournal.com]

New Prosperity is not new. This doctrine has been around at least since the days of Billy Sunday and Amy Semple-Macpherson back in the 1930s. Recent practitioners include Reverend Ike, Robert Tilton, and Reverend Gene Scott.

Outside of Christianity, a strain of Nichiren Shosen Buddhism popped up all over the US back in the 1970s, claiming to bring wealth, power, and minty-fresh breath to anyone who offered a basket of fruit to a picture of Nichiren (along with $100 bucks), and chanted Nam Myoho Renge Kyo over and over again. A guy that I used to work with kept telling me that if I chanted that on my way home, all of the traffic lights would turn green for me.

They didn't.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what's "new" about it is "some key modifications" which occurred after the Bakker and Swaggart meltdowns.

The Osteen quotes give me the heebie-jeebies and set off all kinds of bullshit alarms in my head. I don't know what could be done to stop him, though.

[mrbalihai.livejournal.com]

I was far more amused to discover that there's a pastor named Creflo Dollar, than I was disturbed by Osteen's quotes.

I think of the movement as a sort of spiritual Powerball...God Lotto, as it were. I've given up trying to understand or be concerned with other people's theology unless it involves jumping up and down on Oprah's couch or cannibalizing me without my consent.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I guess that the lack of a pope and an antipope means the situation won't ever come to a head.

same story second day

[venividi.livejournal.com]

I recommend the movie "Elmer Gantry" for a view of how little has changed in this arena.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

And probably the book, eh? Thanks for the recommendation; now i better understand mrbalihai's comment about Semple McPherson and Sunday. Have we really changed so little in 80 years?