The Prosperity Gospel For Rich People
I mentioned in a previous post about the increasingly obvious generational divide in the Episcopal Church, which was on display at General Convention. I can't really speak to the attitudes coming from the Baby Boomer crew toward the younger generations, but the critique coming from the younger folks toward their elders can be boiled down to "your theology/theological praxis is bad." For the younger folks of a more conservative bent with regard to the fundamentals of the faith (as distinguished from the sex/gender issues that are almost inevitably the fault lines in Roman Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism), this is usually expressed as the criticism that the Baby Boomers have watered down or sold out core Christian doctrines and distinctives. But even among the younger folks who have a more progressive theological orientation you can find frustration with the Baby Boomers, leading me to believe that "they don't take the Creeds seriously enough" is attacking a symptom rather than the underlying pressure point. There is a more fundamental social and cultural divide at work here.
At the same time, there have been a bunch of articles in the wake of the Brett Kavanaugh thing that are variations on the idea of "WTF is wrong with Jesuit schools?" For people whose primary encounter with the Jesuits is progressive voices like Fr. James Martin, the notion that a Jesuit institution like Georgetown Prep would be a bastion of misogyny and general awfulness is a bit of a culture shock. And, if I may, I think the culture shock can be explained by saying that the Jesuits are clearest expression of the the Roman Catholic version of the Baby Boomers in the Episcopal Church.
But before tackling all of that, let's back up to take a brief detour and talk about this guy:
His name is Joel Osteen, and he is the pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas. To give you a sense of the size of his church, it used to be the arena that the Houston Rockets NBA team played in, and he fills it every week, not to mention distributing his message on various media platforms.
The most common complaint leveled against Osteen is that he is a "prosperity Gospel" preacher, and while in an ultimate sense he is, Osteen is far more nuanced and subtle than the true-blue prosperity charlatans like Trump's buddy Paula White or Creflo Dollar. If you listen to Osteen, he rarely talks about money directly. Instead, Osteen's basic message is (1) God cares about you and meets you where you are; (2) God has a plan for you; and (3) that plan will come true if you have faith, have the proper mental attitude, and take a set of utterly reasonable lifestyle steps to improve yourself.
See, Osteen understands very well who his congregation is--lower middle and middle class white suburbanites. They view themselves as the "forgotten people," the "Silent Majority"--too provincial to be taken seriously by the cultural and other social elites (except when some politician needs their vote), but also successful enough to not be the focus of social concern (at least, from their point of view). They believe that their situation--their wants, fears, concerns, etc.--is irrelevant, or at least seen as irrelevant. Osteen's message resonates with them because he affirms them where they are, and reassures them that, even if no one else seemingly cares about what happens to them, God cares about them. It's OK, Osteen tells them, to want things, to want to be taken seriously, to try to improve your situation. In fact, it's more than OK; it's what God wants for them, too.
Now, in 21st Century late capitalism in the United States, the thing that the vast majority of his congregation wants is to get rich, because our culture provides few other vehicles for enhancing your dignity and self-worth other than having lots of money. Whether or not Osteen understands this dynamic is sort of beside the point--though, he would have to be an idiot or pathologically unreflective not to. Osteen is preaching self-help, but self-help in a very targeted way, helping them do the thing that they want to do already, the the thing that fills in their psychological and spiritual needs. Osteen doesn't talk about money because he doesn't have to; there is no need to make the subtext into a text if everyone understands the score.
Now, you might think that Prosperity Gospel preachers like Osteen would not have much resonance with folks who are already rich and privileged, i.e. upper class white folks. And you would be right, in the sense that the specifics of Osteen's message don't really work with that crowd. But the meta-structure of Osteen's message--affirm them as they are, speak to their existential concerns, provide an easy-to-implement way to address those concerns--works perfectly well in the rarefied air of wealthy white folks. See, whereas the people Osteen is talking to believe themselves to be forgotten, rich white folks understand that they are at the center of everything in America. No, the existential concern of this crowd is not "does anyone care?" but rather "am I an asshole?"
Remember, no one is the villain of his or her own story, and very few people are OK with a self-understanding as a Black Hat. While there are some people who are just temperamentally unable to consider the needs and circumstances of people other than themselves, most people some measure of genuine compassion for others, especially those who are in a tough place. Not withstanding all of the recent discussion surrounding "wokeness," and "acknowledging your privilege," most people who are privileged know perfectly well that they are, in fact, incredibly privileged. And those that have that awareness generally feel at least a little bit guilty about their privilege. So, folks are caught in a bit of a double-bind--how can I live my basically awesome privileged life in a manner that doesn't make me feel like I am Ebenezer Scrooge?
Into this mix comes what you might call "The Prosperity Gospel for Rich People." Unlike with Osteen et al., these folks aren't looking for God to bless them with wealth, because that's already happened. Instead, what they are looking for is some sort of divine sanction for the wealth they already have, and the maintenance and further pursuit thereof--some moral framework for why it is OK, even good, to go out and work on Wall Street or go work for some DC law firm and become a powerful, wealth person. The Prosperity Gospel for Rich People is, at the end of the day, the dominant, if unacknowledged, ideology of much of the Baby Boomer generation in the Episcopal Church, and a large chunk of the US Catholic Church as well.
So, how does the Prosperity Gospel for Rich People work? The pithiest formulation of this idea is the motto of Georgetown Prep (and other Jesuit high schools and colleges)--"Men for Others." The idea here is to become a "person of service," giving of one's time and money to various sorts of charitable or socially-constructive causes. By doing so, you establish yourself as a good person, a person who is not indifferent or dismissive to the plight of the less fortunate (notice how Kavanaugh was often pictured giving out food to various unfortunates or volunteering time to coach youth sports). And, having done so, one now with a clear conscience can go and make a ton of money and become a big shot and associate with other big shots of various sorts. By doing your duty as a person of service, you show that you are not an ingrate for what you have, without meaningfully calling into question what you have and the manner in which you obtained it. You can have your cake (feeling good about being a social-conscious, responsible person), and eat it, too (going after money, status, and influence).
It's important to see how compatible this framework is, notwithstanding folks like Kavanaugh, with a generally socially and political liberal world-view. While the Jesuits have to tread lightly around sexuality and gender issues as a result of the various threads within Roman Catholicism, the Baby Boomers in the Episcopal Church have no such constraints. Indeed, showing your progressive bona fides on gender and sexuality is a good way to show how much you are not a jerk. Why not? It's not like being, for example, pro-choice, or pro-gay rights is antithetical to having a high-powered corporate gig and functioning in that space. To paraphrase something basketball great Michael Jordan may or may not have actually said, gay people buy sneakers, too. Particularly where those bona fides don't require one to actually do anything, or at least anything that meaningfully impacts your lifestyle. If you work in a high-powered corporate job, being OK with other similarly situated folks who happen to be gay getting married is costless. What do you care?
In fact, one of the more interesting changes in Jesuit education in the last 40 years is the way it has gone from being almost entirely male-only to generally co-ed (with Georgetown Prep as a notable exception). I am convinced this was and is an utterly pragmatic decision--whereas two generations ago women had no political and social power, now women are important social, economic and cultural leaders, and so it is "worth it" to bring them into the fold. Again, the Jesuits are constrained by Rome in various ways, but if they had their way they would by-and-large be on-board with full equality of women. Now that women matter, they matter to the Jesuits. And many, many women are A-OK with being embraced as part of the Old Boys Club--just look at the voting patterns of white women in the recent midterm election. Georgetown Prep, in certain respects, actually is not particularly indicative of Jesuit education now, as most places have killed the insular male culture by going co-ed, or at a minimum have broadened it out a bit.
But all of this, at the end of the day, is basically an exercise in conscience cleaning. The goal of this Prosperity Gospel for Rich People is to convince the audience that they are really good people, or at least can become good people through a set of easily accomplished steps. Actually fixing problems or materially altering the circumstances of other folks is really kinda beside the point. That's why so much of the effort in the Prosperity Gospel for Rich People revolves around consciousness-raising. Consciousness-raising is the ultimate sort of empty calorie whitewashing of conscience, because the people who need and want their consciences cleansed can feel better about their increased Wokeness, and the people who don't give a shit can easily pretend to go along with all of this, knowing that they are never going to asked to put anything of consequence on the table.
Which in turn brings us back to Kavanaugh and Georgetown Prep. The problem is not that the ideas and ethos on offer at places like Georgetown Prep are inherently flawed, in the sense that you can look at their mission statement and say "a ha! Item #7 is bad and the source of the problems!" No, the problem is that the meta-goal is always to get you to the place where you are comfortable with where you are. So, people who already have deep consciences will be pushed and encouraged to go as far as their compassion will take them, while folks who barely care about these things will not be challenged very much, with every space in between, and all of those outcomes are considered to be "wins."
No one buys a self-help book regarding a topic that they haven't already decided they want to change about themselves. As a result, the scope of a program of self-help is necessarily going to be limited to the topics that are pre-selected by the person receiving the self-help. When Kavanaugh says that his life and experience are deeply formed by Georgetown Prep and the ethos of service, I suspect he really means that. But that ethos is only going to go as deep as Kavanaugh was ready to let it go from the jump. As a result, there is nothing in principle that Kavanaugh has done or will do that is in conflict with the ethos of service he possesses via his Jesuit education. His life has been changed in a positive way by a place like Georgetown Prep--in precisely the areas that he had decided ahead of time he wanted to experience growth. The rest of it--pounding beers and groping women and reducing people's rights--those were areas that I suspect Kavanaugh was and is pretty comfortable with, thank you very much. Nothing from the Prosperity Gospel for Rich People was ever going to penetrate that space.
On the flip side, I am sure you can find someone who went to Georgetown Prep in Kavanaugh's class who has dedicated their life to truly self-sacrificing service to the poor or marginalized, and will tell you (truthfully) that they were inspired to do what they do because of Georgetown Prep. But that person came to Georgetown Prep wanting to go to that place already, if perhaps in an inchoate way, and the Jesuits provided the tools to do that, as well. It may seem like there is a complete dichotomy between Kavanaugh and our hypothetical do-gooder, but there really isn't. For both Kavanaugh and our construct, Georgetown Prep gave them what they wanted.
Take another example, this time from the Episcopal Church. The most recent buzzword in TEC circles is the importance of "Becoming the Beloved Community." The term "Beloved Community" comes from Martin Luther King, Jr. (the go-to source for white people looking to feel enlightened about race). I am not sure what Dr. King meant by the Beloved Community, but I'm pretty sure it's not what the folks in my diocese mean by it, because judging from what I heard at the Diocesan Convention a couple of weekends ago, it doesn't mean anything in a concrete sense. We have to walk a labyrinth, and we need to be aware that racist things were done by Episcopalians in the past. But what are we supposed to do? What is it that we need to change? Silence. But there is money to be had and programs to plan, so those will occur apace.
Some white lady telling me how to be more Woke about race is the same sort of pablum you get from. . . corporate diversity programs. Ding ding ding! It all comes from the same fundamental source--how can I feel better about doing all of the things I'm already doing and have no intention of changing? How can I be affirmed as I am? The ultimate goal of the Beloved Community project, at least from what I have seen, is to make white people in the Episcopal Church feel less bad about racism, which is has little or nothing to do with actually making racism in the United States less prominent or less destructive for people and communities of color.
Now, having said all of this, it's important not to over-steer here. The Prosperity Gospel for Rich People is objectively better than its primary alternatives in American society--functional Randism where not caring about others is elevated to a weird virtue, equally weird (often crypto-fascist) Jordan Peterson style woo-woo, or "Scapegoating 4 Jesus" modern American conservative Christianity. The motivations might be decidedly mixed and the scope of application limited, but being pro-women and pro-gay rights and pro racial justice are objectively good things, and giving to the poor even out of a desire to feel better about yourself is still providing resources to those in need. Better to do a good thing for the wrong reasons than do nothing at all (or do a bad thing). In fact, I'd even take Prosperity Gospel for the Silent Majority a la Osteen over the alternatives--Joel Osteen may be a bit of a grifter, but Franklin Graham and Charles Chaput are affirmatively wicked and harmful to people's lives.
But the ultimate problem is that conservatives are right that the sort of vague do-gooderism embodied in the Prosperity Gospel for Rich People is not really Christianity. Again, I'd take humanism wearing a Christian cloak over fascism wearing a Christian cloak (which is what is on offer in American conservative Christianity, at least in 2018), but in the end it's still just a simulacrum of the real thing. See, the problem is that Jesus actually has a very concrete set of requirements that are necessary in order to become His follower. Christianity has tried hard throughout its history to try to obfuscate this in various ways, but Jesus basically lays the whole thing out pretty clearly. And this program isn't interested in affirming our particular situation all that much. In fact, Jesus is very clear Christian thing is ultimately about taking up your cross and leaving your places of comfort to follow Him. If you are doing it right, it will lead you to exactly the place you don't want to go, the place you are afraid of. And Jesus doesn't really pull His punches about how that place likely isn't in the corridors of the rich and powerful and contented.
So, the issue with the Episcopal Church and the Jesuit-influenced branches of American Catholicism is not that they have radical social positions; it's that they don't have radical enough social positions. Being in favor of gay marriage, while good in and of itself, is easy; being against the power structure that affirms the folks in the audience, and calls the privileged to do concrete work to change it and not simply talk about it how sad it is, is much, much harder. And it is in this space that I see a disappointing lack of enthusiasm, from either the Episcopal or Roman Catholic ends of the equation. Christian discipleship doesn't magically stop when it impacts your bottom line. Without turning this entirely into a generation war, I see far, far more willingness to accept this reality among the 40 and below members of the Episcopal Church than I see among the older crowd. And the Jesuits, for all of their progressive bona fides, don't seem particularly interested in really trying to cut into the meat with regard to the enormous number of people they educate and influence on a daily basis.
A Christianity that allows you to wall off parts of your life that aren't subject to change or correction is not a really Christianity. There is an affirmation of the person that comes from the message of Christ, without question. But it's not the affirmation of the status quo. Christianity is a radical religion, at least it should be.
At the same time, there have been a bunch of articles in the wake of the Brett Kavanaugh thing that are variations on the idea of "WTF is wrong with Jesuit schools?" For people whose primary encounter with the Jesuits is progressive voices like Fr. James Martin, the notion that a Jesuit institution like Georgetown Prep would be a bastion of misogyny and general awfulness is a bit of a culture shock. And, if I may, I think the culture shock can be explained by saying that the Jesuits are clearest expression of the the Roman Catholic version of the Baby Boomers in the Episcopal Church.
But before tackling all of that, let's back up to take a brief detour and talk about this guy:
The most common complaint leveled against Osteen is that he is a "prosperity Gospel" preacher, and while in an ultimate sense he is, Osteen is far more nuanced and subtle than the true-blue prosperity charlatans like Trump's buddy Paula White or Creflo Dollar. If you listen to Osteen, he rarely talks about money directly. Instead, Osteen's basic message is (1) God cares about you and meets you where you are; (2) God has a plan for you; and (3) that plan will come true if you have faith, have the proper mental attitude, and take a set of utterly reasonable lifestyle steps to improve yourself.
See, Osteen understands very well who his congregation is--lower middle and middle class white suburbanites. They view themselves as the "forgotten people," the "Silent Majority"--too provincial to be taken seriously by the cultural and other social elites (except when some politician needs their vote), but also successful enough to not be the focus of social concern (at least, from their point of view). They believe that their situation--their wants, fears, concerns, etc.--is irrelevant, or at least seen as irrelevant. Osteen's message resonates with them because he affirms them where they are, and reassures them that, even if no one else seemingly cares about what happens to them, God cares about them. It's OK, Osteen tells them, to want things, to want to be taken seriously, to try to improve your situation. In fact, it's more than OK; it's what God wants for them, too.
Now, in 21st Century late capitalism in the United States, the thing that the vast majority of his congregation wants is to get rich, because our culture provides few other vehicles for enhancing your dignity and self-worth other than having lots of money. Whether or not Osteen understands this dynamic is sort of beside the point--though, he would have to be an idiot or pathologically unreflective not to. Osteen is preaching self-help, but self-help in a very targeted way, helping them do the thing that they want to do already, the the thing that fills in their psychological and spiritual needs. Osteen doesn't talk about money because he doesn't have to; there is no need to make the subtext into a text if everyone understands the score.
Now, you might think that Prosperity Gospel preachers like Osteen would not have much resonance with folks who are already rich and privileged, i.e. upper class white folks. And you would be right, in the sense that the specifics of Osteen's message don't really work with that crowd. But the meta-structure of Osteen's message--affirm them as they are, speak to their existential concerns, provide an easy-to-implement way to address those concerns--works perfectly well in the rarefied air of wealthy white folks. See, whereas the people Osteen is talking to believe themselves to be forgotten, rich white folks understand that they are at the center of everything in America. No, the existential concern of this crowd is not "does anyone care?" but rather "am I an asshole?"
Remember, no one is the villain of his or her own story, and very few people are OK with a self-understanding as a Black Hat. While there are some people who are just temperamentally unable to consider the needs and circumstances of people other than themselves, most people some measure of genuine compassion for others, especially those who are in a tough place. Not withstanding all of the recent discussion surrounding "wokeness," and "acknowledging your privilege," most people who are privileged know perfectly well that they are, in fact, incredibly privileged. And those that have that awareness generally feel at least a little bit guilty about their privilege. So, folks are caught in a bit of a double-bind--how can I live my basically awesome privileged life in a manner that doesn't make me feel like I am Ebenezer Scrooge?
Into this mix comes what you might call "The Prosperity Gospel for Rich People." Unlike with Osteen et al., these folks aren't looking for God to bless them with wealth, because that's already happened. Instead, what they are looking for is some sort of divine sanction for the wealth they already have, and the maintenance and further pursuit thereof--some moral framework for why it is OK, even good, to go out and work on Wall Street or go work for some DC law firm and become a powerful, wealth person. The Prosperity Gospel for Rich People is, at the end of the day, the dominant, if unacknowledged, ideology of much of the Baby Boomer generation in the Episcopal Church, and a large chunk of the US Catholic Church as well.
So, how does the Prosperity Gospel for Rich People work? The pithiest formulation of this idea is the motto of Georgetown Prep (and other Jesuit high schools and colleges)--"Men for Others." The idea here is to become a "person of service," giving of one's time and money to various sorts of charitable or socially-constructive causes. By doing so, you establish yourself as a good person, a person who is not indifferent or dismissive to the plight of the less fortunate (notice how Kavanaugh was often pictured giving out food to various unfortunates or volunteering time to coach youth sports). And, having done so, one now with a clear conscience can go and make a ton of money and become a big shot and associate with other big shots of various sorts. By doing your duty as a person of service, you show that you are not an ingrate for what you have, without meaningfully calling into question what you have and the manner in which you obtained it. You can have your cake (feeling good about being a social-conscious, responsible person), and eat it, too (going after money, status, and influence).
It's important to see how compatible this framework is, notwithstanding folks like Kavanaugh, with a generally socially and political liberal world-view. While the Jesuits have to tread lightly around sexuality and gender issues as a result of the various threads within Roman Catholicism, the Baby Boomers in the Episcopal Church have no such constraints. Indeed, showing your progressive bona fides on gender and sexuality is a good way to show how much you are not a jerk. Why not? It's not like being, for example, pro-choice, or pro-gay rights is antithetical to having a high-powered corporate gig and functioning in that space. To paraphrase something basketball great Michael Jordan may or may not have actually said, gay people buy sneakers, too. Particularly where those bona fides don't require one to actually do anything, or at least anything that meaningfully impacts your lifestyle. If you work in a high-powered corporate job, being OK with other similarly situated folks who happen to be gay getting married is costless. What do you care?
In fact, one of the more interesting changes in Jesuit education in the last 40 years is the way it has gone from being almost entirely male-only to generally co-ed (with Georgetown Prep as a notable exception). I am convinced this was and is an utterly pragmatic decision--whereas two generations ago women had no political and social power, now women are important social, economic and cultural leaders, and so it is "worth it" to bring them into the fold. Again, the Jesuits are constrained by Rome in various ways, but if they had their way they would by-and-large be on-board with full equality of women. Now that women matter, they matter to the Jesuits. And many, many women are A-OK with being embraced as part of the Old Boys Club--just look at the voting patterns of white women in the recent midterm election. Georgetown Prep, in certain respects, actually is not particularly indicative of Jesuit education now, as most places have killed the insular male culture by going co-ed, or at a minimum have broadened it out a bit.
But all of this, at the end of the day, is basically an exercise in conscience cleaning. The goal of this Prosperity Gospel for Rich People is to convince the audience that they are really good people, or at least can become good people through a set of easily accomplished steps. Actually fixing problems or materially altering the circumstances of other folks is really kinda beside the point. That's why so much of the effort in the Prosperity Gospel for Rich People revolves around consciousness-raising. Consciousness-raising is the ultimate sort of empty calorie whitewashing of conscience, because the people who need and want their consciences cleansed can feel better about their increased Wokeness, and the people who don't give a shit can easily pretend to go along with all of this, knowing that they are never going to asked to put anything of consequence on the table.
Which in turn brings us back to Kavanaugh and Georgetown Prep. The problem is not that the ideas and ethos on offer at places like Georgetown Prep are inherently flawed, in the sense that you can look at their mission statement and say "a ha! Item #7 is bad and the source of the problems!" No, the problem is that the meta-goal is always to get you to the place where you are comfortable with where you are. So, people who already have deep consciences will be pushed and encouraged to go as far as their compassion will take them, while folks who barely care about these things will not be challenged very much, with every space in between, and all of those outcomes are considered to be "wins."
No one buys a self-help book regarding a topic that they haven't already decided they want to change about themselves. As a result, the scope of a program of self-help is necessarily going to be limited to the topics that are pre-selected by the person receiving the self-help. When Kavanaugh says that his life and experience are deeply formed by Georgetown Prep and the ethos of service, I suspect he really means that. But that ethos is only going to go as deep as Kavanaugh was ready to let it go from the jump. As a result, there is nothing in principle that Kavanaugh has done or will do that is in conflict with the ethos of service he possesses via his Jesuit education. His life has been changed in a positive way by a place like Georgetown Prep--in precisely the areas that he had decided ahead of time he wanted to experience growth. The rest of it--pounding beers and groping women and reducing people's rights--those were areas that I suspect Kavanaugh was and is pretty comfortable with, thank you very much. Nothing from the Prosperity Gospel for Rich People was ever going to penetrate that space.
On the flip side, I am sure you can find someone who went to Georgetown Prep in Kavanaugh's class who has dedicated their life to truly self-sacrificing service to the poor or marginalized, and will tell you (truthfully) that they were inspired to do what they do because of Georgetown Prep. But that person came to Georgetown Prep wanting to go to that place already, if perhaps in an inchoate way, and the Jesuits provided the tools to do that, as well. It may seem like there is a complete dichotomy between Kavanaugh and our hypothetical do-gooder, but there really isn't. For both Kavanaugh and our construct, Georgetown Prep gave them what they wanted.
Take another example, this time from the Episcopal Church. The most recent buzzword in TEC circles is the importance of "Becoming the Beloved Community." The term "Beloved Community" comes from Martin Luther King, Jr. (the go-to source for white people looking to feel enlightened about race). I am not sure what Dr. King meant by the Beloved Community, but I'm pretty sure it's not what the folks in my diocese mean by it, because judging from what I heard at the Diocesan Convention a couple of weekends ago, it doesn't mean anything in a concrete sense. We have to walk a labyrinth, and we need to be aware that racist things were done by Episcopalians in the past. But what are we supposed to do? What is it that we need to change? Silence. But there is money to be had and programs to plan, so those will occur apace.
Some white lady telling me how to be more Woke about race is the same sort of pablum you get from. . . corporate diversity programs. Ding ding ding! It all comes from the same fundamental source--how can I feel better about doing all of the things I'm already doing and have no intention of changing? How can I be affirmed as I am? The ultimate goal of the Beloved Community project, at least from what I have seen, is to make white people in the Episcopal Church feel less bad about racism, which is has little or nothing to do with actually making racism in the United States less prominent or less destructive for people and communities of color.
Now, having said all of this, it's important not to over-steer here. The Prosperity Gospel for Rich People is objectively better than its primary alternatives in American society--functional Randism where not caring about others is elevated to a weird virtue, equally weird (often crypto-fascist) Jordan Peterson style woo-woo, or "Scapegoating 4 Jesus" modern American conservative Christianity. The motivations might be decidedly mixed and the scope of application limited, but being pro-women and pro-gay rights and pro racial justice are objectively good things, and giving to the poor even out of a desire to feel better about yourself is still providing resources to those in need. Better to do a good thing for the wrong reasons than do nothing at all (or do a bad thing). In fact, I'd even take Prosperity Gospel for the Silent Majority a la Osteen over the alternatives--Joel Osteen may be a bit of a grifter, but Franklin Graham and Charles Chaput are affirmatively wicked and harmful to people's lives.
But the ultimate problem is that conservatives are right that the sort of vague do-gooderism embodied in the Prosperity Gospel for Rich People is not really Christianity. Again, I'd take humanism wearing a Christian cloak over fascism wearing a Christian cloak (which is what is on offer in American conservative Christianity, at least in 2018), but in the end it's still just a simulacrum of the real thing. See, the problem is that Jesus actually has a very concrete set of requirements that are necessary in order to become His follower. Christianity has tried hard throughout its history to try to obfuscate this in various ways, but Jesus basically lays the whole thing out pretty clearly. And this program isn't interested in affirming our particular situation all that much. In fact, Jesus is very clear Christian thing is ultimately about taking up your cross and leaving your places of comfort to follow Him. If you are doing it right, it will lead you to exactly the place you don't want to go, the place you are afraid of. And Jesus doesn't really pull His punches about how that place likely isn't in the corridors of the rich and powerful and contented.
So, the issue with the Episcopal Church and the Jesuit-influenced branches of American Catholicism is not that they have radical social positions; it's that they don't have radical enough social positions. Being in favor of gay marriage, while good in and of itself, is easy; being against the power structure that affirms the folks in the audience, and calls the privileged to do concrete work to change it and not simply talk about it how sad it is, is much, much harder. And it is in this space that I see a disappointing lack of enthusiasm, from either the Episcopal or Roman Catholic ends of the equation. Christian discipleship doesn't magically stop when it impacts your bottom line. Without turning this entirely into a generation war, I see far, far more willingness to accept this reality among the 40 and below members of the Episcopal Church than I see among the older crowd. And the Jesuits, for all of their progressive bona fides, don't seem particularly interested in really trying to cut into the meat with regard to the enormous number of people they educate and influence on a daily basis.
A Christianity that allows you to wall off parts of your life that aren't subject to change or correction is not a really Christianity. There is an affirmation of the person that comes from the message of Christ, without question. But it's not the affirmation of the status quo. Christianity is a radical religion, at least it should be.
Comments