How Evangelicals Justify Economic Inequality
“Conservative evangelical Protestantism… is associated with attitudes that favor the status quo of inequality,” writes Dawson P. R. Vosburg, a PhD candidate in sociology at the Ohio State University.
These attitudes manifest in a variety of ways. Evangelical televangelists enrich themselves through donations from their faithful then splurge on houses, cars, and private jets. Congregations erect gaudy megachurches replete with fancy sound systems, multicamera projectors, and professional musical entertainment. Evangelicals themselves voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, who adorns his abodes in gold while championing policies that transfer wealth from the poor to the rich.
Evangelicals hold the Bible as the ultimate, inspired, and authoritative revelation from God and, when “born-again,” devote themselves to following Jesus for the rest of their lives. How then do these folks reconcile worshipping wealth with the Bible’s egalitarian message?
To find out, Vosburg extensively analyzed ten year’s worth of sermons at a large and growing Midwestern evangelical megachurch, which he anonymized as “New River.”
New River’s pastors sold this seemingly un-Christ-like point of view through four key themes: preaching against “rich shaming”; minimizing inequality within the U.S. by proclaiming that America’s impoverished aren’t really “poor”; interpreting the Bible as castigating “spiritual” poverty rather than material wealth; and arguing that God owns everything and thus decides who gets to be wealthy and who doesn’t.
In railing against rich shaming, New River’s head pastor, Pastor Tray, said in one sermon, “What other blessing does God give some people in the church that makes the person receiving the blessing almost feel like they’ve got to shrink back into the shadows and apologize for what God has given them, or even be embarrassed because of what God has given them?”
In another sermon, he said of wealth, “[God] wants you to enjoy it. He wants you to appreciate it. He loves to see His children blessed. Just like this dad of two loves to see my kids blessed …. God loves to see his kids blessed.”
Many passages in the Bible encourage helping the poor, but New River’s pastor frequently interpreted “poor” in the spiritual sense rather than the material. God wants his followers to help and guide those poor in spirit, who lack faith, not necessarily those lacking material resources.
But Vosburg noted that New River’s preachers didn’t always take a spiritual interpretation of economic matters. Parishioners were regularly reminded to give at least 10 percent of their income to the church as a tithe.
“According to Pastor Tray, ‘you become the most insulated and protected person on the planet by God when you tithe.’” Vosburg described.
Lastly, Vosburg noticed New River’s pastors rationalizing inequality by arguing that God owns everything and thus dictates the allocation of material riches.
“What you have was given to you by God, which means that ultimately inequality is the result of God’s direct action and is thus not unjust,” he paraphrased. “Questioning both the distribution of resources and what the rich do with their resources is condemned on the basis that God is the one who owns and distributed the resources.”
https://www.splinter.com/how-evangelical...inequality
“Conservative evangelical Protestantism… is associated with attitudes that favor the status quo of inequality,” writes Dawson P. R. Vosburg, a PhD candidate in sociology at the Ohio State University.
These attitudes manifest in a variety of ways. Evangelical televangelists enrich themselves through donations from their faithful then splurge on houses, cars, and private jets. Congregations erect gaudy megachurches replete with fancy sound systems, multicamera projectors, and professional musical entertainment. Evangelicals themselves voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, who adorns his abodes in gold while championing policies that transfer wealth from the poor to the rich.
Evangelicals hold the Bible as the ultimate, inspired, and authoritative revelation from God and, when “born-again,” devote themselves to following Jesus for the rest of their lives. How then do these folks reconcile worshipping wealth with the Bible’s egalitarian message?
To find out, Vosburg extensively analyzed ten year’s worth of sermons at a large and growing Midwestern evangelical megachurch, which he anonymized as “New River.”
New River’s pastors sold this seemingly un-Christ-like point of view through four key themes: preaching against “rich shaming”; minimizing inequality within the U.S. by proclaiming that America’s impoverished aren’t really “poor”; interpreting the Bible as castigating “spiritual” poverty rather than material wealth; and arguing that God owns everything and thus decides who gets to be wealthy and who doesn’t.
In railing against rich shaming, New River’s head pastor, Pastor Tray, said in one sermon, “What other blessing does God give some people in the church that makes the person receiving the blessing almost feel like they’ve got to shrink back into the shadows and apologize for what God has given them, or even be embarrassed because of what God has given them?”
In another sermon, he said of wealth, “[God] wants you to enjoy it. He wants you to appreciate it. He loves to see His children blessed. Just like this dad of two loves to see my kids blessed …. God loves to see his kids blessed.”
Many passages in the Bible encourage helping the poor, but New River’s pastor frequently interpreted “poor” in the spiritual sense rather than the material. God wants his followers to help and guide those poor in spirit, who lack faith, not necessarily those lacking material resources.
But Vosburg noted that New River’s preachers didn’t always take a spiritual interpretation of economic matters. Parishioners were regularly reminded to give at least 10 percent of their income to the church as a tithe.
“According to Pastor Tray, ‘you become the most insulated and protected person on the planet by God when you tithe.’” Vosburg described.
Lastly, Vosburg noticed New River’s pastors rationalizing inequality by arguing that God owns everything and thus dictates the allocation of material riches.
“What you have was given to you by God, which means that ultimately inequality is the result of God’s direct action and is thus not unjust,” he paraphrased. “Questioning both the distribution of resources and what the rich do with their resources is condemned on the basis that God is the one who owns and distributed the resources.”
https://www.splinter.com/how-evangelical...inequality
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
