That there “Prosperity” Gospel is a bogus idea.
I have yet to experience the truth of the reverend’s promises that if I send him money, God will prompt some innocent duffer to move his car from a parking spot right next to the front door at Olive Garden so I don’t have to walk far to the front door.
The Evangelicals Calling for War on Poor People
A God who does his best work in the dark hours is integral to the story of American evangelical Christianity. The stuff of country music songs and conversions in roadside motels, Jesus tends to come to people at their lowest and loneliest. The only problem is that some of God’s most pernicious modern apostles understand this all too well. At a time when fewer and fewer believers are going to church, it is consumption, in these dark times, that illuminates a deeply antisocial shift in evangelical Christian beliefs.
Elle Hardy, New Republic 10-23-2023
Mix the above recognitions with the popular Right Wing religious notion that America was founded as a so-called “Christian Country based on Judeo-Christian ideas” and we end up with traumatized gullible minds. First of all, as Mia Brett wrote two years ago,
“Judeo-Christian values” is a dog whistle that erases Jewish values by subsuming Judaism into Christianity. It also excludes other religions, particularly Islam. When politicians claim “Judeo-Christian values” they’re almost always describing Christian values but want to pretend they are being inclusive of Jews.
Initially, in the 19th century the phrase referred to Jewish people who converted to Christianity. It wasn’t intended to be inclusive of Jews at all. The current meaning of the term was an invention of American politics in the 1930s, as a phrase to show opposition to Hitler and communism. “Judeo-Christian values” is often used by politicians to proclaim common opposition to atheism, abortion and LGBT issues.
… For the well-heeled, success is an obvious reward of faith. For the disadvantaged, a God who is looking after them in this life, as well as the next, DANGLES A GOLDEN CARROT at a time when social mobility is becoming harder to come by due to increasing inequality.
ibid
They’re surely out there this morning trying to get the hell out of things, places and people … you can count on that.
So what exactly is our yearning when we seek the spiritual within the walls of our local chapels?
Better asked perhaps … Just what is it that our Christian congregations offer in their communities when someone outside the circle comes seeking light and knowledge?
Does the traditional pastoral offering have a real potential of satisfying the needs or hungers of those looking through the doors and windows of America’s chapels and mega-churches? Do our new adult children with our grandchildren in tow find something useful – something of much more worth than the literal-minded silliness of Jesus Camp?
The enduring power of religion is not as a social club or political/moral sign-waving publicity stump. Rather, it ought to lie within the realm of a human need for meaning and purpose in living. The venue in life that seems to require endurance is more in the perceptive realm of mind and spirit and certainly not best served with the traditional literal-minded approach of moralizing.
When our non-physiological internal hungers flare up, the void to be filled is not satisfied by lasagna, a hot bath or a good night’s sleep. These kinds of internal hungers and dissatisfactions reflect not a lack of consumable organics, but a powerful uneasiness; a restlessness with life. Our thoughts truly form who we are: what has and continues to form us.
When we think we are just worried about things, wanting things we don’t have, dissatisfied with work, with marriage, with friends, our community, the economy or the government – even our favorite pro team that’s never going to win a championship – we are thinking thoughts that are part of what forms us and recreates anew who we are every day.
Christianity as a valid 21st Century spirituality must offer something more than Sunday group and conformity-dominated worship with its hand-waving sighs of “Jesus” as the single important mantra. Families must be offered more than potluck suppers and the clichéd generalities that create feelings of acceptance and belonging to a mega-church crowd that flocks together in pious self-congratulation every Sunday.
Further, it should be no surprise that a hunger for something more powerful arouses not just laity, but the clergy as well. If being Christian means more than just going through weekly motions and repeating worn out slogans, then what ought to be offered is something responsive to that internal hunger. It’s a hunger that cries out for something of substance and not rigid god and bible talk. It’s a hunger for an experience that is barely verbal but more powerfully prompted from within by something Holy Spiritual (wholly spiritual).
And satisfying that hunger is possible. The means are there, within each of us. We do not need anyone standing at a pulpit or pacing back and forth on a stage to throw the book at us.
Satisfying that hunger involves one simple concept.
Take ownership of your spirituality just as you take ownership and responsibility to provide for yourself and your family.
Responsible citizens ought not rush to something external like a government for food and shelter dependency. Nor should citizens run to the local house of worship to for spiritual feeding and shelter – creating a dependency that is only a single step away from the fear, shame and guilt of the cult.
This is not what is obtained by splashing in the shallow waters of mega-church biblically-literal spirituality that, when all is said and done, shackles itself to the limits of literal-minded moral whining; to pretended “prosperity theology” that masquerades as the teaching of Jesus the Master.
The power behind our beliefs is not our ability to become educated in what the Bible SAYS, thereby permitting us opportunities to publicly display how well we can read or memorize verses. The power lies in what scripture, prayer, tradition and reason prompt within.
I’m not talking about being prompted to obey, conform and donate.
An unspoken communal experience of what is divine both inside and outside our perception lies within the potential of every Christian congregation. It does however remain powerfully elusive – even perhaps hidden – while the emphasis on social behavior, conformity and financial contribution lies behind the flashing lights and cloying praise-songs.
rugerac.com 