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The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream
A grand and startling work of American historyAmerica was founded, we’re taught in school, by the Pilgrims and other Puritans escaping religious persecution in Europe—an austere and pious lot who established a culture that remained pure and uncorrupted until the Industrial Revolution got in the way. In The Money Cult, Chris Lehmann reveals that we have it American capitalism has always been entangled with religion, and so today’s megapastors, for example, aren’t an aberration—they’re as American as Benjamin Franklin. Tracing American Christianity from John Winthrop to the rise of the Mormon Church and on to the triumph of Joel Osteen, The Money Cult is an ambitious work of history from a widely admired journalist. Examining nearly four hundred years of American history, Lehmann reveals how America’s religious leaders became less worried about sin and the afterlife and more concerned with the material world, until the social gospel was overtaken by the gospel of wealth. Showing how American Christianity came to accommodate—and eventually embrace—the pursuit of profit, as well as the inescapability of economic inequality, The Money Cult is a wide-ranging and revelatory book that will make you rethink what you know about the form of American capitalism so dominant in the world today, as well as the core tenets of America itself.
406 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 15, 2016
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Chris Lehmann
7 books9 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
May 6, 2020
Religionising Society
Like Harold Bloom (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and Terry Eagleton (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), Chris Lehmann identifies Gnosticism as the central belief of Americans, not just in terms of the theological rationalisations provided by the growing number of proponents of the uniquely American 'Prosperity Gospel', but also in terms adopted from this theology by the secular culture. It is this continuing path from religion to culture rather than any cultural influence on religion that Lehmann explores.
Lehmann's general thesis is that the religion of America is the abiding source of an evolving secular culture, it's elan vital. It is a mistake to believe, according to Lehmann, that religion has been progressively secularised since the 18th century. Rather, it is American culture that has been constantly shaped by the developments in American Christianity from Calvinist Puritanism, to Arminian Methodism, Emersonian Transcendentalism, Holistic Pentacostalism, Mormonism and finally today's evangelical mega-churches that preach the doctrine of holy wealth.
This evolution is (somewhat paradoxically) one of the increasing sanctification of the material world. The apparent contradiction between the Gnostic belief in the inherent evil of the created world and the striving to get ahead within it, is resolved by the American ethos of continuous self-recreation, itself an evolutionary process of incorporating more and more of the world into the boundaries of the self.
The world, as it were, becomes better the more it is subject to and the result of an individual will. Wealth becomes not just a Puritan sign of divine favour; it is reward expected for an implacable will. Wealth then becomes Mammon baptised and spiritualised. It doesn't simply change the way we live, it changes our being.
Money, in short, is grace. One empirical verification of this thesis is Donald Trump's otherwise unaccountable success among evangelicals. He is patently a man of grace.
Like Harold Bloom (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and Terry Eagleton (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), Chris Lehmann identifies Gnosticism as the central belief of Americans, not just in terms of the theological rationalisations provided by the growing number of proponents of the uniquely American 'Prosperity Gospel', but also in terms adopted from this theology by the secular culture. It is this continuing path from religion to culture rather than any cultural influence on religion that Lehmann explores.
Lehmann's general thesis is that the religion of America is the abiding source of an evolving secular culture, it's elan vital. It is a mistake to believe, according to Lehmann, that religion has been progressively secularised since the 18th century. Rather, it is American culture that has been constantly shaped by the developments in American Christianity from Calvinist Puritanism, to Arminian Methodism, Emersonian Transcendentalism, Holistic Pentacostalism, Mormonism and finally today's evangelical mega-churches that preach the doctrine of holy wealth.
This evolution is (somewhat paradoxically) one of the increasing sanctification of the material world. The apparent contradiction between the Gnostic belief in the inherent evil of the created world and the striving to get ahead within it, is resolved by the American ethos of continuous self-recreation, itself an evolutionary process of incorporating more and more of the world into the boundaries of the self.
The world, as it were, becomes better the more it is subject to and the result of an individual will. Wealth becomes not just a Puritan sign of divine favour; it is reward expected for an implacable will. Wealth then becomes Mammon baptised and spiritualised. It doesn't simply change the way we live, it changes our being.
Money, in short, is grace. One empirical verification of this thesis is Donald Trump's otherwise unaccountable success among evangelicals. He is patently a man of grace.
October 1, 2016
An exploration of the associations between American capitalism and Christianity.
The author develops the thesis of what he calls the "money cult," a symbiotic and mutually reinforcing relationship between certain tenets of American Protestantism and its developing capitalistic economy. He looks fondly upon the Puritans as having a more communitarian practice; he explores what he deems the degeneration of this culture as it moves toward the more rugged individualism of the later colonial era and the first and second Great Awakenings, the latter of which especially promoted primitivism and emphasized the importance of hard work to get ahead. Mormonism and Pentecostalism are especially emphasized in terms of their religious and capitalist associations; much is made of New Thought in the 19th century. In the 20th century the author sees the continuation of this "money cult" ethos in the work surrounding Bryan and especially Peale; the work ends with a blistering critique of the American capitalist spirit suffusing the Left Behind series.
The book does well at advancing its thesis in its general sentiment: American Protestantism has profoundly shaped the American capitalist economy and itself has been strongly influenced by it as well. What passes for "Christian" economic philosophy among American Christians need not be the only way that the ethos of the NT is understood, and the book explains how the American philosophy developed.
At times, however, the author seems to be stretching the evidence. His use of "Gnostic" is a bit baffling; he uses it for just about everything, from the Cane Ridge revival to Mary Baker Eddy. Granted, the term is so expansive and flexible that it can mean just about anything, but generally maintains the idea of salvation by knowledge at its core, and not necessarily askance at institutions. A more precise use of philosophical terms would do better at not undermining his argument, since there are more discontinuities than continuity between, say, revivalism and Christian science. And in some details there was a bit of confusion, much of which is likely due to the author's lack of experience in the groups in mind (e.g. dispensational premillennialism pre-dates Pentecostalism and significantly influenced all of Evangelicalism, not just Pentecostalism). This is not surprising considering the breadth of the project.
Nevertheless, an eye opening work worthy of consideration.
The author develops the thesis of what he calls the "money cult," a symbiotic and mutually reinforcing relationship between certain tenets of American Protestantism and its developing capitalistic economy. He looks fondly upon the Puritans as having a more communitarian practice; he explores what he deems the degeneration of this culture as it moves toward the more rugged individualism of the later colonial era and the first and second Great Awakenings, the latter of which especially promoted primitivism and emphasized the importance of hard work to get ahead. Mormonism and Pentecostalism are especially emphasized in terms of their religious and capitalist associations; much is made of New Thought in the 19th century. In the 20th century the author sees the continuation of this "money cult" ethos in the work surrounding Bryan and especially Peale; the work ends with a blistering critique of the American capitalist spirit suffusing the Left Behind series.
The book does well at advancing its thesis in its general sentiment: American Protestantism has profoundly shaped the American capitalist economy and itself has been strongly influenced by it as well. What passes for "Christian" economic philosophy among American Christians need not be the only way that the ethos of the NT is understood, and the book explains how the American philosophy developed.
At times, however, the author seems to be stretching the evidence. His use of "Gnostic" is a bit baffling; he uses it for just about everything, from the Cane Ridge revival to Mary Baker Eddy. Granted, the term is so expansive and flexible that it can mean just about anything, but generally maintains the idea of salvation by knowledge at its core, and not necessarily askance at institutions. A more precise use of philosophical terms would do better at not undermining his argument, since there are more discontinuities than continuity between, say, revivalism and Christian science. And in some details there was a bit of confusion, much of which is likely due to the author's lack of experience in the groups in mind (e.g. dispensational premillennialism pre-dates Pentecostalism and significantly influenced all of Evangelicalism, not just Pentecostalism). This is not surprising considering the breadth of the project.
Nevertheless, an eye opening work worthy of consideration.
March 6, 2016
A compelling work of social criticism examining the intricate ties between American Protestantism and capitalism from the colonial period to the present.
April 4, 2021
In 1660, the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony hanged Mary Dyer for returning there after banishment for being a Quaker heretic. The heresy? The belief that one could receive direct personal revelations from the Divine.
Author Chris Lehmann would have theologically sided with the Puritans and classified Dyer's understanding as gnostic. Gnosticism, according to the writer of The Money Cult, ultimately turned American Protestantism into a recruiting ground for sanctified capitalism and its uniquely destructive market order.
Unfortunately, Lehmann devotes less than a page to examining gnosticism's origins and his understanding of its meaning. In this book, gnosticism becomes an amorphous boogyman word similar to "secular humanism," "neoliberalism," "socialism," "the patriarchy," "the deep state," etc. This failure of precision is a serious and distracting flaw. The author by his flabby use of the word, inadvertently perhaps, minimizes the Roman Catholic mystic tradition that well predates the Reformation and dismisses Eastern Orthodoxy altogether. It's unfortunate, too, because The Money Cult is otherwise a well-constructed interpretive history of the relationship between American Protestant Christianity and capitalism.
It's an important book as well. The Money Cult systematically demonstrates Max Weber's thesis that American capitalism grew inherently out of the Protestant work ethic is terribly incomplete. A variety of folk practices, magical beliefs, and pagan intuitions also combined to turn the capitalist market economy into the active presence of the Protestant God. It is a startlingly conclusion, fortified by the author's detailed analysis of the historical record.
The Money Cult teaches much about the religious history of the United States. It will be a good source and one from which I will draw in the future. Lehmann can be verbose and occasionally wanders into the weeds. Still, it is worth reading, particularly for those who mourn the breakdown of the Protestant moral imagination and who wonder what caused modern materialist religiosity to grow with such abandon.
Author Chris Lehmann would have theologically sided with the Puritans and classified Dyer's understanding as gnostic. Gnosticism, according to the writer of The Money Cult, ultimately turned American Protestantism into a recruiting ground for sanctified capitalism and its uniquely destructive market order.
Unfortunately, Lehmann devotes less than a page to examining gnosticism's origins and his understanding of its meaning. In this book, gnosticism becomes an amorphous boogyman word similar to "secular humanism," "neoliberalism," "socialism," "the patriarchy," "the deep state," etc. This failure of precision is a serious and distracting flaw. The author by his flabby use of the word, inadvertently perhaps, minimizes the Roman Catholic mystic tradition that well predates the Reformation and dismisses Eastern Orthodoxy altogether. It's unfortunate, too, because The Money Cult is otherwise a well-constructed interpretive history of the relationship between American Protestant Christianity and capitalism.
It's an important book as well. The Money Cult systematically demonstrates Max Weber's thesis that American capitalism grew inherently out of the Protestant work ethic is terribly incomplete. A variety of folk practices, magical beliefs, and pagan intuitions also combined to turn the capitalist market economy into the active presence of the Protestant God. It is a startlingly conclusion, fortified by the author's detailed analysis of the historical record.
The Money Cult teaches much about the religious history of the United States. It will be a good source and one from which I will draw in the future. Lehmann can be verbose and occasionally wanders into the weeds. Still, it is worth reading, particularly for those who mourn the breakdown of the Protestant moral imagination and who wonder what caused modern materialist religiosity to grow with such abandon.
March 1, 2021
I've been on a quest to understand how some versions of Christianity are so diametrically opposed to the version I learned in Lutheran Sunday School forty years ago, how capitalism came to be understood as God (i.e., that which practitioners take to be ultimately important), how this makes sense to the practitioners of this radically new exegesis and practice, and how this tiny minority group (which overlaps significantly with the Christian Nationalist movement and holds significant sway in the Republican party) has come to have a laser focus on seeking and holding power in America, and has cemented their hold for decades to come through their control of the judiciary, with their emplacement of thousands of judges intent on restricting freedom of all kinds. I've answered my first question: I now understand that this is, in fact, a different religion than the one in which I was raised.
Lehmann's central argument is that American religious practice and thought has shaped politics and culture from the beginning (though NOT in the Founding Fathers wanted a Christian nation, which is without historical basis in fact). Instead, he traces how evangelical/charismatic traditions came to overlap with the Gospel of Wealth (or rather, a new prosperity gospel). He cautions that to reduce this movement to its usually-charlatan leaders (Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, Jerry Falwell, Joel Osteen, Rick Warren) is to miss its significance and the laser focus on obtaining and using power these groups have had for over 50 years. To trivialize it ignores, Lehmann argues, "just about every truly remarkable development that has radically reconfigured American Protestantism into something rare, strange, and infinitely adaptable to the market-based American culture of the main chance. What sets the Money Cult apart is how closely the _content_ of this potent American offshoot of Protestant faith now mirrors so many of the baseline assumptions of consumer capitalism . . . . The social ethic of the New Testament -- under which the poor were the true heirs to the planet, and early Christians held all property in common -- has morphed into the prosperity gospel, which deems worldly success a direct sign of divine favor, and translates the ministry of Jesus into a battery of business stratagems and motivational slogans." (xvii)
He points out that much of the success of the latter-day religious right is based in "the cross-denominational explosion of charismatic piety. From its original outcast roots in the poor white and African American congregations in the South and West, the Pentecostal movement had, by the 1970s, matured into a successful mainstay of the urban revival circuit, and soon moved into the vanguard of that era's pioneering boom in televangelism (300). This practice, 'unloosed from the conventional structures of denominational discipline and theological doctrine," allowed "the experience of the indwelling Holy Spirit" to "lift their sanctified souls out of the disappointing, ugly, and perilous sphere of mere matter and history." (307).
The beliefs fit with the times -- it was precisely in the 70s with its rampant inflation and the beginnings of consumer debt, when "money itself held a value that was increasingly theoretical, as the connection between the value of one's labor and the value of one's income grew increasingly unpredictable . . . these economic conditions boosted consumer confidence in unseen multipliers. For many, faith in supernatural hundredfold returns appeared a reasonable economic strategy." (310).
"The gospel merchandised over the cable airwaves of the seventies and eighties was tailor-made for a postindustrial service economy, where labor was steadily casualized, and credit-based consumption was ascribed with its onw magical, soul-transforming properties." (311).
Falwell, C. Everett Koop, and others were "strident enthusiasts of supply-side Reaganism. The political mobilization of the religious right, in other words, ensured that the rising mood of evangelical militancy remained confined to the overlapping crusades fo the Cold War and the culture wars, leavin ghte agendas of the economic right serenely intact -- and indeed, scripturally anointed. "Ownership of property is biblical," Falwell thundered." (313), a statement that is almost impossible to understand in its ignoring of the dramatic differences between what "property" and "ownership" might mean in the contemporary US vs. under the monarchies is Judah and Israel, Israel during the Roman occupation, and the varied notions of property ownership throughout the Hellenized Roman empire.
They cling tightly to the perceived enemies of old, as when Falwell "inveighs against a prospective Communist putsch in America via the humanist infiltraion of public schools, and lamenting the academically engineered 'socialist takeover' of formerly hardy Protestant free-market polities such as Sweden" (313).
Again, re: the context/ways in which this charismatic vision is embedded in the social context in which it arose: "We tend to see the trademark shifts of this crucial transitional phase of American capitalism -- which took most Americans out of the orbit of manufacturing work and into the complex of service professions known as FIRE (i.e., finance, insurance and real estate) -- from the vantage point of the policy elite who struggled to fully define and implement the transition. But hte charismatic revival allows us to better understand how the historic emergence of the low-wage American service economy looked from the groun d-- and how it played out in the redemptive visions of a rapidly expanding charismatic Protestantism." (314).
"Wal-Mart is a cultural icon nearly as significant for evangelical believers as a matrix of public piety as it is a source of private family bargain-hunting. As Moreton shows, the Wal-Mart Corporation has come to be the most enthusiastic exemplar of the servant-leader idea -- so much so that the customer experience at the store's thousands of outlets serves as a kind of cultural shorthand for how Protestant citizens are to treat each other in the marketplace: with familial dignity, folksy personal concern, and hierarchical deference" (314).
Like almost all paens to free-market worship, though, "northwest Arkansas owes much of its service-economy infrastructure to massive federal spending; the all-year tourist and retirement settlements that fueled an eye-popping 80 percent increase in the Ozarks' population from 1960 to 1998 exist only thanks to the Army Corps of Engineers . . . Wal-Mart, in short, was made for -- and by -- the service-based, federally subsidized world of Ozarks capitalism." (315)
Regular patronage of Wal-Mart stores i sa more sturdy measure of conservative voting habits than church attendance (316)
"It's an awkward business, to put things mildly, to meekly acceded to the denail of health care coverage to the population that needs it most desperately while also claiming to represent the teachings of a biblical prophet who'd devoted a significant portion of his own ministry to healing the poor" (359) -- but is it? It seems to make sense to many evangelicals.
"For Osteen's parishioners, a smartly turned-out appearance or diligently organized work station might mean the difference between a steady salary and an indefinite plunge into debt, unemployment, and depression -- or, in the way that economic and personal misfortunes often intertwine, it might mark the dividing line between a divorce and a marital reconciliation. These are the realms where divine favor is often most desperately needed, and just as desperately felt to be absent" (370).
Outlining a number of Osteen stories about how God wants us to keep our cars clean, dress well to run errands to the store, and perform our work with diligence because we should be grateful God has given us a job, Lehmann places them in socioeconomic context: "There is . . . a poignant quality to Osteen's effforts to benedict the workaday routines of family and office-park life with ultimate meaning . . . . [they represent], just beneath their surface, an anxiety to appease an aggrieved and angry market God. Osteen's rage for personal order scarcely concelas the gnawing suspeicion tha tthe worksings of the market, and the entire system of reward and punishment that they rationalize, are deeply impersonal and, indeed, terrifyingly random.
Points out how curious it is that nothing has arisen to challenge the prosperity gospel, especially given its vivid failures in 2008 and beyond. "Here, after all, was ample and incontrovertible evidence that God was NOT arranging economic affairs to deliver believers into their best lives now, with millions of Americans evicted from underwater and/or foreclosed properties, and millions more relegated to the economic purgatory of long-term unemployment.
"Instead, Osteen's brand of the prosperity faith has continued to flourish amid conditions of brutal and long-term economic distress -- and no rival movement has taken root within the nation's vast Protestant mainstream either to question either the logic of sanctified capitalism or to draw attention to the predatory practices of the financial sector that have plunged so many Americans into such prolonged misery. As employment prospects stagnate or decline in regional job markets, as household debt continues, as more and more college graduates find themselves facing lifetimes of grinding debt obligations, the dominant message of our Protestant pulpits continues to be one long variation on Osteen's sunny individualist message . . .. If your bank is foreclosing on your house, believers are told, why, that's another trial that God has fashioned to sharpen your faith and work out his plan for an eventual life blessed with still greater abundance. Lost your job? Well, that just means that God has contrived to open an unexpected new window on your own foreordained vista of personal opportunity.
The chant that opens each worship service, "This is my Bible. I am what it says I am. I have wht it says I have. I do what it says I can do. I am about to receive the incorruptible, indestructible, ever-living seed of God, and I will never the be the same. Never, never, never. I will never be the same. In Jesus' name. Amen.
"What's troubling in this ritual invocation isn't so much its blinkered vision of spiritual literature -- whatever else the Bible may be, it most definitely isn't about the identity tor aspirations of its individual readers. Nor is it the half-sexualized, half-infantilizing imagery of the change. . . . No, what sets this oddly compelling refrain apart is its close cousinship to the consumer fantasies that populate the rest of American culture: the unshakeable conviction that whatever disappointments or calamites might overtake our common life, the integrity of the individual self is somehow forever unblemished, transcendent, and redeemed.
"The . . . . genius of Joel Osteen is, in fact, the . . .. genius of American capitalism. And the real mystery to unravel here isn't just how a huckster from the margins of the Protestant mainstream has come to captivate the spiritual imagination of a nation; it is, rather, just how America's once-austere and communal version of dissenting Protestantism developed into such a ripe recruiting ground for the sanctified capitalism of our financialized, upward-skewing, and uniquely destructive market order" (376-7).
Lehmann's central argument is that American religious practice and thought has shaped politics and culture from the beginning (though NOT in the Founding Fathers wanted a Christian nation, which is without historical basis in fact). Instead, he traces how evangelical/charismatic traditions came to overlap with the Gospel of Wealth (or rather, a new prosperity gospel). He cautions that to reduce this movement to its usually-charlatan leaders (Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, Jerry Falwell, Joel Osteen, Rick Warren) is to miss its significance and the laser focus on obtaining and using power these groups have had for over 50 years. To trivialize it ignores, Lehmann argues, "just about every truly remarkable development that has radically reconfigured American Protestantism into something rare, strange, and infinitely adaptable to the market-based American culture of the main chance. What sets the Money Cult apart is how closely the _content_ of this potent American offshoot of Protestant faith now mirrors so many of the baseline assumptions of consumer capitalism . . . . The social ethic of the New Testament -- under which the poor were the true heirs to the planet, and early Christians held all property in common -- has morphed into the prosperity gospel, which deems worldly success a direct sign of divine favor, and translates the ministry of Jesus into a battery of business stratagems and motivational slogans." (xvii)
He points out that much of the success of the latter-day religious right is based in "the cross-denominational explosion of charismatic piety. From its original outcast roots in the poor white and African American congregations in the South and West, the Pentecostal movement had, by the 1970s, matured into a successful mainstay of the urban revival circuit, and soon moved into the vanguard of that era's pioneering boom in televangelism (300). This practice, 'unloosed from the conventional structures of denominational discipline and theological doctrine," allowed "the experience of the indwelling Holy Spirit" to "lift their sanctified souls out of the disappointing, ugly, and perilous sphere of mere matter and history." (307).
The beliefs fit with the times -- it was precisely in the 70s with its rampant inflation and the beginnings of consumer debt, when "money itself held a value that was increasingly theoretical, as the connection between the value of one's labor and the value of one's income grew increasingly unpredictable . . . these economic conditions boosted consumer confidence in unseen multipliers. For many, faith in supernatural hundredfold returns appeared a reasonable economic strategy." (310).
"The gospel merchandised over the cable airwaves of the seventies and eighties was tailor-made for a postindustrial service economy, where labor was steadily casualized, and credit-based consumption was ascribed with its onw magical, soul-transforming properties." (311).
Falwell, C. Everett Koop, and others were "strident enthusiasts of supply-side Reaganism. The political mobilization of the religious right, in other words, ensured that the rising mood of evangelical militancy remained confined to the overlapping crusades fo the Cold War and the culture wars, leavin ghte agendas of the economic right serenely intact -- and indeed, scripturally anointed. "Ownership of property is biblical," Falwell thundered." (313), a statement that is almost impossible to understand in its ignoring of the dramatic differences between what "property" and "ownership" might mean in the contemporary US vs. under the monarchies is Judah and Israel, Israel during the Roman occupation, and the varied notions of property ownership throughout the Hellenized Roman empire.
They cling tightly to the perceived enemies of old, as when Falwell "inveighs against a prospective Communist putsch in America via the humanist infiltraion of public schools, and lamenting the academically engineered 'socialist takeover' of formerly hardy Protestant free-market polities such as Sweden" (313).
Again, re: the context/ways in which this charismatic vision is embedded in the social context in which it arose: "We tend to see the trademark shifts of this crucial transitional phase of American capitalism -- which took most Americans out of the orbit of manufacturing work and into the complex of service professions known as FIRE (i.e., finance, insurance and real estate) -- from the vantage point of the policy elite who struggled to fully define and implement the transition. But hte charismatic revival allows us to better understand how the historic emergence of the low-wage American service economy looked from the groun d-- and how it played out in the redemptive visions of a rapidly expanding charismatic Protestantism." (314).
"Wal-Mart is a cultural icon nearly as significant for evangelical believers as a matrix of public piety as it is a source of private family bargain-hunting. As Moreton shows, the Wal-Mart Corporation has come to be the most enthusiastic exemplar of the servant-leader idea -- so much so that the customer experience at the store's thousands of outlets serves as a kind of cultural shorthand for how Protestant citizens are to treat each other in the marketplace: with familial dignity, folksy personal concern, and hierarchical deference" (314).
Like almost all paens to free-market worship, though, "northwest Arkansas owes much of its service-economy infrastructure to massive federal spending; the all-year tourist and retirement settlements that fueled an eye-popping 80 percent increase in the Ozarks' population from 1960 to 1998 exist only thanks to the Army Corps of Engineers . . . Wal-Mart, in short, was made for -- and by -- the service-based, federally subsidized world of Ozarks capitalism." (315)
Regular patronage of Wal-Mart stores i sa more sturdy measure of conservative voting habits than church attendance (316)
"It's an awkward business, to put things mildly, to meekly acceded to the denail of health care coverage to the population that needs it most desperately while also claiming to represent the teachings of a biblical prophet who'd devoted a significant portion of his own ministry to healing the poor" (359) -- but is it? It seems to make sense to many evangelicals.
"For Osteen's parishioners, a smartly turned-out appearance or diligently organized work station might mean the difference between a steady salary and an indefinite plunge into debt, unemployment, and depression -- or, in the way that economic and personal misfortunes often intertwine, it might mark the dividing line between a divorce and a marital reconciliation. These are the realms where divine favor is often most desperately needed, and just as desperately felt to be absent" (370).
Outlining a number of Osteen stories about how God wants us to keep our cars clean, dress well to run errands to the store, and perform our work with diligence because we should be grateful God has given us a job, Lehmann places them in socioeconomic context: "There is . . . a poignant quality to Osteen's effforts to benedict the workaday routines of family and office-park life with ultimate meaning . . . . [they represent], just beneath their surface, an anxiety to appease an aggrieved and angry market God. Osteen's rage for personal order scarcely concelas the gnawing suspeicion tha tthe worksings of the market, and the entire system of reward and punishment that they rationalize, are deeply impersonal and, indeed, terrifyingly random.
Points out how curious it is that nothing has arisen to challenge the prosperity gospel, especially given its vivid failures in 2008 and beyond. "Here, after all, was ample and incontrovertible evidence that God was NOT arranging economic affairs to deliver believers into their best lives now, with millions of Americans evicted from underwater and/or foreclosed properties, and millions more relegated to the economic purgatory of long-term unemployment.
"Instead, Osteen's brand of the prosperity faith has continued to flourish amid conditions of brutal and long-term economic distress -- and no rival movement has taken root within the nation's vast Protestant mainstream either to question either the logic of sanctified capitalism or to draw attention to the predatory practices of the financial sector that have plunged so many Americans into such prolonged misery. As employment prospects stagnate or decline in regional job markets, as household debt continues, as more and more college graduates find themselves facing lifetimes of grinding debt obligations, the dominant message of our Protestant pulpits continues to be one long variation on Osteen's sunny individualist message . . .. If your bank is foreclosing on your house, believers are told, why, that's another trial that God has fashioned to sharpen your faith and work out his plan for an eventual life blessed with still greater abundance. Lost your job? Well, that just means that God has contrived to open an unexpected new window on your own foreordained vista of personal opportunity.
The chant that opens each worship service, "This is my Bible. I am what it says I am. I have wht it says I have. I do what it says I can do. I am about to receive the incorruptible, indestructible, ever-living seed of God, and I will never the be the same. Never, never, never. I will never be the same. In Jesus' name. Amen.
"What's troubling in this ritual invocation isn't so much its blinkered vision of spiritual literature -- whatever else the Bible may be, it most definitely isn't about the identity tor aspirations of its individual readers. Nor is it the half-sexualized, half-infantilizing imagery of the change. . . . No, what sets this oddly compelling refrain apart is its close cousinship to the consumer fantasies that populate the rest of American culture: the unshakeable conviction that whatever disappointments or calamites might overtake our common life, the integrity of the individual self is somehow forever unblemished, transcendent, and redeemed.
"The . . . . genius of Joel Osteen is, in fact, the . . .. genius of American capitalism. And the real mystery to unravel here isn't just how a huckster from the margins of the Protestant mainstream has come to captivate the spiritual imagination of a nation; it is, rather, just how America's once-austere and communal version of dissenting Protestantism developed into such a ripe recruiting ground for the sanctified capitalism of our financialized, upward-skewing, and uniquely destructive market order" (376-7).
July 3, 2018
Really takes off once it gets passed the butter churn era.
July 28, 2017
Just as it is impossible to begin to understand the complicated rivalries of the Middle East without an appreciation for the crucial role that various religious faiths have long played there, so is it also difficult to comprehend American politics without an awareness of religion’s central role in the story of the United States.
Unlike in Europe, where Protestants and Catholics competed for the loyalties of its people since the outbreak of the Reformation, Protestantism early assumed a dominant role in the United States. Both Frances Fitzgerald’s The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, and Chris Lehman’s The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream, examine not only how it has been an integral part of American history from its colonial beginnings, but also how its more conservative values have come to play such a key role in many important policy issues from the second half of the 20th century onward.
While Ms. Fitzgerald devotes the bulk of her book to developments in the 20th century –when the voice and power of conservative Christians came to assume a decisive role in America’s divisive “culture wars” – Mr. Lehman focuses on how these fundamentalist adherents became so intertwined with, and supportive of, unrestrained capitalism and the celebration of material wealth.
Among the most important of the earliest settlers were the Puritans, so-called because of their conviction that their practices were “purer” than those of the Church of England. Puritan theology owed much to the teachings of John Calvin, a key Reformation leader who believed that depraved humanity was not only “despised” by an angry, jealous deity, but also – without God’s merciful forgiveness – condemned to eternal damnation.
Also inherent in Calvin’s theology was the concept that each individual’s fate was essentially “predetermined,” since God – possessing all knowledge – knew before anyone’s birth just who would be “saved” and who would be “lost.” This created an undeniable tension with those who believed that individuals possessed “free will”:
• Were individual “choices” really free, or were they foreknown – hence pre-determined – from the beginning of time?
• Furthermore, what was the relationship, if any, between the choices persons made their lifetimes and their fate after death?
To allay the consequent anxieties of many, Calvin also taught, however, that people could learn who the lucky few were by observing their earthly lives: the “chosen” were those who prospered while those who suffered or failed were destined to be among the “lost.” It was but a short leap from this to the hopeful suspicion that perhaps individuals could positively “influence” their destiny if they were to achieve success or standing in this life.
As new colonists continued to arrive in North America in the 17th century, they frequently left behind the more established cities of the Atlantic coast – where the earliest colonists had settled – and began migrating further inland, settling in small, rural villages. The ministers who chose to follow them – some formally ordained and many non-ordained, pious laymen – were usually less educated than the leaders of the coastal cities’ established churches.
It was in these rural areas that extraordinary revivals, which came to be known as spiritual awakenings, occurred on several occasions in the 18th and 19th centuries. These large gatherings featured astonishing examples of otherwise normal persons speaking in tongues, experiencing ecstatic states, and undergoing intensely emotional conversions that convinced those involved that they had experienced a personal connection with the divine. Their excited retellings, bolstered by the accounts of observers, sparked a broader enthusiasm that infectiously spread through neighboring villages and communities. Over time, these experiences modified the harsh theology of the early Puritans into a more accessible form.
Since these conversion experiences were intensely personal – experienced by average men and women who often knew little scripture or doctrine – they contributed to a suspicion of, and even an aversion to, persons possessing academic or scientific credentials. Moreover, since it seemed that good fortune – say, an uptick in a business venture, or a bountiful harvest – frequently came to those who had undergone such experiences, material gains came to be understood as an outward sign from God marking those who had been “saved.”
It was, then, only a small step to embrace the operation and fruits of capitalism as an integral experience of their religious faith, the genesis of what Chris Lehman identifies as the money cult that celebrates “wealth as a spiritual virtue in American Protestantism” and, by “minting the promise of individual salvation into a precept of economic advancement, [allows] today’s prophets of prosperity [to ignore] entirely matters of economic justice as they pertain to Christian morality….”
Throughout the latter 19th and into the 20th centuries, these fundamentalist communities routinely jostled with the more mainline Protestant churches – and, because of immigration, the growing influence of the Catholic Church – over interpretations of Jesus’ teachings concerning the importance of caring for one’s neighbors and of working to make “this world” a more just and compassionate place. The more fundamentalist sects, while fervent believers in the necessity of personal reform (such as avoiding tobacco, liquor, and other vices), were, nonetheless, wary of larger social reform movements since these appeared too accommodating to modernism and its many threats to established authority.
While it often seemed in the first half of the 20th century that fundamentalist sects were dwindling in influence and in the number of adherents, this was not the case. In fact, even into the present day, fundamentalism’s appeal has always been strongest in the South and in America’s rural areas, the very places where lingering racism, suspicion of various elites, and resentment towards “others” – immigrants, freeloaders, and welfare-dependent “takers” who demand and consume ever-increasing amounts of attention and federal dollars – have always been strongest.
It is hardly surprising that those with the most conservative religious convictions have been drawn into the orbit of those with the most conservative political views. Especially since the 1970s, religious fundamentalists have acquired ever-greater power within the Republican Party and have become key allies of the ideological Right. Their aversion to science and fact, coupled with their devotion to doctrine and myth, is allowing the interests of the wealthy elite to ignore the pressing needs of the many while pursuing policies favoring the few.
Civilization is, at best, a very thin veneer covering human irrationality; it can exist only as long as a sufficient number of citizens choose facts over lies and rumors, prefer substance and achievement in policy proposals and action rather than fractious division, and support the rights of the larger community over the wishes of the greedy few.
These books make it very clear that America’s “civilization,” in fact somewhat less glorious and refined than advertised, is in grave danger of falling prey to the priesthood of the devoted ignorant.
Unlike in Europe, where Protestants and Catholics competed for the loyalties of its people since the outbreak of the Reformation, Protestantism early assumed a dominant role in the United States. Both Frances Fitzgerald’s The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, and Chris Lehman’s The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream, examine not only how it has been an integral part of American history from its colonial beginnings, but also how its more conservative values have come to play such a key role in many important policy issues from the second half of the 20th century onward.
While Ms. Fitzgerald devotes the bulk of her book to developments in the 20th century –when the voice and power of conservative Christians came to assume a decisive role in America’s divisive “culture wars” – Mr. Lehman focuses on how these fundamentalist adherents became so intertwined with, and supportive of, unrestrained capitalism and the celebration of material wealth.
Among the most important of the earliest settlers were the Puritans, so-called because of their conviction that their practices were “purer” than those of the Church of England. Puritan theology owed much to the teachings of John Calvin, a key Reformation leader who believed that depraved humanity was not only “despised” by an angry, jealous deity, but also – without God’s merciful forgiveness – condemned to eternal damnation.
Also inherent in Calvin’s theology was the concept that each individual’s fate was essentially “predetermined,” since God – possessing all knowledge – knew before anyone’s birth just who would be “saved” and who would be “lost.” This created an undeniable tension with those who believed that individuals possessed “free will”:
• Were individual “choices” really free, or were they foreknown – hence pre-determined – from the beginning of time?
• Furthermore, what was the relationship, if any, between the choices persons made their lifetimes and their fate after death?
To allay the consequent anxieties of many, Calvin also taught, however, that people could learn who the lucky few were by observing their earthly lives: the “chosen” were those who prospered while those who suffered or failed were destined to be among the “lost.” It was but a short leap from this to the hopeful suspicion that perhaps individuals could positively “influence” their destiny if they were to achieve success or standing in this life.
As new colonists continued to arrive in North America in the 17th century, they frequently left behind the more established cities of the Atlantic coast – where the earliest colonists had settled – and began migrating further inland, settling in small, rural villages. The ministers who chose to follow them – some formally ordained and many non-ordained, pious laymen – were usually less educated than the leaders of the coastal cities’ established churches.
It was in these rural areas that extraordinary revivals, which came to be known as spiritual awakenings, occurred on several occasions in the 18th and 19th centuries. These large gatherings featured astonishing examples of otherwise normal persons speaking in tongues, experiencing ecstatic states, and undergoing intensely emotional conversions that convinced those involved that they had experienced a personal connection with the divine. Their excited retellings, bolstered by the accounts of observers, sparked a broader enthusiasm that infectiously spread through neighboring villages and communities. Over time, these experiences modified the harsh theology of the early Puritans into a more accessible form.
Since these conversion experiences were intensely personal – experienced by average men and women who often knew little scripture or doctrine – they contributed to a suspicion of, and even an aversion to, persons possessing academic or scientific credentials. Moreover, since it seemed that good fortune – say, an uptick in a business venture, or a bountiful harvest – frequently came to those who had undergone such experiences, material gains came to be understood as an outward sign from God marking those who had been “saved.”
It was, then, only a small step to embrace the operation and fruits of capitalism as an integral experience of their religious faith, the genesis of what Chris Lehman identifies as the money cult that celebrates “wealth as a spiritual virtue in American Protestantism” and, by “minting the promise of individual salvation into a precept of economic advancement, [allows] today’s prophets of prosperity [to ignore] entirely matters of economic justice as they pertain to Christian morality….”
Throughout the latter 19th and into the 20th centuries, these fundamentalist communities routinely jostled with the more mainline Protestant churches – and, because of immigration, the growing influence of the Catholic Church – over interpretations of Jesus’ teachings concerning the importance of caring for one’s neighbors and of working to make “this world” a more just and compassionate place. The more fundamentalist sects, while fervent believers in the necessity of personal reform (such as avoiding tobacco, liquor, and other vices), were, nonetheless, wary of larger social reform movements since these appeared too accommodating to modernism and its many threats to established authority.
While it often seemed in the first half of the 20th century that fundamentalist sects were dwindling in influence and in the number of adherents, this was not the case. In fact, even into the present day, fundamentalism’s appeal has always been strongest in the South and in America’s rural areas, the very places where lingering racism, suspicion of various elites, and resentment towards “others” – immigrants, freeloaders, and welfare-dependent “takers” who demand and consume ever-increasing amounts of attention and federal dollars – have always been strongest.
It is hardly surprising that those with the most conservative religious convictions have been drawn into the orbit of those with the most conservative political views. Especially since the 1970s, religious fundamentalists have acquired ever-greater power within the Republican Party and have become key allies of the ideological Right. Their aversion to science and fact, coupled with their devotion to doctrine and myth, is allowing the interests of the wealthy elite to ignore the pressing needs of the many while pursuing policies favoring the few.
Civilization is, at best, a very thin veneer covering human irrationality; it can exist only as long as a sufficient number of citizens choose facts over lies and rumors, prefer substance and achievement in policy proposals and action rather than fractious division, and support the rights of the larger community over the wishes of the greedy few.
These books make it very clear that America’s “civilization,” in fact somewhat less glorious and refined than advertised, is in grave danger of falling prey to the priesthood of the devoted ignorant.
March 11, 2017
A sense of trauma permeates this text; I will not let it into my mind. Though packed with information, I leave each page either despondent at the state of the world or devoid of remembrance. The minutia is impressive, but impassive; Johns and Thoms and 200 years of colonial appellations, their lifes’ arc radiating outward from their introductional interruption of the text.
I cannot handle it, I cannot absorb it. Sixty-odd pages passed before I hit a moment of textual flow:
The ratio is off in Money Cult, it is panning gold in a river of muck for days at a time. Certainly there is someone for whom this text was written, but its bleakness is surely not for me.
I cannot handle it, I cannot absorb it. Sixty-odd pages passed before I hit a moment of textual flow:
Broadly, these millennial believers fell into two camps. The premillennialists argued that the great moment of cosmic reckoning foretold in Revelation would be swift and epically indifferent to puny human efforts to urge on its arrival. In their view, based on their reading of the recondite language of Revelation, the thousand-year reign of Christ (i.e., the millennium) would come after the Final Judgment--so it made no sense for people to smooth the path for Jesus’ return with incremental feints at social reform. At best, such efforts were absurdly self-defeating, since all would be swept away in God’s crowning show of wrath; at worst, social reform was a species of hubris, since it placed the upstart reformist conceits of humanity in the presumptuous role of prelude to the main event.This is interesting, perhaps a star turn for the coming pages. And then the book reverts—there is a new era of America but the same formula is applied—dates and names and facts so dense as to be non-existent, another sixty pages before things might slide into place for that brief moment of tranquil elucidation.
Postmillennial believers, on the other hand, contended that the reign of Christ would precede the final moment of judgment. It therefore behooved concerned Christians to gradually improve human society so that the millennium would be smoothly integrated into the existing order of things. The general sense was that the Savior would take a very dim view of disarrayed social conditions and rampant injustice on his return to Earth; they would represent grossly squandered opportunities for Christian charity, and they’d probably weigh adversely in the balance for the communities of believers hoping to dwell infinitely in God’s grace upon the millennium’s eventual return.
The ratio is off in Money Cult, it is panning gold in a river of muck for days at a time. Certainly there is someone for whom this text was written, but its bleakness is surely not for me.
May 6, 2019
Reading this book requires a mule and a plow. It is esoteric in the extreme. Each and every sentence and paragraph is a semantical summersault and leaves you exhausted. The conclusion of this book was entertaining but it could not save it. So here's what I thought I was getting into: A book that would follow the money - who gives, what they get for it, how it is spent and perhaps the outcomes of corruption, fraud, etc. Instead I read an evolutionary history of religion in America from the 1600's to the present and it's unique relationship with capitalism and democracy. It's no doubt a symbiotic relationship and one needs the other as religion has to be run like a business. Religion needs revenue to survive and do it's work or mission. But even this book doesn't explore that very deeply.
If I was a post graduate student writing a history of religion in America I might use this book as a resource. But reading this book for fun or pleasure would require a whole new mindset.
If I was a post graduate student writing a history of religion in America I might use this book as a resource. But reading this book for fun or pleasure would require a whole new mindset.
January 18, 2018
I had high hopes for The Money Cult because the introduction was incisive and prophetic - I hoped for an indictment of the modern American church's love affair with and worship of mammon. However, whatever prophetic statements Lehmann makes get lost in the mire of an excessively verbose, seemingly intentionally confusing writing style. This book could have benefited from serious editing - there's a lot of history, which is great, but not every historical piece of evidence of what formed the modern American church needs to be given the same airspace.
The most clear chapters were the chapters on Mormonism as the exemplar of the money cult church, and the hilarious literary criticism chapter of the LaHaye/Jenkins Left Behind series.
The most clear chapters were the chapters on Mormonism as the exemplar of the money cult church, and the hilarious literary criticism chapter of the LaHaye/Jenkins Left Behind series.
February 4, 2025
Very hard to hold my interest. A concept, group or person would be introduced then many, many words would pour forth to try to explain or illustrate their approach to religion. In some cases, it was hard to determine what that had to do with a prosperity gospel. I had so much trouble trying to connect one paragraph to another and would put the book down for a minute, then pick it back up and have no recollection of where I had stopped.
The constant use of "Money Cult" was tiring. The word "gnostic" and its various forms also appeared many times.
I could not pick up the point of the text.
The constant use of "Money Cult" was tiring. The word "gnostic" and its various forms also appeared many times.
I could not pick up the point of the text.
September 28, 2016
The Money Cult is broad in its scope, examining Protestant Christianity's relationship to wealth from the first settlers off the Mayflower to modern peddlers of the Prosperity Gospel like Joel Osteen. Lehmann shows how over time Protestants moved from an ambiguous attitude toward wealth, to sanctifying it, and ultimately embracing it as a sign of divine favor. Lehmann's tone is balanced and objective, at least until the final chapter when he launches a sharp (and highly entertaining) critique of the Left Behind series.
The strength of the book is its ability to shine a light on the view of money within Protestant churches that is so ubiquitous that it is taken for granted. There's no inherent reason that Christianity should sanctify the American version of Capitalism, but almost no Protestant leader questions the sacredness of private property, the goal of business being to maximize profit (even at the expense of workers or the environment), or the accumulation of wealth. In fact, increasing material prosperity is often seen as an obligation for the believer in order to show that he is "bearing fruit" and receiving divine favor. This in spite of warnings in the Bible such as Isaiah 5:8 which states, "Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land." And as Lehmann argues, the effects of this acceptance of wealth as a sign of divine approval has a dark flip side - the poor are either being punished by God or lack the faith to "name it and claim it."
As much as I enjoyed the book, there are a few areas where I thought it was lacking. First, it focuses exclusively on Protestantism. I would have liked at least a brief note explaining why Catholicism was not included in the discussion. Is Catholicism somehow immune to the excesses of the Protestant church? If so, what has enabled the Catholic Church avoid the same errors as the Protestants? Second, I would have liked to have seen more nuance in the approach to twentieth century Protestantism. Lehmann presents it as a monolith, but anyone within the tradition knows that it is highly fragmented. Churches who embrace laissez-faire capitalism and a TEA Party ideal for government may nevertheless be highly critical of the 'Health and Wealth Gospel' or Word of Faith. Finally, there were a distracting number of typos in the book. This is a minor criticism, but in an otherwise beautifully written book, the errors were jarring.
In spite of my criticisms I think this is an excellent, timely, and important book that deserves a wide audience. I especially hope pastors and laypeople within the Protestant tradition will take the time to carefully consider Lehmann's arguments. Unfortunately, Lehmann didn't provide any suggestions as to how to reform Protestantism. That change will have to come from within the Protestant churches.
(Another excellent book examining similar themes is Peter Brown's Through the Eye of A Needle, which explores the Church's evolving relationship to wealth during the Late Antique period).
The strength of the book is its ability to shine a light on the view of money within Protestant churches that is so ubiquitous that it is taken for granted. There's no inherent reason that Christianity should sanctify the American version of Capitalism, but almost no Protestant leader questions the sacredness of private property, the goal of business being to maximize profit (even at the expense of workers or the environment), or the accumulation of wealth. In fact, increasing material prosperity is often seen as an obligation for the believer in order to show that he is "bearing fruit" and receiving divine favor. This in spite of warnings in the Bible such as Isaiah 5:8 which states, "Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land." And as Lehmann argues, the effects of this acceptance of wealth as a sign of divine approval has a dark flip side - the poor are either being punished by God or lack the faith to "name it and claim it."
As much as I enjoyed the book, there are a few areas where I thought it was lacking. First, it focuses exclusively on Protestantism. I would have liked at least a brief note explaining why Catholicism was not included in the discussion. Is Catholicism somehow immune to the excesses of the Protestant church? If so, what has enabled the Catholic Church avoid the same errors as the Protestants? Second, I would have liked to have seen more nuance in the approach to twentieth century Protestantism. Lehmann presents it as a monolith, but anyone within the tradition knows that it is highly fragmented. Churches who embrace laissez-faire capitalism and a TEA Party ideal for government may nevertheless be highly critical of the 'Health and Wealth Gospel' or Word of Faith. Finally, there were a distracting number of typos in the book. This is a minor criticism, but in an otherwise beautifully written book, the errors were jarring.
In spite of my criticisms I think this is an excellent, timely, and important book that deserves a wide audience. I especially hope pastors and laypeople within the Protestant tradition will take the time to carefully consider Lehmann's arguments. Unfortunately, Lehmann didn't provide any suggestions as to how to reform Protestantism. That change will have to come from within the Protestant churches.
(Another excellent book examining similar themes is Peter Brown's Through the Eye of A Needle, which explores the Church's evolving relationship to wealth during the Late Antique period).
Read
November 11, 2019An incredibly slow start but gets interesting toward the middle. Went from dragging myself through 30 pages in a sitting to putting off other things to keep reading. Don't know if I'd recommend, but there's some really coherent critiques of people like Francis Schaeffer, who toned down his income/inequity/anti-worker exploitation stuff, and I hadn't known Peale was into putting down labor on the side of the bosses, though I can totally see it from his work.
dnf
November 24, 2021This isn't the book that I wanted to read right now. I've moved on to One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America.
January 19, 2018
Highly Recommended in understanding the economics of our church.
November 13, 2023
I am interested in the topic of this book, found the introduction fascinating and yet I couldn’t finish. The writing style made it very difficult to read and I found myself falling asleep.
June 7, 2017
I'm calling this one done. I'll probably actually finish it just because I'm nearly done, but he could have said this in way less pages. There was not a lot of new information for me coming out of the "evangelical" culture. I think he's stretching trying to tie the prosperity gospel religions to the early Americans, though. Maybe the Mormons (they are the richest American domination and there's a much better book about that out there somewhere - I think it's called "The Mormon Murders"). I grew up in the Southern Baptist church and while it is pretty cultish, I did not grow up in a prosperity gospel tradition. We always made fun of the televangelists, so his including Southern Baptists didn't fit with my experience. It could be that it fits now, but I've been unchurched for about 15 years now. His description of the prosperity gospel religions fits with what I've seen of pentecostal churches. Oh, he did have a good chapter that was basically "books not to read" and a section about the "Left Behind" series which I just skimmed. I don't need to know the plot of that; I've read the Bible.
February 1, 2017
I wanted to really like this book, I have long been fascinated as to how "good Christians" is determined by how much material wealth one accumulates without helping others. I had expected this book to touch on that a bit more based on the first few opening pages but instead I got a long winded history of how people got into church and then used their own belief system as a way of making their own little cults. I think that Lehmann makes some excellent points but a lot of it got lost in the presentation.
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