The Theology Of The Great Bubble

December's Atlantic Magazine features an extensive article tying The Great Bubble to a popular brand of American Christianity: The Prosperity Gospel.  Written by Hannah Rosin, it is thoughtful, and well worth the time invested in the read.

OldSouth has always always believed that culture shapes economy; and that behind culture stands theology, even if it's the anti-theology of atheism.  OldSouth also thinks that heresy is no laughing matter, that it destroys lives and cultures.

Rosin refers to Jackson Lears, author of Something for Nothing.  This paragraph states the problem succinctly:

...Jackson Lears describes two starkly different manifestations of the American dream, each intertwined with religious faith. The traditional Protestant hero is a self-made man. He is disciplined and hardworking, and believes that his “success comes through careful cultivation of (implicitly Protestant) virtues in cooperation with a Providential plan.” The hero of the second American narrative is a kind of gambling man—a “speculative confidence man,” Lears calls him, who prefers “risky ventures in real estate,” and a more “fluid, mobile democracy.” The self-made man imagines a coherent universe where earthly rewards match merits. The confidence man lives in a culture of chance, with “grace as a kind of spiritual luck, a free gift from God.” The Gilded Age launched the myth of the self-made man, as the Rockefellers and other powerful men in the pews connected their wealth to their own virtue. In these boom-and-crash years, the more reckless alter ego dominates.

The 'second American narrative' is soooo seductive, and has become ubiquitous in American church life. Like the original serpent, the message is often subtle:  God loves you better than that pagan down the street. Step out on faith, and He'll be there to catch you! They purposefully ignore the entire Wisdom tradition of the Old Testament, the very tradition that gave birth to Christianity.  Some of the purveyors of the heresy even blatantly connect donations to their ministry to the rewards of earthly wealth for the faithful donor. 


It's a far cry from that crucial moment of history when that certain rabbi from Nazareth sweat blood and prayed, 'Not my will, but thine, be done.'

Culture forms economy. Our view of God and mankind form culture.

Let's be careful out there. That same rabbi also issued warnings about wolves among the flock,  and wheat and tares, and trees that bear good and bad fruit...