Poverty (of sorts) is suddenly in fashion. Politicians and commentators blame the financial crisis on greed, not only by malefactors on Wall Street but also by all the denizens of Main Street who live beyond their means, accumulate useless possessions and despoil the environment. It is not quite clear what a nongreedy Wall Street would look like. But for the rest of us, after due repentance, the solution to our financial woes is held to be a more ascetic life. If it is voluntary, rather than compelled by circumstance, it has the glow of moral superiority. “Green is good,” says a latter-day Gandhi as he goes to work by bicycle. But if you are really poor, asceticism does not mean giving up your SUV — it means eating just one meal a day because it is all you can afford.
Far more attractive to poor people, who are a majority of its adherents, is the “prosperity gospel,” a version of Christianity asserting that material benefits will come to those who have faith, live a morally upright life and, not so incidentally, give money to the church. Broadly speaking, this is what Max Weber called the Protestant Ethic, but with much less emphasis on self-denial and more on hard work, planning for the future, family loyalty and educating one’s children.
The prosperity gospel probably originated among the poorer elements of the evangelical community in America. It is now a global phenomenon, especially among the rapidly spreading Pentecostal churches in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
Personally, I think the biggest practical problem with “prosperity teaching” in the U.S. is that too many of its adherents did it on credit. I don’t think that this is God’s plan, no matter how you slice it. One of the few good things about the current economic mess is that it’s no longer necessary to explain the dangers of going into debt.
It’s easy for elitist snobs to sniff at the desire of people to improve themselves economically. It’s much harder when your position is not so strong.