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Christianity has always dealt in hard truths

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Michael Gerson, Calgary Herald
Published: Sunday, August 10, 2008

In a recent investigative profile, The Associated Press tells the depressingly familiar story of televangelist Kenneth Copeland.

His ministry's private jet and lakeside mansion. The complex web of ranching, oil and media interests that benefits his extended family. In this case, there is no taint of hypocrisy. Copeland practises what he preaches -- a doctrine that God wants his followers to prosper in very material ways.

This prosperity gospel combines two of the most powerful forces on Earth: the profit motive and the power of positive thinking. At its best, it inspires hard work, generosity and the avoidance of life-destroying vices. At its worst, it is religiously infantile.

"I believe God wants to give us nice things," says evangelist Joyce Meyer.

"I think God wants us to be prosperous," pastor Joel Osteen assures us. "I think He wants us to be happy."

Whatever ethical problems such leaders may or may not have, they face a large theological challenge.

A religious system that promises happiness and "nice things" is difficult to reconcile with the faith whose founder had "no place to lay his head," urged his followers not to store up "treasures on Earth," and called on them to deny themselves and take up a cross of suffering.

This has never made the best marketing message. What company would adopt the electric chair or the hangman's noose as its logo?

Christianity has always dealt in hard truths -- God is not a means to our own ends, suffering is unavoidable in lives bounded by mortality and often wrecked by failure.

Suffering for the sake of suffering is useless; it is merely masochism.

But when suffering cannot be escaped as the health-and-wealth preachers promise -- or even nobly endured as the stoics promise -- it may perhaps be transformed.

"If you and I can share our pain," said the late theologian Henri Nouwen, "suddenly we find grace and joy coming in. In your tears and anguish and struggle, you suddenly discover community, you suddenly discover friendship, you suddenly discover affection, you suddenly discover forgiveness, you suddenly discover healing.

"All these things come through vulnerability."

In this odd faith where the poor in spirit are blessed, the highest ideal is suffering for others -- though most of us do precious little of it. This model of spiritual leadership has nothing to do with conventional measures of success and influence. It is found in the medical missionary who buries his or her life in the forgotten relief of forgotten suffering. In the dying pope who speaks for the vulnerable by exposing his own shocking vulnerability.

One of the most vivid literary pictures of this leadership comes from a strange source -- a self-loathing, self-described "Catholic agnostic," prone to prostitutes, opium and suicide attempts.

In Graham Greene's "The Power and the Glory," set in the 1930s, Mexico's authorities destroy churches and hunt down priests for execution. An unnamed whiskey priest -- disguised and constantly moving -- doggedly performs his sacramental duties while knowing he is a spiritual failure. He has a mistress, a child and a problem with alcohol. But stripped of dignity, respect and possessions, he discovers an identification with the poor around him.

Labels: Christianity, love, Michael Gerson, prosperity, suffering

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Sunday, December 30, 2007

`Gospel of wealth' facing scrutiny

By ERIC GORSKI

The message flickered into Cindy Fleenor's living room each night: Be faithful in how you live and how you give, the television preachers said, and God will shower you with material riches.

And so the 53-year-old accountant from the Tampa, Fla., area pledged $500 a year to Joyce Meyer, the evangelist whose frank talk about recovering from childhood sexual abuse was so inspirational. She wrote checks to flamboyant faith healer Benny Hinn and a local preacher-made-good, Paula White.

Only the blessings didn't come. Fleenor ended up borrowing money from friends and payday loan companies just to buy groceries. At first she believed the explanation given on television: Her faith wasn't strong enough.

All three of the groups Fleenor supported are among six major Christian television ministries under scrutiny by a senator who is asking questions about the evangelists' lavish spending and possible abuses of their tax-exempt status.

The probe by Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has brought new scrutiny to the underlying belief that brings in millions of dollars and fills churches from Atlanta to Los Angeles — the "Gospel of Prosperity," or the notion that God wants to bless the faithful with earthly riches.

The modern-day prosperity movement can largely be traced back to evangelist Oral Roberts' teachings. Roberts' disciples have spread his theology and vocabulary (Roberts and other evangelists, such as Meyer, call their donors "partners.") And several popular prosperity preachers, including some now under investigation, have served on the Oral Roberts University board.

Most scholars trace the origins of prosperity theology to E.W. Kenyon, an evangelical pastor from the first half of the 20th century.

But it wasn't until the postwar era — and a pair of evangelists from Tulsa, Okla. — that "health and wealth" theology became a fixture in Pentecostal and charismatic churches.

Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagin — and later, Kenneth Copeland — trained tens of thousands of evangelists with a message that resonated with an emerging middle class, said David Edwin Harrell Jr., a Roberts biographer. Copeland is among those now being investigated.

The teachings took on various names — "Name It and Claim It," "Word of Faith," the prosperity gospel.

Prosperity preachers say that it isn't all about money — that God's blessings extend to health, relationships and being well-off enough to help others.

They have Bible verses at the ready to make their case. One oft-cited verse, in Paul's Second Epistle to the Corinthians, reads: "Yet for your sakes he became poor, that you by his poverty might become rich."

One of the teaching's attractions is that it doesn't dwell on traditional Christian themes of heaven and hell but on answering pressing concerns of the here and now, said Brian McLaren, a liberal evangelical author and pastor.

The checks and balances central to Christian denominations are largely lacking in prosperity churches. One of the pastors in the Grassley probe, Bishop Eddie Long of suburban Atlanta, has written that God told him to get rid of the "ungodly governmental structure" of a deacon board.

Some ministers hold up their own wealth as evidence that the teaching works. Atlanta-area pastor Creflo Dollar, who is fighting Grassley's inquiry, owns a Rolls Royce and multimillion-dollar homes and travels in a church-owned Learjet.

In a letter to Grassley, Dollar's attorney calls the prosperity gospel a "deeply held religious belief" grounded in Scripture and therefore a protected religious freedom. Grassley has said his probe is not about theology.

But even some prosperity gospel critics — like the Rev. Adam Hamilton of 15,000-member United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in suburban Kansas City, Mo. — say that the investigation is entering a minefield.

"How do you determine how much money a minister like this is able to make when the basic theology is that wealth is OK?" said Hamilton, an Oral Roberts graduate who later left the charismatic movement. "That gets into theological questions."

There is evidence of change. Joyce Meyer Ministries, for one, enacted financial reforms in recent years, including making audited financial statements public.

Meyer, who has promised to cooperate fully with Grassley, issued a statement emphasizing that a prosperity gospel "that solely equates blessing with financial gain is out of balance and could damage a person's walk with God."

Labels: blessings, Christian, church, Eric Gorski, Gospel, money, prosperity

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Thursday, July 12, 2007

The Bliss We Can't Buy

By Robert J. Samuelson
Wednesday, July 11, 2007; Page A15

Ponder now the happiness gap.

In 1974, economist Richard Easterlin pointed out that beyond a certain point -- presumably when people's basic needs for food, shelter, public order and work are met -- greater wealth does not generate more national happiness. The America of 2007 is far richer than the America of 1977. Life expectancy is 78 years, up from 74 years. Our homes are bigger and crammed with more paraphernalia (microwave ovens, personal computers, flat-panel TVs). But happiness is stuck.

In 1977, 35.7 percent of Americans rated themselves "very happy," 53.2 percent "pretty happy" and 11 percent "not too happy," reports the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. In 2006, the figures are similar: 32.4 percent "very happy," 55.9 percent "pretty happy" and 11.7 percent "not too happy." Likewise, in most advanced countries, self-reported happiness has been flat for decades.

Hordes of scholars are asking why. Consider Cornell University economist Robert Frank's new book, "Falling Behind." He argues that rising affluence condemns us to self-defeating consumption contests. People want ever-bigger homes, because their friends have ever-bigger homes. But the extra pleasure of owning these grander homes is muted, because (yes) all our friends have them, too. Meanwhile, the added debt to buy the house may make us more anxious; and we may regret sacrificing some leisure -- working harder to buy the bigger home.

Greater individual wealth does not bring greater collective welfare. Moving farther out into suburbia for a bigger home increases traffic congestion and our commutes. Roads grow more clogged, pollution worsens. We engage in "behaviors that are smart for one, dumb for all," Frank writes.

Superficially, Frank seems convincing. The trouble is that he ignores history. The behavior he describes isn't new. A mobile society such as ours is inherently stressful. People rise and fall.

Americans have always been acquisitive and rank-conscious. In "Democracy in America" (1840), Alexis de Tocqueville observed: "Besides the good things which he possesses, [the American] every instant fancies a thousand others. . . . This thought fills him with anxiety, fear, and regret."

The psychology of prosperity -- striving, taking risks -- feeds on ambition and insecurity. Our system often seems an insane rat race. But over time, it has created huge gains in material well-being. Air conditioning may not have made people in the South and elsewhere happier. But it surely has made them more comfortable.

True, there's an economic disconnect today. Despite obvious prosperity, including 8 million new jobs since mid-2003, consumer confidence is subdued. But the explanation, I think, lies neither in Frank's elaborate theory nor in several popular culprits -- higher gasoline prices and the housing slump. Instead, I'd cite two underlying causes.

First, economic insecurity has increased. Companies are quicker to fire. Median job tenure for men age 45 to 54 dropped from about 13 years in 1983 to eight years in 2006, reports economist Rob Valletta of the San Francisco Fed. People have more cause to worry -- and they do.

Second, Americans compare the present with the immediate past. The economic boom of the late 1990s conditioned people to expect a blissful future. Clearly, that hasn't arrived. People are disappointed because reality doesn't match the promise.

Still, even the 1990s economic boom didn't produce a happiness boom; the survey figures barely budged. Nor has the growing income inequality since the 1970s produced an unhappiness boom. Between the richest and poorest Americans, happiness gaps have always been large. But income differences in the middle class involve modest or nonexistent differences in happiness. The old adage is true: Money can't buy happiness.

We ultimately get satisfaction from our relations with family and friends, the love we give or receive, the meaning we find in work, service, religion or hobbies. The strongest survey finding is that married people are happier than singles, particularly widowers and divorcees, says Tom Smith of the National Opinion Research Center. An estimated 42.5 percent of married couples say they are "very happy," compared with 18 percent of the divorced.

The popularity of happiness research suggests that economists and other social scientists think they can devise public policies to elevate the nation's feel-good quotient. This is an illusion. Happiness depends heavily on individual character and national culture. Some people will complain no matter how great their fortune; others will smile through the worst of times. In international comparisons, the United States ranks lower in happiness than some smaller nations (Denmark, Ireland, Sweden) but much higher than many large countries with paternalistic welfare states (France, Germany, Italy). Governments can provide health care. But they cannot outlaw despair or mandate euphoria.

It is novelists and philosophers, not social scientists, who provide a deeper understanding of happiness. For better or worse, there are limits to reengineering the human spirit.

Labels: family, happiness, love, National Opinion Research Center, prosperity, religion, Robert Frank, Robert J. Samuelson, wealth