Looking for enlightened, compassionate theological or social perspectives from today's Christian fundamentalist leaders is like looking for honesty and integrity in Karl Rove, or a conscience in Dick Cheney.

Still, a couple of recent pieces from the conservative Protestant realm of the Christian Post point to a point of friction within the politically conservative Protestant outlook, the question of the Prosperity Gospel, the teaching associated with American Pentecostalism in particular that Christianity teaches us how to get rich and that wealth is a sign of godliness:

Michelle A. Vu reports in Idolatry is Biggest Obstacle to World Mission, Says U.K. Theologian 10/24/2010 on a speech by Chris Wright:

God's people today, like in the Old Testament, have fallen to worshiping the false gods and idols of the world, said the international director of U.K.-based Langham Partnerships as he spoke before the thousands attending the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangeliziation.

"Idolatry ... is the biggest single obstacle to world mission," said Wright, who will be the main drafter of the much-anticipated Cape Town Commitment that will come out of the weeklong gathering of mission-minded Christian leaders.

According to Wright, the three idols are: power and pride, popularity and success, and wealth and greed.

This is partially a conventional warning against the sin of pride and a caution against arrogance leading to mistaken judgment. But he called out the Prosperity Gospel specifically:

But the Kingdom of God cannot be built on the foundations of dishonesty and lies, such as questionable statistics of success, he said. It also cannot be built based on the false teaching of prosperity gospel, which distorts what it means to be blessed by God and does not properly teach about suffering and the cross, Wright added.

"We are a scandal and a stumbling block to the mission of God," Wright stated. ...

During a press conference Saturday afternoon, Wright explained that his address was inspired by a friend and scholar who visited his home country in Latin America. The friend reported that he attended ten different churches that claim to be evangelical, but not one of them preached the Bible. Furthermore, the pastors of the churches wielded great power with no accountability, and were considerably wealthy.

After hearing his friend's story, Wright realized that the evangelical movement needed a "reformation" because it was facing similar problems to that of the medieval church before the Reformation.

"This is not just something casual. This is a deep-seated corruption in the Church of Christ," said Wright. "And of course this is not just in Latin America, but all over the world."

Another piece is by Brother Al, aka, the Rev. Albert Mohler, the leading theologian of the Southern Baptist Convention, Bankruptcy in the Cathedral 10/22/2010, gloating (in a holy way, of course) about the bankruptcy of Rev. Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral in Orange County CA, as reported in Rebecca Cathcart, California's Crystal Cathedral Files for Bankruptcy New York Times 10/18/2010. Brother Al writes:

Without doubt, the media impact of the news was guaranteed by the fact that Robert Schuller has been so closely identified with his own version of prosperity theology. How does the ministry built on "Possibility Thinking" declare financial bankruptcy? ...

"Possibility Thinking" was Schuller's central message. He told his fellow preachers not to worry about repeating themselves in sermons, insisting that every message (he did not like to call his messages "sermons") must be about the development of a positive mental outlook.

Though ordained in the Reformed Church in America, Schuller minimized historic Christian orthodoxy and stressed instead the message of positive thinking. ...

In his 1986 book, Your Church Has a Fantastic Future, Schuller provided what he called "A Possibility Thinker's Guide to a Successful Church." The book is a manual for a ministry built on pure pragmatism, sensationalistic promotion, a therapeutic message, and a constant and incessant focus on thinking positively. ...

In an odd and upside-down way, the news of bankruptcy at the Crystal Cathedral makes that point emphatically. The most significant problem at the Crystal Cathedral is not financial, but theological. The issue is not money, but this ministry's message. The "gospel of success" is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ, therapy is no substitute for theology, and "Possibility Thinking" is not the message of the Bible.

It turns out that Robert Schuller offers the best analysis of this crisis with his own words. "No church has a money problem; churches only have idea problems." The theological crisis in Garden Grove is far more significant than the financial crisis. [my emphasis]

Brother Al doesn't cite any studies to show that churches following his own theological prescriptions fare better financially. In fact, membership growth in the Southern Baptist Convention has slowed and is likely to reverse itself in the coming years if current trends continue.

As far as the money part goes, lots of things can affect the financial performance of such institutions, in this instance a combination of religious operations and entertainment businesses. A lot of it has to do with plain old dollars-and-sense business management: good accounting, making reasonable revenue projections, keeping adequate reserves and insurance, etc. One of my favorite books ever about money and finances in general is The Seven Laws of Money (1974) by Michael Phillips. In it, he writes, "The high priests of money ... are obviously accountants. May we should have a cult in which accountants are worshipped; projects related to that cult would probably be very successful."

Of course, that particular arrangement would be difficult to pass off as conventional Christianity. The point is that Brother Al's gloating over the Crystal Cathedral's money problems as a theological victory is more than a little overdrawn. After all, as the Times article reports, revenue took a dive in 2008, when there was a a major financial crash. Whether or not the church's members had their faith in the Prosperity Gospel shaken thereby, they amount of actual money they have had to contribute to the church's revenue in the last two years has almost certainly been reduced.

But criticisms like these from Brother Al are unlikely to lead to a lot of conservative white Christians in the US rejecting the Prosperity Gospel for a prophetic notion of solidarity with the poor in the their struggles against the wealthy and the injustices of class society. Brother Al promotes a variety of Calvinism, which is presumably why he made the reference quoted above, "Though ordained in the [Calvinist] Reformed Church in America, Schuller minimized historic Christian orthodoxy."

Brother Al's brand of Calvinism is, I suspect, largely about John Calvin's theocratic side, which viewed the Church as the secular law-giver. But Calvinism with its doctrine of predestination can serve well as an ideology for acceptance of existing social conditions as God-ordained and out of the control of individuals. And for conservative white Protestants like Brother Al, the current system of plutocracy and growing inequality of income and wealth that prevail in the United States are not something that should be challenged. The evils of the secular government, on the other hand, particularly government by the Kenyan revolutionary Antichrist Barack Obama, are something to be challenged - especially when they challenge the claims of plutocracy and restrained corporate power.

Brother Al's theological objection to the Prosperity Gospel he states as follows:

Dennis Voskuil, a professor of church history at Schuller's alma mater, Western Theological Seminary, placed Schuller within the context of the New Thought movement. "Robert Schuller is indirectly related to a long line of popular religionists who have proclaimed the gospel of this-worldly well-being through positive thinking," he wrote. "His lineage includes such disparate figures as Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, Mary Baker Eddy, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, Ralph Waldo Trine, and Norman Vincent Peale. While there are many ideological branches on this family tree, all of its members have stressed a utilitarian message of self-help through some form of mind-conditioning."

Russell Chandler in his factually very useful book Understanding The New Age (revised edition 1993) also links the Schuller approach to the New Thought movement of which Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science was the most famous in its early days in the 19th century. Chandler, Voskuil and Brother Al are right in making that connection. Chandler does note, though, that Schuller himself partially objected to that association. Giving a different example of a Prosperity Gospel advocate, Chandler writes:

It is closely akin to the teachings of the Church of Christ, Scientist, founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879, and bears striking resemblance to the self-esteem theme of Reformed Church in America minister Norman Vincent Peale, whose Power of Positive Thinking was an immediate smash in 1952 and remains so to this day.

It is also echoed in some of the preachments and writings of another Reformed Church minister, Robert Schuller, whose giant Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, has become synonymous with "Possibility Thinking." Ever since the ebullient prophet of happiness mounted the tar-paper roof of a drive-in theater snack shack in 1955 and launched the nation's first year-round drive-in church, Schuller has pronounced that a lack of self-esteem separates the average believer from fully understanding God.

After reading the first edition of this book, Schuller telephoned me, objecting strongly to being classed as "a fellow traveler" with New Agers. "I don't deserve that," he chided. "And I categorically deny that I believe in pantheism, reincarnation, channeling, astrology or crystals." Schuller added that he was "frustrated with the New Age movement" although, in his opinion, too much of the "anti-New Age work today is simply condemning it." Schuller went on to defend his concepts of "self-esteem" and "self-potential" theology, saying they are biblical ideas taught by Jesus.

It appears that Schuller specifically wanted to distance himself from other esoteric practices. But Chandler's quote doesn't have himself objecting specifically to placing his version of the Prosperity Gospel in the tradition of New Thought.

William James discussed earlier version of this optimistic, positive-thinking approach of which the Prosperity Gospel is part in The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902; Library of America edition 1987). He identified it with the "healthy-minded" religious attitude of those possessing what he called the "once-born" religious consciousness. Its opponents, who expressed similar criticisms to those of Brother Al, James included among those of the "twice-born" religious attitude, characterized by an intense awareness of the prevalence of Sin in human affairs. James considered the Epicureans and Stoics the highest expressions of the "healthy-minded" attitude in the ancient Greek world.

James meant terms like "healthy-minded" and "twice-born" to be descriptive, not judgmental or pejorative. He observes of the twice-born type, in a comment pointing to the attitude of passive acceptance of existing evils, "Envy of the placid beasts seems to be a very widespread affection in this type of sadness" or "religious melancholy". At least in relation to preserving the power and privileges of billionaires, "envy of the placid beasts" is the kind of perspective Brother Al's Calvinism promotes.

But he also observes of the once-born with the "healthy-minded" religious attitude, "If religious intolerance and hanging and burning could again become the order of the day, there is little doubt that, however it may have been in the past, the healthy-minded would at present show themselves the less indulgent party of the two."

James found constructive aspects to both kinds of religiosity. Affirmation of life and nature are prominent characteristics of the "once-born". Awareness of the tragedies and evils of life are pronounced among the "twice-born". James was writing before the two world wars and the Holocaust. But the importance of being keenly aware of the presence of evil in the world was already abundantly evident in 1902.

So there are theologically, socially and politically progressive aspects that can be found in both of William James' broad types of thinking. But with the Pentecostal and non-Pentecostal variants of the Prosperity Gospel, we're dealing with a fundamentally conservative brand of Christianity that celebrates narrow individualism and largely ignores or is hostile to considerations of human solidarity and social justice. With Brother Al's brand of Calvinism, we're dealing with an authoritarian form of Christianity which promotes acceptance of social and class conditions that should be intolerable, and even encourages fighting for the maintenance of those conditions at the expense of the poorest and most socially vulnerable - including many of the adherents of that religious outlook.

Social justice, the rights of humanity and especially of the poor, the need for compassion toward others, obligations to the community and rejection of bigotry and racism and xenophobia can never be fully read out of the Christian Gospel. So there will always be individuals from the Prosperity Gospel and the conservative-Calvinist camps who adopt a more humane and forward-looking religious and social stance. But conservative Protestants criticizing the Prosperity Gospel isn't in itself a sign of some new progressive tendency emerging. And it is certainly not a sign of a political split between the Christian Right and the Country Club Republicans who identify far more with the Kochtopus than with the Christian Savior.

Tags: calvinism, christian right, christian theology, christianism