What Would Jesus Buy?

The popular "prosperity gospel" preached to the adoring masses is being blamed for putting a lot of believers deeply into debt that they'll likely never pay off. Guess they just aren't good enough Christians.

The December issue of The Atlantic asks, quite provocatively: Did Christianity Cause the Crash?

Preachers have been telling their congregations that God wants them to be rich, to reward them with all the material possessions they desire. Forget about "living simply so that others may simply live." Forget about that business about creating false idols. Forget about rewards delivered only in the afterlife. If you want something bad enough—a giant McMansion, a Beemer, a new smartphone, an entertainment center loaded with video games for your kids, whatever—and you're a good enough Christian, God will give you whatever you seek, so long as you believe. No matter the actual plausibility, it's an enticing message: Prosperity sounds like way more fun than poverty, no doubt.

Sure, blind faith can cause people to make poor decisions. Blaming the prosperity gospel message for the subprime loan mess, the greater economic crash, and countless home foreclosures seems like a stretch—but the article's writer, Hanna Rosin, makes a compelling case. The Mercedes-driving pastor featured in the story, Fernando Garay, was known to sell his message alongside mortgages:

From 2001 to 2007, while he was building his church, Garay was also a loan officer at two different mortgage companies. He was hired explicitly to reach out to the city's growing Latino community, and Latinos, as it happened, were disproportionately likely to take out the sort of risky loans that later led to so many foreclosures. To many of his parishioners, Garay was not just a spiritual adviser, but a financial one as well.

This is not an isolated case of churches joining forces with banks and mortgage operations. Rosin cites example after example of messages about God stepping in to tell loan officers to approve mortgages for buyers with bad credit or insufficient income to warrant the loan. Baltimore, for example, is suing Wells Fargo for predatory loans that treated minorities unfairly. Here's how the operations worked, according to a former loan officer named Beth Jacobson:

The idea of reaching out to churches took off quickly, Jacobson recalls. The branch managers figured pastors had a lot of influence with their parishioners and could give the loan officers credibility and new customers. Jacobson remembers a conference call where sales managers discussed the new strategy. The plan was to send officers to guest-speak at church-sponsored “wealth-building seminars” like the ones Bowler attended, and dazzle the participants with the possibility of a new house. They would tell pastors that for every person who took out a mortgage, $350 would be donated to the church, or to a charity of the parishioner's choice. “They wouldn't say, ‘Hey, Mr. Minister. We want to give your people a bunch of subprime loans,” Jacobson told me. “They would say, ‘Your congregants will be homeowners! They will be able to live the American dream!'”

Using God's name to coax people into making bad financial decisions: That sounds like marketing—pretty darn evil marketing at that—not the work of the Lord.

A few pages away from Rosin's story, it should be noted, is a profile of Dave Ramsey, the cash-only, no credit card, no debt, never-borrow finance guru who also happens to base much of his philosophy on Jesus and the Bible. His own financial enlightenment came about thusly:

… searching for help in his hour of need, he turned to the Bible and discovered Proverbs 22:7: “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave of the lender.”

(The Atlantic is doing some great, really provocative stuff of late: I am also a big fan of the enormous, eye-opening story the mag did not long ago on health care reform. The suggestions went beyond reform, really, to reinventing it, rebuilding the system as a whole, not merely tweaking it to cover a few million more people with the same broken, inefficient system we have right now.)

Forcing yourself to be responsible and disciplined—that's Ramsey's gospel, one that's not nearly as mystical or mysterious as the "believe and it shall be" word of the prosperity school. To folks who desperately hope for a jackpot-style immediate lifestyle turnaround, the instant magic that's supposed to come via blind faith is far more attractive than Ramsey's prudent, slow-going approach. Ramsey's advice is certainly more realistic, though. Do you really need to spend the $220 it costs for some seats at his seminars to get that message? That's a different issue. Everyone is selling something, I suppose.

Related:

Will God Fix the Economy?