The War Between The Opportunity Economy and The Prosperity Gospel

The Prosperity Gospel is a fast-growing theologically conservative movement frequently associated with Pentecostalism, evangelicalism, and charismatic Christianity. Wanna know why evangelicals support Trump? Look to The Prosperity Gospel. Also known as the Health and Wealth Gospel, it promises believers the ability to transcend poverty and/or illness through devotion and  positive confession.

You just need to believe. And pay your tithe, 10% of your income, and maybe sign over your mortgage. While you’re at it, buy Trump’s Bible ($59.99) or Limited Edition Never Surrender High-Tops ($399) or World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency (the sky’s the limit). Trump’s NFT Digital Trading Cards ($99) are limited to 100 per purchase. Which means The Donald receives $9900, just below the $10,000 that would make the trade taxable. What Trump and the evangelicals share, their hands perpetually out, is the grift, the hustle.

Ideas about financial prosperity were introduced by Oral Roberts with his “Blessing Pact” (1954). Roberts linked financial success with divine favor: the more one gave, the message went, the more one would reap God’s financial reward. Television and Internet media were instrumental in the wide reach of the Prosperity Gospel, as well as large-scale events and “megachurches.”

Megachurch megastar Joel Osteen’s internet site promises:

Our Gifts to you this month!
Fill in your donation and select your preferred resource!

It’s not our gifts to him, but rather his gifts to us. What gift is he offering? For a $50 donation, you get a copy of his 160-page Empty Out the Negative: Make Room for More Joy, Greater Confidence, and New Levels of Influence. And don’t forget to click the box, “Yes, I want to become a Champion of Hope partner with a monthly donation.”

With 5300 reviews on Amazon, the book clocks in at 4.8 stars out of 5. That’s a lot of joy. On Amazon it’s just $7.98. On his site I guess you get $42 worth of extra joy. Trump’s MAGA tribe is not the only cult in today’s America.

The Harvard Divinity School’s page on The Prosperity Gospel pulls no punches:

The PG is popular among impoverished communities, where at best it is considered to offer the poor a means of imagining and reaching for better lives (at times accompanied by sound financial advice), and at worst is criticized as predatory and manipulative, particularly when churches or pastors require heavy tithing. Members of the socioeconomic elite may also be drawn to PG messages, which affirm the religious and spiritual legitimacy of wealth accumulation and reinforce a worldview in which financial success is an indicator of moral soundness.

For evangelicals, Trump’s tax cuts are not only heaven-sent, but they might also help send Trump’s billionaires to heaven.

Harris’s Doorway to an Opportunity Economy

One way to understand Kamala Harris proposal for an Opportunity Economy is that it answers The Prosperity Gospel’s (and Trump’s) empty, exploitative promises with concrete proposals. In a speech at Carnegie Mellon in September, Harris articulated plans that include lowering grocery and prescription drug prices and addressing the housing crisis.

In The New York Times, Harvard economics professor Raj Chetty explains how to build an opportunity economy. Having studied “the science of economic opportunity for many years with my Harvard-based group, Opportunity Insights,” Chetty argues that 

An opportunity economy prioritizes equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcomes. In such an economy, we all have the chance to achieve our potential, even if some people ultimately end up earning more than others. Right now, opportunity is not equally distributed in America: People’s chances of achieving success vary widely depending upon their parents’ income, racial background and ZIP code.

Kamala’s campaign promises “We’re Not Going Back.” But in this worthy instance, it sounds like a return to the Affirmative Action laws the Supreme Court struck down in 2023. White evangelicals must be shouting hallelujah. Or, more likely, invoking hellfire and damnation.

Op-Port-tunity

What my improv lens adds to Chetty’s insights is the poetry hidden in Kamala’s seemingly mundane title. At the center of Opportunity is the root port. The word comes from the Latin phrase, ob portum veniens “coming toward a port” which refers to a favorable wind blowing ships into the harbor. Think of an opportunity as something a good wind blew your way.

Kamala Harris is such a good wind. She promises A New Way Forward that “protects our fundamental freedoms, strengthens our democracy, and ensures every person has the opportunity to not just get by, but to get ahead.”

Port also means gateway: portal. In myth, Trickster is Lord of the Threshold, the way forward. Always with a lockpick at the ready, s/he finds a way through locked doors. In Kamala and the American Gumbo Pot I identified Kamala’s laugh with the Tricksters of her African and Asian roots. Trickster may sound ominous and sometimes indeed he slides over into con man. Sound familiar? But in myth Trickster is a culture bringer. S/he stirs the pot to bring about needed change. I wrote:

Kamala’s laugh is the curve ball the Democrats need in this election. It shouts freedom, then cuts the other way, embracing traditions and embodying the diversity that built America — not America the melting pot, but America the gumbo pot.

Her Opportunity Economy offers not the red meat the Republicans promise but never deliver, but instead a gumbo pot where everyone has the chance to achieve their potential. In New Orleans gumbo is a soup where the ingredients don’t melt all together. The ingredients are what the soup’s about, but they each retain their identity. To bring the metaphor home, immigrants won’t replace the dominant white community as evangelicals fear, but they become an instrumental part of the broth.

Chetty urges that the Opportunity Economy should

focus on communities, not individuals, as the unit of change. Children’s chances of rising out of poverty vary dramatically across places. In some parts of America — such as Boston and Brownsville, Tex. — opportunity is plentiful, with many children from low-income families rising to the middle class and beyond when they grow up…. When children move to better neighborhoods, especially earlier in childhood, their outcomes improve significantly, even if their own parents’ financial status remains unchanged.

Harris proposes to provide $25,000 in down payment assistance for first-time home buyers. How will she pay for it? By asking the wealthy to pay their fair share. She promises to build three million new housing units within the next four years to help foster this mobility.

Mobility is Trickster’s calling card. Hermes’s winged sandals and cap make him the Greek equivalent of Marvel Comics’ Quicksilver. Indeed, his name in Roman myth is Mercury (quicksilver). Hermes/Mercury is the mythic embodiment of the Hot Cognition that charges improvisation, always alert, always looking for the way forward.

That’s just what we’ll need for the OpPortunity Economy: speed and alertness.