The Godly Edition

Summary

Slate Money: The Godly Edition — Episode Summary

Date: July 2, 2016
Host: Felix Salmon
Guests: Cathy O’Neill, Jordan Weissmann, Chris Lehmann (author, editor of The Baffler)

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Overview: Exploring the Interplay of Money and Religion in America

In this episode of Slate Money, the hosts delve into the often-overlooked relationship between religion—primarily Christianity—and money in American society. With guest Chris Lehmann, author of The Money Cult, the panel unpacks how American religious movements have historically merged with economic attitudes, especially around prosperity, debt, and the emergence of mega-churches and televangelism. The conversation highlights how American Protestantism evolved into a unique blend of spirituality and entrepreneurial capitalism, giving rise to phenomena such as the prosperity gospel.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Introducing the “Money Cult”

(00:45–04:20)

• Felix Salmon opens the discussion noting the podcast’s historical gap in addressing the intersection of religion and money, despite their deep coexistence in society.
• Chris Lehmann introduces himself, sharing his background as a religious studies major and self-described outsider to church culture:

  "Religion is this very powerful irrational force that does, in fact, determine a great deal, especially in the United States, about the way we think about moral values, how society should be organized, and the economy." (03:55–04:20)

2. Origins of American Christian Attitudes Toward Wealth

(04:23–08:00)

• Lehmann outlines how American Christianity became tied to commerce from its inception, giving the example of early evangelist George Whitefield selling goods upon arrival:

  "Commerce and...religion were intertwined from the beginning." (06:15)

• The panel distinguishes between American and European religious institutions, noting America’s early “deregulation” of religion (dissolving state-supported churches by 1820) led to increased denominationalism and individual entrepreneurship among preachers.

3. The Rise and Logic of the Prosperity Gospel

(10:08–14:45)

• TV evangelism and the “prosperity gospel” are framed as characteristically American, evolving in an environment where distrust of old institutional religion met entrepreneurial opportunity.

  "The most hardcore iteration of the money faith became what is now called the Prosperity gospel." (10:24)

• Lehmann explains that, in the prosperity gospel, faith is demonstrated by giving money—"seed faith"—with the promise of personal material return.

  "You give money as an act of what’s called seed faith. You plant a seed via your donation and God then allows you to prosper 100-fold." (18:10)

4. Theological Tensions: Poverty, Charity, and Wealth

(15:07–18:36)

• Discussion contrasts traditions of charity and vows of poverty, especially in Catholicism, with the American idea that wealth is virtuous.

  "There is a tradition [in Christianity] that it is good to be poor...and it is not the winning tradition in America now." (17:46)

• The American mega-church model is highlighted as uniquely tied to aspirational economics:

  "White upper middle class Americans don’t want to be told about the virtues of poverty. They want to be told why they’re virtuous...it is aspirational." (18:38)

5. Prosperity Preaching as Market Logic

(19:00–22:09)

• Joel Osteen is discussed as the model prosperity preacher, rationalizing wealth and even real estate windfalls as divine favor rather than market dynamics.

  "God gave me a parking space...this is actually stuff he truly preaches." (19:12–19:29)

• The logic persists in both up and down markets: hope and aspiration fuel giving, even as economic returns fluctuate.

  "In down markets is when you need it the most. You are...waiting around for God to be smiling." (21:45–21:51)

6. Capitalism, Faith, and Donald Trump

(22:01–24:43)

• The panel draws connections between prosperity preachers and figures like Donald Trump:

  "Donald Trump is a prosperity preacher. This is exactly the faith." (23:53)

• Truth claims in faith and politics operate on emotional truth rather than empirical fact-checking—a powerful parallel in modern American life.

  "For believers, that doesn’t matter...he says something that they believe should be true." (24:01–24:36)

7. Changing Attitudes Toward Debt

(24:43–29:55)

• The group traces American Christianity’s shift from seeing debt as a moral failure (like traditional Islam or Puritan beliefs) to viewing it as a sign of trustworthiness and entrepreneurial faith:

  "Debt then becomes a sign of trustworthiness...and if you are able to organize debt, as Donald Trump does and sort of kite it, it's not necessarily that you're shady." (26:41)

• Modern personal finance gurus like Suze Orman and Dave Ramsey are discussed as "counter-currents" that echo older, more skeptical views on debt.

8. Feedback Loops: Religion Shaping Economics & Vice Versa

(30:38–33:26)

• Debate arises as to whether American religion shapes its economic ethos or vice versa. Lehmann argues religion predates and incubates economic thinking:

  "The Protestant money faith is what incubates the particular culture of American capitalism..." (30:55)

• Cathy O’Neill injects a pragmatic concern:

  "It’s very unsustainable to put people into Ponzi schemes and promise them riches because it doesn’t work out and then they get burned...do they leave the religion or migrate to a different megachurch?" (31:34)

9. Global Comparisons and Historical Context

(33:26–37:41)

• The panel discusses Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and global development, noting that prosperity gospel movements tend to bring economic volatility—a "bumpy ride"—as they spread to South America and Africa.

  "Countries that fall under the sway of a prosperity gospel kind of mentality are in for a lot of bumpy rides, a lot of bubbles, a lot of recessions." (37:26–37:41)

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Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• Chris Lehmann:

  "Religion is this very powerful irrational force that...determines a great deal, especially in the United States, about the way we think about moral values, how society should be organized, and the economy." (03:55–04:20)

• On Prosperity Gospel:

  "You give money as an act of what's called seed faith. You plant a seed via your donation and God then allows you to prosper 100-fold." (18:10)

• On Market & Faith:

  "For believers, [facts] don’t matter...he says something that they believe should be true. And that's exactly how word-of-faith, prosperity preaching works." (24:01–24:37)

• On Debt and Trust:

  "Debt then becomes a sign of trustworthiness...and if you are able to organize debt, as Donald Trump does...it's not necessarily that you're shady." (26:41)

• On Global Expansion:

  "Countries that fall under the sway of a prosperity gospel kind of mentality are in for a lot of bumpy rides, a lot of bubbles, a lot of recessions." (37:26)

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Notable and Lighthearted Moments

• [19:29] Cathy prompts Chris to do a Joel Osteen impression, sparking laughter at Osteen’s trademark sermon style.
• [19:38] The group jokes about "God giving you a parking space" in New York—a Seinfeldian moment.
• [29:22–29:40] The comparison of prosperity gospel thinking to Silicon Valley venture capitalism:

  "I kind of like God is venture capital...that is what Prosperity Gospel Peter Thiel's next to." (29:36–29:40)

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Essential Segments & Timestamps

• Introduction to the “Money Cult”: 00:45–04:20
• Prosperity Gospel Explained: 10:08–14:45; 18:10
• American vs. European Religious Traditions: 15:07–18:36
• Televangelism, Mega-Churches & Market Logic: 19:00–22:09
• Debt, Faith, and Capitalism: 24:43–29:55
• Global and Historical Reflections: 33:26–37:41

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Tone & Language

The discussion is witty, skeptical, and intellectually curious, blending dry humor and sharp cultural critique. The hosts and guest keep the tone conversational, accessible, and occasionally irreverent—matching their secular outlook as they analyze religion as a social and economic institution.

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Final Thoughts

This “Godly Edition” of Slate Money offers an incisive, sometimes biting, but always informative look at how religion—particularly American Protestantism—has been intertwined with financial attitudes, behaviors, and structures. The conversation with Chris Lehmann shines a light on the prosperity gospel’s peculiar American logic, examines the evolving meaning of debt, and ponders the future interplay of faith and money both in the U.S. and globally.

Transcript

[A]

The following podcast contains explicit language.

[B]

Hello, and welcome to the most special edition of Slate Money. I think we should call it the godly edition of Slate Money, because we are going. We are getting religion this week.

[A]

Holy shit. We're godly.

[C]

Exactly.

[D]

Adjectives that have never been disputed to describe Slate.

[A]

Feeling super godly.

[B]

I feel like we've been doing Slate Money for over 100 episodes now. We've been going for a while and this is a big gaping gap, a lacuna, you might say.

[C]

Yes, not quite in a God.

[B]

We've been talking about money and money and money and society, and we have not talked about religion, which is a key part of how people think about money, why people think about money in the way they do. And it's a big business. And so we have in the studio, quite aside from Cathy O', Neill, the atheist blogger, and mathbabe.org and I really.

[A]

Don'T know anything about religion, I'm super interested in this topic.

[B]

And quite aside from Jordan Weissman, the, I guess, Jewish money box columnist at.

[D]

Slate, shockingly.

[B]

And me, Felix Hammond, the atheist senior editor at Fusion, I went to a school which was Christian, and so there were a few kind of pro forma himi prairie things every so often.

[C]

Yeah, but this was in.

[A]

Do you learn anything, though, like the Bible verses or anything?

[B]

Oh, God, no.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So to speak. And we have. But never mind us, because we actually have an expert here, Mr. Chris Lehman.

[C]

Lehman. It's important to distinguish from the investment bank.

[B]

Yeah, Not Lehman as in brothers, but.

[C]

Layman as in, you know, a lay preacher, let's say.

[B]

Yes, has written the book. So tell me, tell us very briefly, like, who you are and what is this book?

[C]

I am, as you noted, but mispronounced. Chris Lamon. I am editor of the Baffler. Until very recently, like two weeks ago, I was co editor of book for him. And I have written a lot on the money culture, broadly. My last book was called Rich People Things, which was based on a column I wrote long ago at the all.

[B]

And.

[C]

It does feel I'm at a table now of three secular atheist journalists. So I've had a lifelong interest in religion as an outsider. I was, as an undergraduate, a religious studies major. I just soaked the stuff up in a way that was mystifying, both, I think, to my family and myself. But, you know, I grew up in the Midwest, where religion is a huge. I was not raised religiously. My parents, when they felt guilty, would drag me to a Unitarian church every now and then, just sort of checking the Box. But I was surrounded by very ardent, very Protestant religious schoolmates and such. And I remember having to explain to them what Unitarianism was. They always thought it was the Unification Church. It was like. And I remember talking to my parents, like, do I have to go through this? This is, like, embarrassing. Which is all a long way of saying there was this huge presence in my social world that I knew nothing about. And I just gradually, when I went to college, began to think of it in a more systematic way. And thinking this is this very powerful irrational force that does in fact, determine a great deal, especially in the United States, about the way we think about moral values, how society should be organized, and the economy.

[B]

Okay, so the name of the book is the Money Cult. And so that, I think, is a good place to start American Christianity. And most American religious people are Christian, the overwhelming majority. American Christianity is a big money thing, right?

[C]

Yeah. In terms of.

[B]

Would you call it a money cult?

[C]

I'm glad you asked me that. Yes. So actually, in fairness, my agent, Melissa Flashman, gave me the title, so I just ran with it. But I would nonetheless and do describe it as a money cult in the sense that I think in the traditional, we have this kind of caricature that we in the media often foment of the kind of Elmer Gantry on the make preacher who always turns out to be a sexual hypocrite, who always turns out to be in it for the money. I hope I'm not writing about that stereotype because that's not my view of how money figures into American religious belief. It's actually a much more intimate and foundational idea. And I was surprised when I. You know, it is a history going back to the colonial settlement of the country. And, you know, like the first great American evangelist who was technically British, George Whitefield, the preacher who led the first Great Awakening, which by many historical accounts was the key event that led to the American Revolution. It gave the country a sense of national unity. That's all off to the side. But Whitefield came over on a ship and landed in Philadelphia with a hoard of goods that his brother, who is a wine merchant, had him sell. So the first notice of George Whitefield's arrival was like, there are exotic rugs, there are bottles of wine. You know, it was an open air bazaar. Commerce and. Yeah, exactly. And George Whitefield also was a. In the print culture of the early colonies, he accounted for something. He personally accounted for something like 40% of all printed matter. Like his sermons, his, you know, dispatches. He actually hired A publicist, which was unheard of.

[B]

And he made money selling these things.

[C]

He did, though, like many people who make money and many religious people who make money, he managed it incredibly badly. Most of the money went to an orphanage and sort of religious complex he was founding in the colony of Georgia, and it just sank.

[B]

But there's been a lot of money in religion since long before the founding of the United States. I mean, the Catholic Church is famously just awash in money. It seems that money is something which naturally follows on from power. Like, if you're powerful, you wind up with money. And that certainly in Europe, for most of the past thousand years, the power, a huge amount of power, has resided in the church. And so it's kind of logical that you will also wind up getting a lot of money there. In the United States, which is a nominally secular country with the separation of church and state, is it the same dynamic in just a slightly more diluted way, that even though we don't have the religious people running the country, they still have power in society and that's how they get money?

[C]

Yes and no. It's organizationally very different from the European Catholic model. And I describe this a lot in the book. One of the big themes of Protestant revival and Protestant denomination, denominationalism in America is about deinstitutionalizing. There's a distrust of all forms of earthly power because they're not holy and they're not of the New world. They are associated with old world corruption. So anytime a church is seen to, you know, gain too much worldly influence, you know, there's this kind of reflex of, oh, shit, we're becoming Catholic and go to hell, literally. So it's an interesting dynamic. And in the book, again, these ideas kick around in your head for a long time. And I suddenly realized that as a historical fact, religion is the first deregulated industry in America. The last state supported church was dissolved in 1820 in Massachusetts, which was of course, the mother colony of the Puritans. And from that point you have this total. And what follows in the early 19th century at the same time is what's known as the Second Great Awakening, which is an amazing onrush of people who are in vain against traditional religious establishments and saying, look, I've discovered Christ. No, I've discovered, you know, it's a nationwide revival that just seizes the American imagination and creates, among other things, Mormonism, which is one of the, you know, other themes of the book is Mormonism and Pentecostalism are kind of the leading edge Money cult denominations, in my view.

[A]

Can you talk a little bit about the only actual religious exposure I had as a child, which was that my grandmother used to watch the TV evangelists.

[C]

Oh yes.

[A]

Because that seems like a very. Going to Felix's question, very American phenomenon.

[C]

It is, and it's American in this way I'm describing because the vast majority of TV evangelists either switch their denominational affiliations willy nilly, like Oral Roberts, who was a great Pentecostal preacher in the 70s and helped develop what is now called the Prosperity gospel, which is the most hardcore iteration of the money faith, became a Methodist and it freaked everyone out.

[B]

Now the Prosperity gospel is basically if you give money to the church, then you will become rich.

[C]

That's. Yeah. At the most basic transactional level. That's true. Not true. That's not what happened in reality.

[D]

I'm curious. This is part of it, but I mean, I'd like you to talk about how we got to that point. How did we evolve to the point where religion becomes that kind of hardcore transactional and how is it different than what came before?

[C]

That is the story of my book. So I am very glad you asked that as well. We evolved through this process of kind of rabid deinstitutionalization. So all these denominations I talk about in the book, like Mormonism, like Pentecostalism, also have this fevered romance that they're going to rediscover the primitive church. This is again, going to Felix's earlier point, a very American idea, like we're going to shuck off all of the old world corruption. We're a democracy. We're going to be in an original relationship with God, as Emerson broadly put it. So how we get to this point is, you know, every, you know, from the early 19th century onward, every sort of major Protestant founder of a new denomination or, you know, influential evangelist says, we're going to take you back, you know, to, to the way the gospel was worshiped by Paul and all the disciples in the immediate wake of Jesus's death. Now the interesting thing about this is a primitive church was also essentially socialist. They held.

[A]

They sound like a bunch of hippies in the woods.

[C]

No, they totally were. They held property in common. They, you know, until Paul sort of got them under control, they would let women, you know, play leadership roles. So this is a big problem. We're going to revive the Puritan Church or the Primitive Church, but because we're Americans, it's not going to be socialist. Duh.

[D]

God forbid.

[C]

Right, God forbid. This process actually of divesting power away from solidaristic institutions into charismatic individuals creates the social dynamic where powerful evangelical preachers become obsessed with money. As a sign of your faith and going back to what you were asking about the prosperity gospel, part of what the prosperity gospel preaches is that the words from your mouth create your social reality. Joel Osteen is. This is called the word of faith tradition. Joel Osteen, who is still amazingly both before and after the 2008 meltdown, the most popular preacher in America today. And it is all about creating an abundance theology, having a success outlook on life. It is the business culture of kind of successories and motivational posters. Translated entirely.

[A]

I had to interrupt you. What is successory?

[C]

Successories are this kind of kitschy, or at least I regard them as kitschy line of. You find them in middle management offices all the time. They're just sort of like those posters, right. That have inspirational quotations about how you are going to achieve tremendous things.

[A]

It's a cult of personality.

[C]

It is in a certain way personalities certainly predominate. And the story of how we get from where we were as kind of proto social gospel puritans to today's marketplace of religious. Some may call it hucksterism, but going.

[B]

Back to the money thing, there's this other very profound part of religion. And as a tourist in this area, I feel like this is the thing which I see a lot, which is vows of poverty, which is like you should give your money to other people, probably the church. You should. It is easier for a camel's hair to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

[C]

A camel's hair can pass through whatever it is. For the record. But I was thinking about it, I investigated.

[B]

So I feel like when I think of religion a lot of the time I think of, you know, monks and nuns with no money. I think of priests working, you know, where I grew up in the Church of England on very low salaries.

[A]

Yeah, non materialistic.

[C]

You're thinking of European religion. Religion is what you're thinking.

[B]

So that's. I guess there is. We also have in Europe the Catholic Church. Lots of money right now.

[C]

There is definitely a strong philanthropic and charitable function. I don't want to portray American religion as solely a get rich quick scheme. It's not that. And a lot of like Joel Osteen has a mission of sending goods to Africa. Rick Warren has adopted Rwanda as a purpose driven country. To remake that is a good example in my view. Here you have again, an enormously influential pastor at a megachurch adopting a country to not just help a country recovering from a genocide get back on its feet. Though he's doing a lot of good work along those lines. But branding it as a purpose driven nation, that's a very different, and I would argue distinctly American idea. That, and this, you know, goes into a different discussion of America's imperial past, which, you know, probably isn't in our scope, but.

[B]

But is Joel Osteen himself or are these pastors themselves, do they say that it's good to be poor? Do they say that it's good to be rich? Because I feel like there is a condition somewhere along the line when I look at the priests and the monks and whatnot and, you know, St. Francis and Fasisi or whoever, I feel like there is a tradition of it's good to be poor.

[C]

Yes, there is a tradition. And it is not the winning tradition in America now.

[A]

Joel Osteen, So we in mega churches. Sorry to interrupt. In megachurches, do I assume people who are in the flock give part of their money to the church? Yes, but they're not doing it to support the church. Are they doing it to show fealty? What are they? What's the purpose of the title?

[C]

I mean, people give money for a lot of different reasons, but the sort of theological rationale to give money, and I've received these mailings from Joel Osteen myself, is you give money as an act of what's called seed faith. You plant a seed via your donation and God then allows you to prosper 100 fold.

[A]

So it's like a Ponzi scheme.

[C]

Your words.

[D]

Isn't this just a really good example of kind of the market winning here? I mean, if you're, if you were trying to design a church that's going to be able to sustain itself and prosper, you'd want to appeal to white upper middle class Americans. And white upper middle class Americans don't want to be told about the virtues of poverty. They want to be told why they're virtuous. And so, well, most of the point.

[B]

I think Americans who aspire to being.

[C]

Upper middle class, it is aspirational. So Joel Osteen embodies this. I don't know if you've ever seen him preach or like caught him on tv.

[A]

Can you do an impression?

[C]

You know, I was thinking I need to work up one. He has this kind of soft drawl and he, oh shit, I have seen that guy overtone of wonder where he is. Saying, and then God gave me a parking space. This is actually stuff he truly preaches.

[D]

In all fairness, I think there are a lot of people in this world who like, do feel they have been touched by the hand of God. If they get a parking space in.

[C]

New York, especially in New York, in.

[D]

New York City, that's not outrageous.

[A]

That's a Seinfeld episode right there.

[C]

He also has a long description in one of his books. I actually reviewed one of his books for Slate where he describes he and his wife bought a new house without unloading their first starter house. They had two mortgages. They were struggling financially. This was circa 2006 or so, before the crash. Obviously, lo and behold, their old house sells and their new house flips instantly because it's zoned in a commercial development, lavish commercial development in Houston. So its price doubles, basically. And he says this was all the work of God, not the market. It was all because housing bubbles are.

[B]

Good and they are godly.

[C]

They are good and godly.

[B]

God wants housing bubbles.

[A]

Wait, so what happens when someone gets cancer? Are they.

[C]

That is the whole big, big problem with this, the theodicy question, as it's called in theology. Right. How does a just and omnipotent God allow suffering to happen? And in economic terms, if God is smiling on Joel Osteen when he flips his house, he is angry, I guess, with the millions and millions and millions of Americans who then suffered foreclosure from predatory mortgage markets. So that's a big, big problem. And it's not one that this brand of preaching is.

[A]

Does that make this brand of preaching cyclical with the economy itself?

[C]

No, because as I said earlier, Osteen, both before and after, that's what's fascinating to me.

[A]

Does he change what he was saying?

[B]

No, you don't need to. The great thing about this is it works both ways. In up markets, it's working and it's aspirational.

[C]

It offers aspiration. Right.

[D]

You just give somebody the church and your house price is going to pop back up.

[A]

Wait, I don't understand how it works in down markets.

[B]

In down markets is when you need it the most.

[C]

Right. That, that, that is true.

[A]

You just, you're waiting around for God to be smiling.

[C]

Exactly. You are. It is an investment and it is spoken.

[B]

The best terms, the best time to invest is when.

[D]

One fascinating thing to me about this is a lot of people have talked about how for some American conservatives, they've tried to sort of replace God with the invisible hand.

[C]

Yes.

[D]

And now this is almost like A reaction to the Christianity saying, like, well, we'll just make the invisible hand into God right?

[C]

Now, that is absolutely, that's a very good insight. And that is in large part the, the boring story that, that Felix doesn't want to hear about denominationalism in the 19th century is.

[B]

And trust me, I really don't want.

[D]

I, I so disagree with Felix, unfortunately.

[C]

We'll talk.

[D]

I've got to, I've got.

[C]

No, Jordan, I will talk later.

[A]

Read the book.

[B]

Yeah, no, read the book and you get to learn all about denomination.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

So is, so what we have got basically is this kind of confluence of capitalism and religion to the point at which suddenly the richest people are the godliest people just by dint of being rich, Right.

[C]

I think actually Donald Trump said something to this effect the other day, that you gotta be great in order to be great, you have to be rich. And that is, that is pure prosperity gospel. Actually, my friend Jeff Charlotte wrote a great piece for the Time Sunday magazine a while ago. He went to a bunch of Trump rallies in the heartland or primary states, and he came away saying, yeah, Donald Trump is a prosperity preacher. This is exactly the faith. And when you think about it, it does make sense because we in the press examine Donald Trump's utterances as empirical and verifiable and we fact check them and say, oh, it's not true.

[B]

But no one ever fact checks Joel Osteen.

[C]

Right. And for believers, that doesn't matter.

[A]

It actually throws away rationality and logic.

[C]

Right? That's how I got interested in religion is it is powerful, it is irrational, and it's a cohesive system that works. So how do you explain it? So I would argue in Donald Trump's case, it's not the case that he opposed the Iraq invasion in 2003. It's not the case that the Mexicans are going to pay for the wall on the border. But the important thing I think for Trump devotees is he says something that they believe should be true.

[A]

They want it to be true.

[C]

Right? And that's exactly how word of faith, prosperity preaching works.

[B]

So again, as a tourist in this area, one of the things I see when I look at religion, if I look at the Christian faith, there's a very long, thousands of years old tradition of debt jubilees, where debt is forgiven. In Islam, there's basically a complete ban on debt. They really hate anyone borrowing from anyone and it's immoral. How does debt figure into this American version of Christianity?

[C]

In much the same way, interestingly, that prosperity does. Back I Mentioned oral rock.

[A]

The more you have it, the better.

[C]

No, but you definitely acquire it. And it's in the 19th century. I'll just say quickly. Debt shifts from the Puritan model of debt was like the Islamic model. It is a grave failing of character. It speaks badly of your upstanding nature. But that shifts in the 19th century largely because there's a mass. It's what's called the market revolution in America. There's massive investment in infrastructure, where tollways are built, state legislatures build canals. It's all funded by debt. It's all financialized debt on Wall Street. So debt then becomes a sign of trustworthiness, this kind of debt, at least. And if you are able to organize debt, as Donald Trump does and sort of kite it, it's not necessarily that you're shady, it's that you. And this is actually where you get expressions like, give me some credit that comes from this market revolution.

[A]

So it's associated with being trusted and with power.

[C]

Right, right. Because to contract debt is to place a lot of trust in your debtor or your creditor.

[B]

So this is a bit like the seed planted in the ground. You can do that by giving money to the church, or in a weird way, you can do that in investing in yourself by borrowing money.

[C]

Right, right. Which is why I'm not sure that there's been research done on this. But I would not be surprised if, say, people who go to the University of Phoenix, who I hope is not one of your sponsors, are coming out of a prosperity gospel mindset or tradition.

[A]

What you're saying, though, kind of flies in the face of another kind of quasi moral debt thing that is a big deal nowadays. It's like the Susie Orman version of, like, debt as a moral sin.

[C]

Right. Now, that is a throwback. And you know, Susie Orman, she's not a preacher, so she kind of is.

[B]

And Dave Ramsey is certainly a preacher, and he's explicit.

[A]

He's on the radio. Is that good?

[C]

Yeah, that's right. James Ramsey is.

[B]

Dave Ramsey is another one of these personal finance gurus who. Who inveighs against debt, tells everyone to pay down their debt as quickly as possible, and does so in an explicitly religious way.

[A]

Right.

[C]

There is still that tradition here that, again, I'm speaking in terms of general.

[B]

But you're saying that these personal finance gurus are kind of the counter current, and the main current is saying, go ahead and lever up.

[C]

Yeah, like when I mentioned Oral Roberts before, he was in. He has a university in Oklahoma and a medical center and they were both basically on the verge of bankruptcy back in the 80s. And he became something of a late night figure of fun on late night talk shows because he'd set forward a plea, basically saying to his flock, you are going to assume this debt or God is going to come and take me.

[A]

He was suggesting people go into debt to help him out.

[C]

I think logically that probably follows in many cases.

[D]

How did that work out for him?

[C]

Fine.

[A]

How did it work out for his followers?

[C]

Someone should do some follow up research there. I would be curious to know. But yeah, this is again in the prosperity Gospel version of the money called it is a good thing to leverage yourself.

[A]

It's almost like a Silicon Valley approach. It's like almost goes full circle like Silicon Valley. You'd be an idiot not to borrow a bunch of money to start a.

[C]

Crazy idea if you get the right venture capital. That hadn't occurred to me. Thank you.

[D]

I kind of like God is venture capital.

[C]

That is what Prosperity Gospel Peter seals next to.

[B]

He will take his 2 and 20.

[C]

No, that again, they don't. You always read the small prints in this way. I want to echo Sue Zorman.

[B]

So this is absolutely fascinating to me. The main thrust of American Christianity, it seems to tying threads together here to sort of completely fly in the face of what you might think of like poverty is good, debt is bad. It just turns that on its head and says, poverty is bad, debt is good.

[C]

Yeah. There's one of the most influential works of American rhetoric, period, is a sermon called Acres of diamonds by this 19th century preacher Russell Conwell, who actually says all those things that it is wrong in any event to be poor.

[D]

Kind of a summary question.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

In the end, how much do you think that American religion has conformed to American economics or American attitudes about money? And how much of American attitudes about money conform to religion, which is the causal factor here.

[C]

It's surprisingly hard to separate out. I'm immersed in the religious stuff, so I think I lean toward the idea that the Protestant money faith is what incubates the particular culture of American capitalism. I don't think you don't. I think you don't have the kind of economic thinking that we now have without it. Just a very simple.

[B]

So does that mean that Protestant countries tend to have more sort of like aggressively capitalist?

[C]

Yeah, that is historically true. That is historically true.

[A]

Let me just say something really meta though, okay. I mean it is much more sustainable economically for people to think that poverty is good. Right. Because then they're like. And they're like, yeah, this is cool. But it's very unsustainable to put, to put people into Ponzi schemes and promise them riches because it doesn't work out and then they get burned and then they're pissed. But do they leave the religion or do they just migrate to a different mega church? Like, what is these, like, long term model?

[C]

Well, both American religion and American capitalism are prey to boom and bust cycles. It's definitely true.

[D]

Whereas the Catholic Church has managed to stick around for.

[C]

Yeah. And they're, they're a steady state. You know, they're like a John Stuart Mill model. But.

[B]

I.

[C]

And that's what's interesting, you know, hard times, faith. There was. Yeah. In the, say, the early 20th century, there was a rise of what's called the social gospel, which was very intellectually influential. Less so in terms of mass denominational followings that did try to, you know, wed a progressive kind of this capital P progressive agenda of social reform to Christian belief. It had a lot of different currents and tributaries. But. But what's interesting, like the most influential, the most popular social gospel tract was a book called Our country by Josiah Strong. And in it he actually says Americans as a race. It is an extremely racist book. I should stipulate. Americans as a race have the gifts to make money. It is what we're from a northern climate. It's all that crap, all that eugenics crap, but it is all spiritualized.

[B]

That's amazing. Just before we finish up here, can we expand this a little bit? Let's just expand it to the entire planet. I want to ask you this. Insofar as American capitalism and the American economy has sprung out of this kind of unique religious background, what does that tell us about the global economy? And specifically, as you know, in a world with a billion Muslims where Islam just doesn't have this kind of flavor of Islam doesn't exist anywhere, does that mean that Islamic countries are never going to have that kind of degree of economic success?

[C]

No, I don't think it is. It's not a law of economic development by any means. I just think you had. And one of the interesting things I also discovered because one of the grand explanatory models for the relationship of Protestantism and capitalism is of course, Max Weber's essay the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which I puzzled over a long time trying to figure out how it fits and doesn't. And what's interesting is I realize that Weber's thesis, which, you know, in very short form is Protestant, you Know, Puritans, Protestants who founded America, and Ben Franklin is sort of his personality type of this movement have this, you know, they're insanely thrifty, they're insanely ambitious, yet they think God, you know, because they're Calvinists, they think God could just, you know, send them to hell at any moment for no reason at all. So this is actually what creates the impulse to accumulate your world banks. Right. And that creates this pool of venture capital, essentially. That's largely true. But I realize that basically the conditions Weber was describing were conditions of labor scarcity because he says the problem for capitalists in dealing with religion is that the old world model, you do have things like debt jubilees, you have religious holidays. There was no standard work week in early industrial England or early modern England, I should say. People would just. It would be some saint's holiday and people would get drunk for a couple days and then they'd harvest the crops whenever. And so it was a big problem for people seeking to impose labor discipline. The Calvinist solution, in addition to Calvin, also importantly, wrote that usury was not really a problem, which was a big. That's another problem in the Catholic old world model. And I think speaking globally. Yeah. For religious cultures that tend to discourage speculation, as Islam does, and usury, there is a different kind of idea of economic. And it's more cooperative, it's less individualistic. There's a much more kind of what we would call the traditional Catholic model of charity, what you were talking about with priests and monks. So it's interesting. The prosperity gospel does very well in South America and Africa. Africa is a big, big, big place where crowds turn out for Osteen and all the other prosperity preachers. So it's sort of, I don't know, there is no law that will predict economic development. But you could, I think, make the case that countries that fall under the sway of a prosperity gospel kind of mentality are in for a lot of bumpy rides, a lot of bubbles, a lot of recessions.

[B]

Wow. So let's check back in in a.

[C]

Hundred years and see how Rwanda put this podcast in a timeline.

[A]

Talk about a macroeconomic model.

[D]

If Rwanda is the Switzerland of Africa.

[B]

Okay, so that is it for us this week. Many thanks to Chris Layman for coming on and preaching the truth about American prosperity gospel. We really, really appreciate it. Thank you, Chris. And thank you all for listening to Slate Money, which you can find in your itunes store or anywhere else. Please subscribe to us. Please leave a review in the itunes store. Write to us the address is slatemoneylate.com Many thanks to Audrey Quinn, who produced this show, and to Steve Lichti and Andy Bowers, the executive producers. Slate Money is part of the Panoply Network, so check out all of those [e-mail] panoply and we will talk to you next week on Slate. Sa.