There have been many explanations formed to render a clearer picture as to why the current global recession occurred after the burst of the housing bubble: ‘interest rates were too low, regulation failed, rising real-estate prices induced a sort of temporary insanity in America’s middle class.’ However, social analysts have found a more profound explanation in terms of ‘a lasting and fundamental shift in American culture—a shift in the American conception of divine Providence and its relationship to wealth.’

Some critics have noted that Christianity caused the financial crash. In a bid to grasp all possible explanation behind the global economic downturn, social analysts have turned to blaming religion. They have their solid reasons. ‘Over the past generation, a different strain of Christian faith has proliferated—one that promises to make believers rich in the here and now. Known as the prosperity gospel, and claiming tens of millions of adherents, it fosters risk-taking and intense material optimism. It pumped air into the housing bubble. And one year into the worst downturn since the Depression, it’s still going strong.’

According to Kate Bowler, a doctoral candidate at Duke University and an expert in the gospel, ‘among mainstream, nondenominational megachurches, where much of American religious life takes place, “prosperity is proliferating” rapidly.’ Bowler analyzed their sermons and teachings.

As Jackson Lears observes in his book Something for Nothing, there are ‘two starkly different manifestations of the American dream, each intertwined with religious faith. The traditional Protestant hero is a self-made man. He is disciplined and hardworking, and believes that his “success comes through careful cultivation of (implicitly Protestant) virtues in cooperation with a Providential plan.” The hero of the second American narrative is a kind of gambling man—a “speculative confidence man” who prefers “risky ventures in real estate,” and a more “fluid, mobile democracy.” The self-made man imagines a coherent universe where earthly rewards match merits. The confidence man lives in a culture of chance, with “grace as a kind of spiritual luck, a free gift from God”.’

Thus, the glut of self-confidence, self-righteousness, and tons of hope evoked by the prosperity gospel echoed in churches across the US, might have played a part in the economic collapse as its touted virtues may have well induced material ambition which is the precipice by which one can fall into the abyss of material greed.

Via The Atlantic