this is how these weird cults get followers. instead of talking about the arab corpse nailed to a stick, they are actually worshiping mammon. they are replacing one paper idol (the bible) with another (the almighty american dollar).
and hey presto, greed causes the crash.
isn't greed supposed to be one of the cardinal sins according to the corpse-worshippers? i guess they therefore indulge in it with ever more enthusiasm.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: sri
Did Christianity Cause the Crash?
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/rosin-prosperity-gospel
Religion December 2009
America's mainstream religious denominations used to teach the
faithful that they would be rewarded in the afterlife. But 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.
by Hanna Rosin
Did Christianity Cause the Crash?
Image credit: Mark Peterson/Redux
Like the ambitions of many immigrants who attend services there, Casa
del Padre's success can be measured by upgrades in real estate. The
mostly Latino church, in Charlottesville, Virginia, has moved from the
pastor's basement, where it was founded in 2001, to a rented warehouse
across the street from a small mercado five years later, to a
middle-class suburban street last year, where the pastor now rents
space from a lovely old Baptist church that can't otherwise fill its
pews. Every Sunday, the parishioners drive slowly into the parking
lot, never parking on the sidewalk or grass—"because Americanos don't
do that," one told me—and file quietly into church. Some drive newly
leased SUVs, others old work trucks with paint buckets still in the
bed. The pastor, Fernando Garay, arrives last and parks in front, his
dark-blue Mercedes Benz always freshly washed, the hubcaps polished
enough to reflect his wingtips.
It can be hard to get used to how much Garay talks about money in
church, one loyal parishioner, Billy Gonzales, told me one recent
Sunday on the steps out front. Back in Mexico, Gonzales's pastor
talked only about "Jesus and heaven and being good." But Garay talks
about jobs and houses and making good money, which eventually came to
make sense to Gonzales: money is "really important," and besides, "we
love the money in Jesus Christ's name! Jesus loved money too!" That
Sunday, Garay was preaching a variation on his usual theme, about how
prosperity and abundance unerringly find true believers. "It doesn't
matter what country you're from, what degree you have, or what money
you have in the bank," Garay said. "You don't have to say, 'God, bless
my business. Bless my bank account.' The blessings will come! The
blessings are looking for you! God will take care of you. God will not
let you be without a house!"
... deleted
America's churches always reflect shifts in the broader culture, and
Casa del Padre is no exception. The message that Jesus blesses
believers with riches first showed up in the postwar years, at a time
when Americans began to believe that greater comfort could be
accessible to everyone, not just the landed class. But it really took
off during the boom years of the 1990s, and has continued to spread
ever since. This stitched-together, homegrown theology, known as the
prosperity gospel, is not a clearly defined denomination, but a strain
of belief that runs through the Pentecostal Church and a surprising
number of mainstream evangelical churches, with varying degrees of
intensity. In Garay's church, God is the "Owner of All the Silver and
Gold," and with enough faith, any believer can access the inheritance.
Money is not the dull stuff of hourly wages and bank-account
statements, but a magical substance that comes as a gift from above.
Even in these hard times, it is discouraged, in such churches, to fall
into despair about the things you cannot afford. "Instead of saying
'I'm poor,' say 'I'm rich,'" Garay's wife, Hazael, told me one day.
"The word of God will manifest itself in reality."
Many explanations have been offered for the housing bubble and
subsequent crash: interest rates were too low; regulation failed;
rising real-estate prices induced a sort of temporary insanity in
America's middle class. But there is one explanation that speaks to a
lasting and fundamental shift in American culture—a shift in the
American conception of divine Providence and its relationship to
wealth.
In his book Something for Nothing, Jackson Lears describes 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," Lears calls him, 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." The Gilded Age launched the myth of the
self-made man, as the Rockefellers and other powerful men in the pews
connected their wealth to their own virtue. In these boom-and-crash
years, the more reckless alter ego dominates. In his book, Lears
quotes a reverend named Jeffrey Black, who sounds remarkably like
Garay: "The whole hope of a human being is that somehow, in spite of
the things I've done wrong, there will be an episode when grace and
fate shower down on me and an unearned blessing will come to me—that
I'll be the one."
... long essay deleted, worth reading at the original URL
From: sri
Did Christianity Cause the Crash?
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/rosin-prosperity-gospel
Religion December 2009
America's mainstream religious denominations used to teach the
faithful that they would be rewarded in the afterlife. But 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.
by Hanna Rosin
Did Christianity Cause the Crash?
Image credit: Mark Peterson/Redux
Like the ambitions of many immigrants who attend services there, Casa
del Padre's success can be measured by upgrades in real estate. The
mostly Latino church, in Charlottesville, Virginia, has moved from the
pastor's basement, where it was founded in 2001, to a rented warehouse
across the street from a small mercado five years later, to a
middle-class suburban street last year, where the pastor now rents
space from a lovely old Baptist church that can't otherwise fill its
pews. Every Sunday, the parishioners drive slowly into the parking
lot, never parking on the sidewalk or grass—"because Americanos don't
do that," one told me—and file quietly into church. Some drive newly
leased SUVs, others old work trucks with paint buckets still in the
bed. The pastor, Fernando Garay, arrives last and parks in front, his
dark-blue Mercedes Benz always freshly washed, the hubcaps polished
enough to reflect his wingtips.
It can be hard to get used to how much Garay talks about money in
church, one loyal parishioner, Billy Gonzales, told me one recent
Sunday on the steps out front. Back in Mexico, Gonzales's pastor
talked only about "Jesus and heaven and being good." But Garay talks
about jobs and houses and making good money, which eventually came to
make sense to Gonzales: money is "really important," and besides, "we
love the money in Jesus Christ's name! Jesus loved money too!" That
Sunday, Garay was preaching a variation on his usual theme, about how
prosperity and abundance unerringly find true believers. "It doesn't
matter what country you're from, what degree you have, or what money
you have in the bank," Garay said. "You don't have to say, 'God, bless
my business. Bless my bank account.' The blessings will come! The
blessings are looking for you! God will take care of you. God will not
let you be without a house!"
... deleted
America's churches always reflect shifts in the broader culture, and
Casa del Padre is no exception. The message that Jesus blesses
believers with riches first showed up in the postwar years, at a time
when Americans began to believe that greater comfort could be
accessible to everyone, not just the landed class. But it really took
off during the boom years of the 1990s, and has continued to spread
ever since. This stitched-together, homegrown theology, known as the
prosperity gospel, is not a clearly defined denomination, but a strain
of belief that runs through the Pentecostal Church and a surprising
number of mainstream evangelical churches, with varying degrees of
intensity. In Garay's church, God is the "Owner of All the Silver and
Gold," and with enough faith, any believer can access the inheritance.
Money is not the dull stuff of hourly wages and bank-account
statements, but a magical substance that comes as a gift from above.
Even in these hard times, it is discouraged, in such churches, to fall
into despair about the things you cannot afford. "Instead of saying
'I'm poor,' say 'I'm rich,'" Garay's wife, Hazael, told me one day.
"The word of God will manifest itself in reality."
Many explanations have been offered for the housing bubble and
subsequent crash: interest rates were too low; regulation failed;
rising real-estate prices induced a sort of temporary insanity in
America's middle class. But there is one explanation that speaks to a
lasting and fundamental shift in American culture—a shift in the
American conception of divine Providence and its relationship to
wealth.
In his book Something for Nothing, Jackson Lears describes 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," Lears calls him, 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." The Gilded Age launched the myth of the
self-made man, as the Rockefellers and other powerful men in the pews
connected their wealth to their own virtue. In these boom-and-crash
years, the more reckless alter ego dominates. In his book, Lears
quotes a reverend named Jeffrey Black, who sounds remarkably like
Garay: "The whole hope of a human being is that somehow, in spite of
the things I've done wrong, there will be an episode when grace and
fate shower down on me and an unearned blessing will come to me—that
I'll be the one."
... long essay deleted, worth reading at the original URL
1 comment:
Spengler said that it was the other way around. European culture invented Western christianity.
WESTERN mankind, without exception, is under the influence of an immense optical illusion. Everyone demands something of the rest. We say "thou shalt" in the conviction that so-and-so in fact will, can and must be changed or fashioned or arranged conformably to the order, and our belief both in the efficacy of, and in our title to give, such orders is unshakable. That, and nothing short of it, is<,/i> for us, morale. In the ethics of the West everything is direction, claim to power, will to affect the distant. here Luther is completely at one with Nietzsche, Popes with Darwinians, Socialists with jesuits; for one and all, the beginning of morale is a claim to general and permanent validity...
...
The moral imperative as the form of morale is Faustian and only Faustian. It is quite wrong to associate Christianity with the moral imperative. It was not Christianity that transformed Faustian man, but Faustian man who transformed Christianity--and he not only made it a new religious but also gave it a new moral direction. The "it" became "I," the passion- charged centre of the world, the foundation of the great Sacrament of personal contrition. Will-to-power even in ethics, the passionate striving to set up a proper morale as a universal truth, and to enforce it upon humanity, to reinterpret or overcome or destroy everything otherwise constituted--nothing is more characteristically our own than this is. And in virtue of it the Gothic springtime proceeded to a profound--and never yet appreciated--inward transformation of the morale of Jesus. A quite spiritual morale welling from Magian [he uses this term for culture of the Near-East] feeling--a morale or conduct recommended as potent for salvation, a morale the knowledge of which was communicated as a special act of grace-- was recast as a morale of imperative command..
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