Thieves in the Temple

“There’s been a big change,” he told me as we sat together at a table overlooking the lobby and shops in the 120,000-square-foot Christian Cultural Center (CCC).

Some forty years ago, when Brandon was a child living in poverty, he heard much from the pulpit about humility as an essential tool for keeping the Devil at bay. Today in church, he hears practical advice for succeeding in business and improving his position in society. His preacher is A. R. Bernard, a former banker who attracts 10,000 congregants on a typical Sunday to his campus on Flatlands Avenue. Reverend Bernard’s church is lavish in every respect, from the cushioned theater-style seating to the professional-quality band that plays during services, from the three giant projection screens to the singers in matching charcoal suits. “There’s no way you can equate God with poverty,” Reverend Bernard claims, adding that biblical images of Heaven feature gold streets and other signs of opulence. His church is a monument to his gospel of prosperity.

When the seeds of the CCC took root in 1981, the church was a storefront congregation in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood. Now, the community occupies a $28 million building, has a $15 million annual budget, and counts more than 30,000 members. That makes it New York City’s largest church, attracting middle- and upper-middle-class African American professionals from as far away as Delaware and Rhode Island.

The gospel of prosperity is one reason that the CCC is flourishing while many other churches are floundering. “Jesus said, ‘seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you’,” Bernard told me when I interviewed him in his spacious office, which features a full bathroom and a flatscreen TV. “The idea is that if you can abandon materialism and put God first in your life, then he will give you that materialism back so that you can do something with it.” When he preaches in a dark suit from behind a glass lectern, listeners whip out laptops to take notes on how to be successful and get ahead in corporate America.

Remember: as creatures of God, you are infinitely valuable, Bernard tells them. God wants to “lavish” blessings on His people, he says, and we should help Him do it. Hatch big dreams, keep smart company, be a good listener, and use what you learn from those smarter than you. To get ahead in life, Bernard urges, be an asset to big business, not a thorn in its side. Listeners soak up Bernard’s tips and praise, shouting “Bless you!” and “Amen!” in response.

The CCC is not alone in swelling its ranks by preaching prosperity. Mega-ministries around the country have blossomed by professing that discipleship is a ticket to wealth. Millions of Christians learn the life of faith from the likes of Kenneth Copeland Ministries, an institution that proclaims: “health and wealth belong to the believer.” Or, as Kenneth’s wife, Gloria Copeland, told attendees of a convention in Fort Worth in 2009: “God knows where the money is, and He knows how to get the money to you.” Joel Osteen, whose 47,000-member Lakewood Church in Houston is the nation’s largest church, pledges that “God intends for each of us to experience the abundant life.” He assures donors that “because of your generosity, God’s favor and goodness become a part of your life too.”

Georgia preacher Creflo Dollar goes so far as to offer an on-line “School of Prosperity,” where teachings from his vast, multimedia ministry get boiled down to practical basics. “Having no increase renders you useless to the kingdom of God,” says the aptly named Pastor Dollar on his ministry’s Web site. The School of Prosperity is “designed to teach you how to fulfill your God-given destiny … by being His distribution center.”

Prosperity preaching is a symptom of a deeper problem. Ministries of all sizes are packaging the Christian life as a consumer commodity, a customizable experience. This has become abundantly clear in the success of Christian retailing, a $4.6 billion industry that flourishes by equating discipleship with the joy of consumption. Pastor Rick Warren’s best seller The Purpose-Driven Life has spawned more than a dozen spin-off items, from journals to meditations and DVDs, as readers snap up “essential” accessories for their religious journeys. Organizers of the traveling Christian women’s conference Women of Faith tell women they can hear fabulous music, listen to hilarious stories, and “encounter a love that is life-changing”—if only they’ll pay $89 each for admission ($109 for premium seats). When big Christian films such as The Passion of the Christ come to town, local church groups characterize moviegoing as an act of Christian witness. For those with a few dollars to spend, being a Christian has apparently never been easier.

Christian life hasn’t always been so cushy. Jesus Christ himself lived as a homeless wanderer, with “no place to lay his head” (Luke 9:58). He professed that a rich man must renounce all worldly goods in order to enter the kingdom of Heaven (Mark 10:17-25). His earliest followers understood that sacrifice, sometimes even the ultimate sacrifice, was part and parcel to Christian life. Many of them died for their faith. Jesus made clear that the Church would be no place for anyone who wanted to minimize adversity or have an easy life in this world. “You will be arrested, persecuted, and killed,” he tells his disciples on the eve of his death. “You will be hated all over the world because you are my followers” (Matthew 24:9).

The renunciation of worldly comforts remained a staple of Christian faith long after Jesus’ death. Desert fathers and mothers of the second century, for instance, were seen as heroes for sacrificing food, sex, and even sleep for extended periods in order to master bodily impulses and thereby purify their hearts. Their practice was far more rigorous than what many worshippers could tolerate, but it established an ascetic ideal that would endure in the minds of Christians for centuries.

Sacrifice has until recently remained a central tenet of Christian life. For hundreds of years, monasteries and convents have trained men and women to live ascetically in order to better know the Lord who trusted not in worldly ways. Even after Protestants replaced the celibate priest with the faithfully married cleric, they continued to admire self-denial and tempered appetites. Think, for instance, of Methodists, who have perennially sought to keep their flocks sober; Baptists, who have discouraged the use of drugs, drinking, and even dancing because these practices diminish inhibitions; and Seventh-day Adventists, who commonly refuse meat as an act of discipleship.

Though the particulars of prior eras’ ascetic practices often seem a bit silly to later generations, the understanding that an elevated heart stems from self-denial has endured—and still endures for many. But in the last three decades, America has witnessed a radical reformulation of the Christian ideal, in which the Church and other Christian organizations have begun repositioning the faith as a resource for satisfying primitive desires. How did we get to this point, where ministers expound and congregants seek a version of discipleship devoid of real sacrifice? It is a question that requires rigorous examination if we are to have any hope of saving Protestant Christianity in America from self-destruction.

The idea that an individual should take direct responsibility for the quality and content of his or her relationship with God became an early hallmark of American religion. It was on spectacular display during the First Great Awakening of the 1730s and ’40s. Colonists flocked to hear George Whitefield, a traveling evangelist who brought grown men to their knees, weeping in repentance. By the thousands, they gathered in open fields, where the fiery Whitefield reminded them that no church hierarchy or membership would be sufficient to save their sinful souls. To be saved, each would need a personal conversion experience, led by the Holy Spirit and marked by overwhelming remorse, to be followed by the joy of being reborn in the Spirit. In a phenomenon unlike any seen in Europe, individuals across the colonies sought out the often-wrenching open-air experiences associated with personal salvation. In so doing, they demonstrated their conviction that no one save the Holy Spirit could deliver them into right relationship with God. Each individual would need to find his or her way to God’s throne—even if that meant embracing expressions of faith that hadn’t yet received official church approval.

By the late eighteenth century, Americans recognized religious individualism as an indispensable feature of their society. The landscape of faith had become relatively diverse, with Catholics, Jews, Quakers, and the Dutch Reformed, among other sects, expanding their ranks. Framers of the Constitution worried that state sponsorship of any church would threaten the Church’s integrity, since governments tended to have their own agendas. They debated whether the new republic would be wise to forgo the type of state-funded church that they knew to be the norm across Europe. In the end, religious liberty prevailed. Freedom of religion for every American became part of the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights. Americans would forevermore have a right to seek God on their own terms.

In the absence of a state church, the United States developed a brisk religious marketplace. By 1833, every state had stopped funding churches. Without an inflow of government dollars, congregations were forced to rely on voluntary donations to keep their doors open. Competition for followers heated up. In some areas, especially less-settled ones, Methodists and Baptists aggressively maneuvered to attract new members. They routinely measured ministerial success in terms of the number of people baptized and sanctified each week. Members broke off to form new churches or to join new movements, such as Joseph Smith’s Latter-day Saint movement, which later became Mormonism. The seeds of the exorbitant religious mobility of the current age were arguably sown in the age of the horse and buggy.