The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream by Chris Lehmann
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Religionising Society

Like Harold Bloom (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and Terry Eagleton (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), Chris Lehmann identifies Gnosticism as the central belief of Americans, not just in terms of the theological rationalisations provided by the growing number of proponents of the uniquely American 'Prosperity Gospel', but also in terms adopted from this theology by the secular culture. It is this continuing path from religion to culture rather than any cultural influence on religion that Lehmann explores.

Lehmann's general thesis is that the religion of America is the abiding source of an evolving secular culture, it's elan vital. It is a mistake to believe, according to Lehmann, that religion has been progressively secularised since the 18th century. Rather, it is American culture that has been constantly shaped by the developments in American Christianity from Calvinist Puritanism, to Arminian Methodism, Emersonian Transcendentalism, Holistic Pentacostalism, Mormonism and finally today's evangelical mega-churches that preach the doctrine of holy wealth.

This evolution is (somewhat paradoxically) one of the increasing sanctification of the material world. The apparent contradiction between the Gnostic belief in the inherent evil of the created world and the striving to get ahead within it, is resolved by the American ethos of continuous self-recreation, itself an evolutionary process of incorporating more and more of the world into the boundaries of the self.

The world, as it were, becomes better the more it is subject to and the result of an individual will. Wealth becomes not just a Puritan sign of divine favour; it is reward expected for an implacable will. Wealth then becomes Mammon baptised and spiritualised. It doesn't simply change the way we live, it changes our being.

Money, in short, is grace. One empirical verification of this thesis is Donald Trump's otherwise unaccountable success among evangelicals. He is patently a man of grace.

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