From ancient times, this dangerous attraction has been known to lead to despotic government. John Adams worried it would destroy democracy.
This is Part 6 of our journey in the series, “Democracy in Crisis: We’ve Been Headed Here for Decades.” A coming overthrow was predictable at least thirty years ago, unless we instituted a major course change. How could we have seen this and how can we save democracy?
To help understand this and save democracy, we must explore this dangerous attraction that John Adams feared and how it relates to society, Christianity, and Christian nationalism.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | …
Some have warned that a dangerous attraction has been with us since ancient times, including second U.S. President John Adams. What is this dangerous magnetism? Sympathy with the wealthy and an obsession with wealth as an indicator of worth, superseding one’s character. Luke Mayville, author and lecturer of political philosophy at Boise State University’s Honors College, writes in his 2016 book John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy:
John Adams thought that widespread sympathy for the rich could be a potent source of power for social and economic elites. If this strikes readers as an odd proposition, it is perhaps because sympathy is a concept more often associated with the plight of the poor and downtrodden than with the predicament of the rich and distinguished. Likewise, insofar as sympathy is associated with political power, it is more easily understood as empowering the causes of the disadvantaged and marginalized.
Adams was absolutely right: sympathy for the rich is a very potent source of their power. Mayville continues,
Yet, if sympathy is more easily understood as a sentiment working to empower efforts on behalf of the downtrodden, Scottish historians and moralists of the eighteenth century repeatedly described the same sentiment as a source of power for the rich and distinguished.
Indeed, and this source of power — created by public sentiment — keeps the oligarchs in charge. Oligarchy is a form of authoritarianism, and it’s the rule by the selfish, greedy, corrupt few — not just the rich — who control or influence others. If people want a democracy, they must see the oligarchs for what they are and understand the dangers of looking at wealth, rather than character, as a sense of worth.
The Dangerous Tendency of Commercial Societies
Like John Adams, Adam Ferguson (1723-1816), Scottish historian and moral philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment, saw the dangers of this admiration and sympathy. Mayville says (bolding my emphasis), “Ferguson highlighted the tendency among the people in commercial societies to bestow admiration and influence on fortune rather than character.”
In fact, we have but to look at a dangerous, common belief among the oligarchs that character doesn’t matter. For example, in an interview with John Weiner, The New Yorker’s Jane Meyer, investigative journalist and author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, talks about Robert Mercer, a co-CEO of a lucrative hedge fund. Meyer says of Mercer:
He has, according to his colleagues, a theory of humans which is that they have no inherent value. That a human being is only worth as much as they can earn. He argues that he earns thousands of times more than a school teacher, which makes him that much more valuable than school teachers. And people on welfare, he suggests, have no value. They have negative value. He argues, though, that cats have value—because watching them provides pleasure to people.
Mercer’s belief that he’s superior to the rest of us is shared by others, such as Jeff Bezos. In fact, Tim Libretti, professor of U.S. literature and culture at a state university in Chicago, talks about this in his article “Opinion: Why Defending Democracy Means Taking on ‘Amazons’ of America.” Libretti writes,
Rooted in Jeff Bezos’ belief that people are inherently lazy, Amazon treats workers as disposable, churning through workers precisely because it does not want a stable, long-term workforce that might become “disgruntled” over time. While Bezos believes that people over time will try to figure out how to exert as little energy as possible in doing their jobs, which is why Amazon has such constant turnover in its workforce, it’s hard to think he believes this about himself.
People like Bezos, meaning many of the wealthiest among us, simply believe they are different from and superior to others. It’s a version of supremacist thought we are often pretty quiet about in American [sic].
Indeed, it’s essential to see that America has a caste system where wealth, gender, skin color, etc. are intertwined and deemed more important than character in determining worth. Until we understand and confront the oligarchs and how they use gender, skin color, religion, etc. as tools to maintain power, we are going to be hard-pressed to save democracy for long.
Our struggle is democracy vs. oligarchy.
Since Ancient Times: “Admiration of Riches Leads to Despotical Government”
This admiration and sympathy of wealth didn’t just exist since Adams and Ferguson’s time. In his 1767 book titled, “An essay on the history of civil society,” Ferguson referenced a quote by Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus (c. AD 56 – c. 120), who was a Roman historian and politician. Modern scholars widely regard Tacitus as one of the greatest Roman historians. Therefore, we should take this as a profound warning, along with the rest of what Ferguson says, which sums up so much of our current situation (bolding my own):
[W]hen wealth is accumulated only in the hands of the miser, and runs to waste from those of the prodigal; when heirs of family find themselves straitened and poor, in the midst of affluence; when the cravings of luxury silence even the voice of party and faction; when the hopes of meriting the rewards of compliance, compliance, or the fear of losing what is held at discretion, keep men in the state of suspense and anxiety; when fortune, in short, instead of being considered as the instrument of a vigorous spirit, becomes the idol of a covetous or a profuse, of a rapacious or a timorous mind; the foundation on which freedom was built, may serve to support a tyranny; and what, in one age, raised the pretensions, and fostered the confidence of the subject, may, in another, incline him to servility, and furnish the price to be paid for his prostitutions. Even those who, in a vigorous age, gave the example of wealth, in the hands of the people, becoming an occasion of freedom, may, in times of degeneracy, verify likewise the maxim of Tacitus, That the admiration of riches leads to despotical government.
This illustrates so well the age in which we find ourselves now: many in government and elsewhere are “prostituting” themselves for wealth and power. Please note the title of this part of Ferguson’s book is, “Of Corruption, as it tends to Political Slavery.” Political slavery may not just be figurative slavery. It can include the turn toward chattel slavery. It would be a mistake for While folks to believe they would be immune from chattel slavery. The Nazis enslaved White people of many types, not just Jewish folks, whom the Nazis wanted out of the way, including political enemies.
Philanthropy of the Wealthy Tends to Be Self-Serving & a Source of Tax Evasion
Our government is run by corporate misers, who are keeping the money and power mostly for themselves while doling some out to their supporters. One might counter that billionaires, like the Koch brothers, are philanthropists. However, their donations are mostly self-serving. As this Greenpeace article “To Charles Koch, Universities Are Propaganda Machines” notes, Koch philanthropy began as tax evasion, which was previously reported on by Jane Mayer in her book Dark Money. In fact, much of oligarchic philanthropy, including many religious non-profits, are set up purely to evade taxes.
Oligarchs Will Always Plot to Take Control
This oligarchic behavior isn’t surprising; in fact, John Adams, late in life, wrote about men like Koch. Quoting once again Luke Mayville’s book on John Adams,
Adams insisted that aristocrats had not disappeared from modern republics. They continued to be, as they always had been, “the most difficult animals to manage of any thing in the whole theory and practice of government.” Despite the abolition of formal titles of nobility, there remained a class of men in America and in all republics who “will not suffer themselves to be governed,” men who “not only exert all their own subtlety, industry, and courage, but they employ the commonalty to knock to pieces every plan and model that the most honest architects in legislation can invent to them within bounds.”
We can look at the patterns of history to see this is true. It’s part of the nature of power and oligarchy, Part 2 of this series.
The Trend of All Government Types
In fact, it’s worth noting again that others, like Samuel Johnson, an English essayist and moralist, wrote about this nature of power on April 10, 1753:
Power is always gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent; it still contracts to a smaller number, till in time it centers in a single person.
Thus, all the forms of governments instituted among mankind, perpetually tend towards monarchy; and power, however diffused through the whole community, is by negligence or corruption, commotion or distress, reposed at last in the chief magistrate.
Johnson laid out the stages of power consolidation that we are following even today:
- Democracy – power distributed among the people
- Oligarchy – power concentrated in the hands of a few selfish, greedy, and corrupt individuals, not just the rich, who control or influence the many
- Autocracy – rule by a single person
Trump is a symptom of power consolidation. If we don’t create massive reforms and take mass action, like protests against the oligarchy, Trump or someone worse will rule as an autocrat.
Democracy Requires Counterbalancing Oligarchic Power
Mayville says Adams saw these men as oligarchs and adds (bolding my emphasis), “Insofar as republican governments were successful, their success was due in part to institutions and practices that successfully managed or counterbalanced oligarchic power.” Counterbalancing oligarchic power is exactly how the New Deal saved democracy during the Great Depression from fascism and communism. We must achieve this counterbalance again. It’s also known as countervailing (offsetting) power.
Oligarchs Want You to See Their Wealth & Influence as a Sense of Worth, So You Overlook Their Predatory Nature
John Adams, was, as Mayville says, “a careful student of the Scottish Enlightenment. More than any other Founding Era American, he engaged with the long tradition of thought that emphasized the psychological bases of social and political power.” He understood history and the ramifications of Americans’ obsession with wealth and its danger to democracy in his own time. It wasn’t just that wealth brings political influence but also that people sympathize and admire the wealthy, which is why the long-running TV show Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous (1984-1995) was so successful. And it helped create a new era of obsession with the wealthy and famous.
Shows like this and other media attention empower the rich, helping to keep them in control. They want us to be mesmerized while they steal our power. Behind the seens, they are the ones abusing their power, spending millions to buy political power and politicians, curtailing our rights, and suppressing our voices.
Case in point, look at all the people voting for billionaires Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer under an assumption that these two men are so rich, they would make good presidents, or at least good opponents for Trump. Bloomberg bought his way into the primary, unlike what regular folks are able to do. If it weren’t for Bloomberg’s predatory nature being exposed, we may have had two oligarch billionaires running in the general 2020 election — a death knell to democracy.
Billionaires and mega-millionaires do not represent democracy. Their money buys political power, just as we saw in the 2020 elections. Since power is a zero-sum game, when they have more power, everyone else has less. That is power stolen from the American people and democracy. (Weak democracies lead to overthrows.) Few can make a billion dollars without oppressing the masses, especially the most vulnerable people in a nation. The American people need to recognize unfair business practices at work and this predatory nature of oligarchs.
What does all of this have to do with corrupting Christianity and the rising power of Christian nationalists?
The Admiration of Wealth & the “Prosperity Gospel”
The “prosperity gospel” is a belief among some Christians, that God desires to grant his “chosen” people abundant health and wealth. In the past, the prosperity gospel was thought of as a Protestant belief. However, it’s become popular among some groups of Catholics. The Catholic Herald article “How Catholics are falling for the Prosperity Gospel” says,
It teaches that precariousness is a curse, and that sickness and scarcity can be overcome if one is willing to tithe generously and faithfully attend services where, through the person of the priest, the Holy Spirit manifests itself, offering miracles ranging from healing to abundant wealth.
Overshadowing the Gospel of Christ?
The article describes an added part of the service in one congregation called “liturgy of money” where “lay people urge the congregation to make donations. The greater the gift, they say, the greater will be the divine reward.”
As a result, the article warns that this movement goes against “traditional Catholic theology,” which refers “to Christ’s teaching, in Matthew 6:24, that it is impossible to serve both God and money.”
Various priests in the article voiced their concerns, including Pope Francis:
[P]apal confidant Fr Antonio Spadaro SJ issued a similar warning in the Vatican-approved periodical La Civiltà Cattolica. Noting that the prosperity gospel had spread from its birthplace in the United States to Latin America, Africa and Asia, he said that “Pope Francis has often warned against the perils of this theology that can ‘overshadow the Gospel of Christ’.”
Lucrativeness for Preachers & Lack of Accountability
Preaching the prosperity gospel is lucrative for preachers. They certainly have much to gain. The Catholic Herald article talks about one pastor with more than two million Facebook followers; “In 2011, Forbes Magazine estimated his net worth at $30-50 million.”
Joyce Meyer is another one of these preachers. According to the Microsoft News site, in 2021 Meyer’s monthly salary is $114,444.44. She owns a $10-million private Gulfstream IV jet, a house valued at $20 million, and many other high-priced items. Yes, preaching the prosperity gospel has delivered her prosperity.
Personally, I know a woman, who had an eye-opening experience from the inside while working for Meyer’s ministries. The ministry automatically deducted a 10% tithe from her paycheck. Then, while working the phone lines, she got a call one day from a man who spent his last money on that call. He wanted the woman to pray with him, but the phone workers were told not to do this because they needed to move onto the next phone call. However, the woman couldn’t bear to do that to the man as he begged her to pray with him, which she did. After more incidents like that, the woman chose to leave the ministry.
In 2019, I spoke to an expert about far-right Christians. He didn’t want to be identified because he feared for his life. He talked about how evangelical churches are corrupting Christianity (emphasis is the expert’s):
From John Knox’s Calvinism, the message of the 2000’s evangelical churches had moved toward some new hybrid of what seems to me to be a Pauline heresy — a church without sin. It seems to me to be a docetist version of Jesus, whereby the incarnation and the passion recede in importance and only “confessing” and “witnessing” to a past autobiography are essential. At the acceptance of the Holy Spirit, the believer gets the New Man and righteousness follows from fellowship. In other words, the message became not, “Read the Bible,” but “Go to church. Go to church.”
The inherent temptations of personality exposed in the Second Great Awakening are on full display in Paula White (Trump’s spiritual advisor) prosperity gospel and the megachurch phenomenon. The church structures supposedly limit the dangers of wild rebellion (no), but they fund and insulate the top preachers and make the best facilities/entertainment most remunerative. This — flocks told that all they need to do is attend, preachers protected from any review, preachers funded by a network of touring, consolidation of “Christian” media — is how we can end up with both an evangelical movement and evangelical leaders telling voters that a man who says he has never asked God for forgiveness for anything, on TBN, can be the evangelical choice.
This structure promotes a lack of accountability and, therefore, ruthlessness among oligarchic preachers. They fall to the temptation of power, which Jesus resisted.
The History of the Prosperity Gospel
Can you guess when the modern prosperity gospel movement started? If you need a hint, what is the most likely period of American history that we’ve explored in this series where, like today, immense inequality reigned?
If you guessed the Gilded Age (c.1870-1896), you’re right.
In 1889, the oligarch Andrew Carnegie, one of the robber barons of the Gilded Age, wrote an essay titled “Wealth,” which was published by North American Review. He later published it as the chapter “The Gospel of Wealth” in a book titled, The Gospel of Wealth and Other Timely Essays. Adding “Gospel” says a lot about how wealth and religion where intertwining, supported by the oligarchs to get the public to accept obscene wealth disparities, monopolistic power of big businesses (the basis for fascism), and social conservatism, justifying them all through religion or religious terms. These oligarchs, who included corrupt preachers, helped to manipulate Christianity for their own purposes.
As a child, I was taught not to pray for material things, except in the case of survival. Otherwise, materialism could lead to the worship of money and worse. As 1 Timothy 6:10 (NIV) says, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”
When times are tough, people turn to various sources for hope and help. With immense misery and abject poverty, like in the Gilded Age and today, people are desperate to believe they can become prosperous. The problem isn’t the need to believe in a better life. It lies with those who are deceiving flocks and manipulating them to give what little they have. Oligarchs of various types will always be with us.
In 2013, Kate Bowler published her book, Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel. The Publishers Weekly describes it:
The idea that Christian believers are promised wealth and health by faith in God has existed in various permutations throughout American history. In this … historical account, Bowler, a professor of religion at Duke Divinity School, … introduces readers to major figures and developments since the late 19th century in the prosperity gospel movement. Her … narrative traces the entanglement of prosperity and the divine in New Thought thinkers, who believed in mind-power to transform heaven-sent blessings; the power of positive thinking in the postwar era, from Norman Vincent Peale to the televangelists of the 1980s; and the rise of the contemporary megachurch, which includes preachers like Joel Osteen, who argue that believers are created to excel. There are fascinating detours into Pentecostalism and the charismatic revival as well as examination of numerous odd and compelling religious figures... Bowler argues that the prosperity gospel has become a major theological, social, and political force in America. Refusing to condemn the prosperity gospel as merely a religious iteration of the American dream of individual upward mobility and accumulation, Bowler also explores how some groups, particularly African-American churches, transformed it for liberating ends.
Bowler is correct that the prosperity gospel has become a major theological, social, and political force in America. She says this “gospel” is based on “rugged individualism,” which means pull yourselves up by your bootstraps because there’s no safety net for the less faithful. This is the “survival of the fittest” mentality or “survival of the most faithful,” which isn’t surprising either. When oligarchs take over the government, like in the Gilded Age and now, this is what happens. And it isn’t just happening in America, either. It’s worldwide, especially in poor areas.
What Is a “Prosperity Doctrine”?
I also spoke to the expert on far-right Christians about the prosperity gospel. He said many far-right Christians ridicule this “gospel.” However, some of them (emphasis his own) “loudly proclaim their antipathy toward it while, at the same time, reading all scripture typologically and teaching students to do the same. They also preach very specific providence.” When taken all together, they “enable something akin to a prosperity doctrine beneath the surface of their preaching. While they decry the gaudy ‘God demands a Gulf Stream’ preachers, they make their appeal to salvation based on ‘If God is for me, who can be against me?’” This appeal promotes dangerous thinking, which history shows, leads to polarization and religious wars.
Reprobation & Social Darwinism
The expert continued, “In other words, their flocks are prepared for a prosperity gospel, and, worse, they’re prepared for something akin to the doctrine of reprobation. The poor deserve it.” Preachers instill a message that God blesses his people, alleviating sickness and poverty — viewed as curses on people who lack faith. Therefore, the flocks of these spiritual leaders believe that the poor and sick among them are poor and unfortunate sinners deserving of their afflictions. Moreover, some believe that these people are predestined to damnation! Thus, many have come to regard the poor and sick are akin to “parasites.” This type of thinking can be used to justify anything, giving believers, as they see it, a clear conscience that suffering is God’s will, including the miseries endured by victims of racism. This is another version of Social Darwinism — “survival of the ‘chosen’ and most faithful.”
The Death Cult & Christian Nationalism
Effectively, Christian nationalism creates a death cult where believers want people to die, as we witnessed during the pandemic. Many said God would protect those with faith, so no masks were needed. Is it any wonder that so many people cared so little about wearing masks or otherwise protecting themselves and others by preventing infections from COVID-19? There were plenty of oligarchs, preachers included, who supported death for the unfaithful, sick, weak, old, poor, immigrants, people of color, and Democrats. This anti-mask sentiment is also fueling insurrection sentiments.
Many of these Christians believe it’s the end times, and Christians have been preparing for this for hundreds of years, some ready for violence and war. Their efforts ramped up post-World War II and exponentially after 9/11. As the expert told me, Christian nationalists are the ideological counterparts to the Muslim nationalists of ISIS, imposing their fundamentalist version of righteousness on everyone else with the threat of death to those who do not meet their “ideal.”
American Society & the Prosperity Gospel
Regardless of whether one is Christian or not, the prosperity gospel of the “faithful” is affecting all Americans. This “gospel” is nationalized, perpetuating laissez-faire capitalism — a tenet of Libertarianism, a malignant ideology which is based on “rugged individualism” for the masses and lack of accountability of the oligarchs.
Because religion, economics, and political ideology are intertwined, together they are driving the government. When religion and the State merge, terrible things happen to a nation, which we are witnessing, such as the pandemic death cult and genocide.
Also, the expert I spoke to said, “[W]hen a [S]tate does adopt an official religion, very, very bad things happen to the religion.” Yes, we can see how Christianity is morphing from Jesus’s message of universal love and compassion to something very cruel. Religion has become a weapon of the State — just look at the Supreme Court allowing this monstrous abortion bounty-hunting law in Texas. Our Founders studied the history of Europe and its association with religion, realizing the terrible wars and death that occur when a State gives privilege to one religion over all the others.
Indeed, it’s important to understand how Christianity operated in the Confederacy with Christian nationalism tied to its identity. Today’s Christianity as practiced by today’s nationalists is basically the Christianity and ideology of the Confederacy on massive steroids.
Despite all this, Christianity itself is not the problem — religious bigotry has been undermining democracy from the beginning. The oligarchs have, and continue to manipulate religion to suit themselves, whether to increase their power and riches or to conquer America today, Germany in 1933, or the world.
How Can We Work to Save Democracy?
Looking at all of this holistically, by placing immense value on wealth (also race and gender) over character, American society, itself, has been headed toward an overthrow of democracy and governance by an autocrat.
We cannot solve problems without recognizing what the problems are. Therefore, we must realize that this misplaced value is part of the American caste system where rich, White men stand on the backs of everyone else, and Indigenous and Black people are on the bottom, the most oppressed from the weight of this immoral system.
Unite Against the Oligarchs
Many of us, without realizing it, are perpetuating a caste system, even if we aren’t intentional racists and misogynists. We do this by admiring and elevating the wealthy. Attention is power. And society hasn’t been alarmed enough and informed enough to unify the American people against the real source of our problems or to mount an effective opposition that would counterbalance the oligarchs through demanding accountability, taxing and regulating the wealthy, taking back stolen power from the oligarchs, and never giving up.
Turn the Women’s March on Oct. 2 into the March & “Women’s Day Off”
We must also stop supporting oligarch businesses and products, as best as possible. Marches, boycotts, and strikes (one day and longer) are necessary. There is a Women’s March across the nation on October 2 ahead of the Supreme Court reconvening on October 4.
We should take a page from the women in Iceland in 1975. “The Day Iceland's Women Went on Strike.” Since some thought the word “strike” was too confrontational, the day was renamed "Women's Day Off." Then, it got near-universal support. The article says of Iceland’s women,
[T]hey refused to work, cook and look after children for a day. It was a moment that changed the way women were seen in the country and helped put Iceland at the forefront of the fight for equality.
In America, women, who can, should take the day off, go to the march, and leave everything for the men to do.
For Democracy to Survive, There Must Be Accountability
The consequences of not unifying and acting to hold oligarchs accountable are devastating. The Huffington Post article “The Golden Age of White Collar Crime” details how “Elite lawbreaking is out of control.” It’s an existential threat to American society demonstrative of the moral bankruptcy of oligarchs at the highest levels. Like a metastasized cancer, moral rot (which includes corruption) pervades all aspects of a society and eats it alive, destroying democracy in its path and, therefore, people’s lives — especially of society’s most vulnerable. We need mass action for accountability by, once again, taking to the streets.
Coming Up…
In the next article, we will examine one of several groups in the Christian nationalism movement that has had a major influence on America today, including the group’s terrifying connections to Hitler.
Next article in series >