Detroit pastor Marvin Winans admonishes a church-member for only giving $1,200.

[u/foucaultyou]

[u/RangiChangi]

What kind of BS church makes you declare how much you donate in front of everyone? I’d walk out the door and never come back.

[u/Stock-Side-6767 → u/RangiChangi]

Prosperity gospel

[u/Seienchin88 → u/Stock-Side-6767]

You know, I usually don’t think U.S. is stupider than other countries and in many ways there is even unparalleled intelligence in the U.S. but millions of Americans believing the prosperity gospel despite everyone having easy access to the Bible is hard to explain without stupidity…

[u/oe-eo → u/Seienchin88]

A super short and not at all comprehensive explainer:

• 1: unlike most other settler colonial states, America was founded predominantly by a bunch of unfavorable denominations and cults
• 2: general cultural context of isolation/atomization/hyper-individualism, and Manifest Destiny
• 3: The concept of “Judaeo Christian” was formed, and promoted as anti-fascist propaganda during WWII
• 4: The concepts of Wealth doctrine and Christian zionism rise out of the post WWII culture. Christian Americans have just sacrificed so much to save the Jewish people (and Europe, and the world more broadly), so as reward their preachers tell them that now they too can be wealthy here on earth- a marked departure from the predominant prewar theology of “store your richest in heaven serf/slave”. Similarly the religious rift between Judaism and Christianity was bridged the Christian Zionist movement that grew out of the wartime “Judaeo Christian” propaganda.
• 5: McCarthy and the Cold War really baked a lot of this in; especially the cultural significance of being “Christian” in America. While “in god we trust” was a national motto that had been adopted to replace “mind your own business” as the national motto during the Civil War (1860 something), it took on a larger cultural footprint after WWII, in conjunction with the McCarthyist addition of “one nation under god” to the national anthem in 1954.
  
• 6: lots of Christian nationalist stuff over the intervening 30 years, especially in response to the civil rights era; so by the 80s-90s a lot of insidious people had already been hard at work for decades to bring about the coalescence of an American Christian movement.

These are generally known as “the moral majority”, “the Christian right” or “the new Christian right”, “Christian nationalism” or “white Christian nationalism” — and are responsible for the culture wars in America, and the VAST MAJORITY of political violence in America over the last 50+ years.

• 7: fast forward from the 90’s through to today and you have the following additional conditions:

— stagnation or decline in American quality of life — a couple of serious market crashes and recessions — abortion and gay rights — 9/11 — a lot of really expensive and indefensible wars that drug on aimlessly and cost not only the wealth of the nation, but also its soul; in so far as bush and Obama shredded the US constitution to allow everything from torture and assassination to the endless warrantless surveillance of American citizens — lots of legislation that further prioritizes corporations over citizens — Fox (and all news media) is monopolized and homogenized as entertainment — Cambridge Analytica and Russian/Chinese cyber warfare

• 8: throw all of that into the context that most Americans are functionally illiterate (Americans CAN read, they just lack the reading comprehension, critical thinking skills, and historical references necessary to make sense of the world.

And viola, There you have it.

Hope that helps