Did Christianity Cause the Economic Crisis?
By pushing the parishioners to get bigger loans and get into bigger houses? Hanna Rosin at The Atlantic, has a very interesting piece on the how pastors are one of the many negative influences on people to place them in homes that are well beyond their means. Not to say there weren’t other causes, but churches have a lot of power and sway in their communities.
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!”
Yes, of course, god will take care of you! Especially after you’ve been foreclosed on, are in debt due to all those medical bills, and living in with relatives in a one-bedroom apartment.
Read the rest of The Atlantic’s “Did Christianity Cause the Crash?”
Related posts:
Sounds like a winner to me. My church experiences include vivid memories of numerous pastors solemnly preaching that if you tithe, that money will somehow return to you tenfold. That the best way to spend your money is to give it away blindly, with no expectation of recouping. But the key, they would always say, is to give it away totally on faith. Never mind the math, no-no-no! If you pay too much attention to the numbers, it means you're not "putting it into God's hands!" And remember the "widow's mite" story in the gospels of Mark and Luke. Never mind that giving to the church could bankrupt you — that's GOOD! It means you're "blessed."
Is it any wonder that Christians would take the next logical step and assume that God will leapfrog them past the normal rules of simple arithmetic when purchasing a home with mortgage payments that outstrip your income?