I can't get enough of heavy metal guitarist Andre Antunes' work, and he's done it again, with this brilliant video featuring his guitar work accompanying the preaching of Terri Pearsons. Pearson is the daughter of prosperity gospel-loving televangelist pastor Kenneth Copeland, who made headlines for justifying his need for private jets—which he bought with money donated by his congregation—by insisting, "You can't. — Read the rest
The fact that Trumped hired his spiritual advisor Paula White to come to work for him tells you everything you need to know about her. This video will add no new information. It's for entertainment purposes only. Skip to :47 if you want to see her speaking in High Valyrian. — Read the rest
The "prosperity gospel" (previously) is a religious doctrine that encourages poor people to send specific amounts of cash (usually in the hundreds of dollars) to charismatic preachers, an act the preachers characterizes as "seed giving" — and the preachers promise that God will reward these gifts by making the givers rich.
That weird meeting between presidential candidate Donald Trump and a number of so-called Prosperity Gospel evangelists sounds weirder the more we learn about who was there, and what they actually say they believe.
The "protestant work ethic" is invoked for any number of political reasons – foreign policy and developmental aid, the spiritual justification for reducing one's life to capitalist time, and as a way to understand the relationship between religion and profit.
A city upon a hill (already inhabited by people with millennial ties to the land and labored by kidnapped indigenous people from a country called Africa) and the divine chosen people are origin stories for the prosperity gospel. — Read the rest
Self-identified people of God, self-proclaimed mystics, and conspiracy theorists have been hyping and hawking Christian Science and snake oil spirituality with healing properties since at least the early part of the 20th century. The forgeries of ideas that are Christian exceptionalism and the arrogant sociopathic notion of a "chosen people" finding and populating a "city on a hill," a hill already inhabited by people, built with the labor of indentured and enslaved people, are myths that people fight wars over. — Read the rest
What is the function of the myth of separation of church and state? What is the relationship between capitalism and Christianity? What is the relationship between the Puritan view of the chosen, "elected" few that could be saved and the prosperity gospel or entrepreneurial Protestantism? — Read the rest
In 2014, robbers apparently stole more than $600,000 from a safe at Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas. Who would have the gall to do such a thing? Well, last month, a plumber was doing work on the megachurch's bathroom and found a void behind the toilet. — Read the rest
At at least 20 worshippers were killed in a stampede at a prosperity gospel church service in Tanzania on Sunday when the pastor told the thousands in attendance to come forward to get anointed with blessed miracle oil that solves all problems, reports The Telegraph. — Read the rest
Donald Trump's "prosperity gospel" spiritual advisor Paula White, a pastor who is reported to reside in an 8,000 square foot house and travel on a $2.6 million private jet, is commanding her congregation to cough up their January salaries to her or else God is seriously going to punish them so hard.
Writing in the Baptist News, Miguel De La Torre — a progressive professor at Denver's Iliff School of Theology — denounces evangelicals who "forgive" Trump for his myriad sins and support child-molesters like Roy Moore, saying that they embrace a faith that "fuses and confuses white supremacy with salvation."
