# Godless prosperity theology isn’t secular or better than godded (Part 1 of 2) Date: 2025-06-23 Next Part: https://disrael.github.io/blogs/raw/godless-prosperity-theology-isn-t-secular-or-better-than-godded.part2.md --- --- ### Godless prosperity theology isn’t secular or better than godded From the beginning, both Christianity and neoliberalism have been a religious shell game of the rich and powerful to maintain wealth inequality. > Constantine I (born February 27, after 280 ce?, [Naissus](https://www.britannica.com/place/Nis), [Moesia](https://www.britannica.com/place/Moesia) [now Niš, Serbia] — died May 22, 337, Ancyrona, near [Nicomedia](https://www.britannica.com/place/Izmit), [Bithynia](https://www.britannica.com/place/Bithynia) [now İzmit, Turkey]) was the first [Roman](https://www.britannica.com/place/ancient-Rome) emperor to profess [Christianity](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Christianity). He not only initiated the evolution of the empire into a Christian state but also provided the impulse for a distinctively Christian [culture](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/culture) that prepared the way for the growth of [Byzantine](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Byzantine) and Western [medieval](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/medieval) culture. But now the [important part](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Constantine-I-Roman-emperor): > Throughout his life, Constantine ascribed his success to his conversion to Christianity and the support of the Christian God. The [triumphal arch](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Arch-of-Constantine) erected in his honour at Rome after the defeat of Maxentius ascribed the victory to the “inspiration of the Divinity” as well as to Constantine’s own genius. So Christianity became accepted and popular because of Constantine’s prosperity theology. Constantine’s mantle of divine prosperity was then assumed by an unbroken chain of royalty and then Protestant work ethic businessmen. *Neoliberalism’s Demons: on the Political Theology of Late Capital* describes how neoliberalism is also a religious mechanism for justifying short term prosperity for “good” people: > Overall, increasing inequality appears to be the most consistent outcome of neoliberalism. Tax cuts allow the wealthy to amass greater fortunes, while contributing to inequality in less direct ways as well. For instance, when the top tax rate was 90 percent or more, as it was for most of the postwar era in the United States, there was little benefit to increasing an individual’s pay above that threshold, given that the vast majority of the added salary would go toward taxes — better to reinvest that money in the company and its workers. Similarly, high taxes on capital gains virtually mandate a longer-term perspective on investment, since cashing in too quickly would result in losing a greater portion of the profits to taxation. By contrast, in a low-tax regime both management and shareholders (who are often the same individuals, because of stock-based compensation of executives) are emboldened to extract as much short-term profit out of a company as possible, at the expense of workers as well as the firm’s long-term prospects. Similarly, privatization provides opportunities for individuals and firms to extract profit out of essential public services, while free trade has functioned to increase corporate profitability by allowing firms to seek out the cheapest possible labor force. However the trick of neoliberalist legitimizing wealth inequality with theocracy is more subtle. First both Christianity and neoliberalism preach “freedom” in god or the market respectively. For neoliberalism, which in America incarcerates an insane number of people, freedom is an odd brag. It’s the same for Christianity though just that the incarceration happens after death. Freedom in Christ, according to the Bible, means being liberated from the enslaving power of sin and its consequences, and instead, living in a relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ. But the only sin that matters is not having faith in Jesus Christ — so Christian freedom is completely circular. Similarly market freedom liberates one from the enslaving power of government interference. However, a strong government, with high incarceration, police states, wars, and spy technology, is required to create and maintain private markets and the wealth inequality they cause. Not to mention fantastically enormous, fascist corporate empires. So again the “freedom” disappears in a strange circle. Since, by itself, the freedom tautology is a weak pillar of legitimacy; both Christianity and neoliberalism resort to defeating demons. Again from *Neoliberalism’s Demons*: > In short, the welfare queen exercises a near-demonic power over American society, far out of proportion to what the poverty of actual welfare recipients would lead us to expect. For the neoliberal, I work and lead a “good” life — how dare others try to get what I have without working as hard? For the Christian, having devoted himself to God, how dare those with no devotion achieve eternal rewards? For both the neoliberal and the Christian there are billions that have not had an opportunity to be blessed by the market or God respectively and they will have to go to poverty / jail or hell respectively. It doesn’t matter that they are innocent, but we should speed our outreach to them with war and other forms of coercion. The welfare queen neoliberal demon has many forms — immigrant, DEI hires, people whose work can be automated, the less educated, etc. For Christianity many of the demons are people outside of Christian gender roles, like women shirking their pure baby raising machine responsibility. ![Image](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/godless-prosperity-theology-isn-t-secular-or-better-than-godded-dbd9e7b280.png) Neoliberals and Christians have religions with abundant overlap that can feed off of each other: > This alliance is not without conflict — for instance, over gay marriage, which neoliberals tend to support and neoconservatives to abhor — but overall it has delivered nearly four decades of remarkably consistent bipartisan social policy. What Cooper does not mention is the extent to which the neoconservatives par excellence, the religious right, have conformed increasingly to neoliberal culture, with most groups lying somewhere along the spectrum between the corporate slickness of the evangelical megachurch and the outright worship of wealth that characterizes the prosperity gospel. Demonization and glory and aren’t just the neoliberal playbook; they are God’s playbook: > To “demonize” is to set someone up to fall, providing them with just the barest sliver of agency necessary to render them blameworthy. This is how the theological tradition envisions the process by which God produces demons, a strategy that he then repeats in order to entrap his human subjects into a debt of sin — all for his greater glory. So trans women can be demonized and defeated with glory with the same religious fervor with which neoliberals attack socialists. A socialist stifles individual initiative, reduces efficiency, and causes authoritarianism. Whether socialism actually has those effects is just as irrelevant as whether or not schools assign students new genders. > And it *[neoliberalism]* is above all a remarkably cohesive moral order, deploying the same logic of constrained agency (demonization), competition (in which there must be both winners and losers), and conformity (“best practices”) at every level: from the individual to the household to the racial grouping to the region to the country to the world. The problem that both godless and godded prosperity theology face in maintaining social order is wealth inequality. Demonization and glory only work so long as the greater part of a society is “saved”. ![Image](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/godless-prosperity-theology-isn-t-secular-or-better-than-godded-39ccf0ba52.jpg) --- **[Continue reading Part 2 of 2](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/raw/godless-prosperity-theology-isn-t-secular-or-better-than-godded.part2.md)**