Content warning: anti-Black racism, genocide
Introduction
One of my earliest memories of Sunday school is sitting on the carpet, drawing, and listening to Bible stories. I remember how the sun shone through the church’s window, almost as bright as what I imagined an angel’s halo to look like. My time at Sunday school is a period I look back at fondly.
The older I got, the more uncertain I felt about my relationship with God. I envied those who believed in God with certainty and had religion as a robust support system. I have always had this nagging feeling of shame that if I attended church more regularly, maybe I would have confidence that God exists.
Through life’s challenges, I have become agnostic. The mere fact that such unfairness exists in this world was enough for me to lose my faith completely. I have too many questions about the world to confidently believe in a God. Philosophically in some Christian spaces, it is as though those with power are chosen or favored by God. Therefore, why would protecting those with money and power be an exception to this rule?
In this essay, I will explore the problem I have with this theological mindset towards the rich and “well-off” using contemporary research around wealth inequality, the prevalence of prosperity gospel in religious practice, and exploring my own life experiences, which shape my perspective on this topic. This essay will first address my experiences and why I have felt neglected by God.
My story
Every working-class kid has a distinctive moment where they realize how much poorer they are compared to other children. Growing up some of my earliest memories are realizing the difference between me and my peers.
My mum, my older sister, and I barely went on holiday growing up. Birthday celebrations which involved inviting people over were never a thing, and if anything in the house broke down or needed repair, it was always a huge source of anxiety due to the potential cost.
I also remember how stressed I felt when I had to ask my mum for money for school trips. One time, I had a school trip to Belgium in year 10. I remember being extremely nervous about whether she would be able to pay the deposit on time. Being from a non-wealthy family, I have always felt like I was thirty steps behind everyone else. Everything, even considered simple for others was always so much harder for me.
When I experienced bullying as a teenager, I kept it to myself for years because I knew how much my mum was dealing with. Even as a child, I knew that being a single mother and having to juggle work and children was not straightforward. Looking back, I normalized the name-calling and physical abuse I experienced. I felt like I was in a Hollywood teen film. There were the jocks and then, at the bottom of the food chain, the losers. They were cool, and I was not. It felt like it was just a part of life because I was poor and Black.
My transition from young adult to adulthood was difficult, to say the least. I often had days upon days of difficulty. Feeling alone, like a fish out of water in a White middle-class workplace, was soul-crushing. Once again, there was no God to intervene and help me survive these experiences. As a young Black person, unconfident but eager to do well, I was not supported or protected. For some time now, I have felt perpetually unlucky. I know I have a portion of the blame for not being able to handle conflict and advocate for myself, a pattern I knew all too well. But that does not make me feel any less let down by God or whatever higher power in the universe.
A lot of my early experiences of life involved feeling outcasted. For this reason, it is to me quite ironic that the church as an institution, particularly for the poor, the racialized, women and other gender marginalized folks and queer folk, is a place of fear, bullying, and prejudice. It is hard not to feel overlooked and neglected by God when the marginalized continue to be persecuted. I always felt like the church should be a sanctuary for those rejected by society, but it is often, for many, a sword used to strike us down.
Tackling wealth inequality
As the United Kingdom enters a recession again, both wealth and income differences risk becoming more apparent (Frost, 2023, para 14-17). The gap between the rich and the poor in the UK is a trend exacerbated in part due to the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis that followed (Abdulla and Bruce, 2024, para 1-19). The Institute for Government defines the cost-of-living crisis as the “fall in ‘real’ disposable incomes (that is, adjusted for inflation and after taxes and benefits) that the UK has experienced since late 2021” (Hourston, 2022, para 1).
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his wife are worth £730 million, as reported by the Sunday Times Rich List in 2022 (The Sunday Times, 2023, para 1-3). Before he became King, King Charles was worth £350 million, as reported by The Guardian, which has since grown significantly due to his inheritance from the late Queen Elizabeth II to at least 500 million (Partridge, 2022, para 14-24; Sharma, 2022, para 1-5; Tognini, 2023, para 1-4). Divine right refers to the belief that God gave a royal family the right to rule, but what in the divine realm is given to ordinary folk who were not fed with a diamond spoon like King Charles (Campbell, 2014, para 1; Taaffe-Maguire, 2024, para 1-11)?
This then brings up the central question of this essay: If God favors those with money, does this mean that the working class, those who are both employed and unemployed, and those in precarious work situations or at an economic disadvantage are cursed or, at the very least, intentionally ignored by God?
The current wealth disparities that exist globally that relate to identity-related factors also demand an answer to this question. Placing a magnifying glass on race, according to a study in the Runnymede Trust, UK White British households have the highest wealth at £282,000, followed by Indian groups at £266,000 (Khan, 2020:12). Pakistani households have less than half the wealth of White British households at £127,000, Black Caribbean households have £89,000 and Black African and Bangladeshi households have even less at £30,000 (Khan, 2020:12). One’s identity has the potential to influence their relationship to money, which ultimately reflects whose labor is valued and generational inequalities which have been passed down. If we subscribe to the mindset that money is a blessing to those God favors, we are forced to confront the reality of the wealthy White 1% and the (non-White) global majority of working-class people. God is then an entity that favors people based on their identities, including in this context, skin color.
A recent report by the Personal Finance Research Centre at the University of Bristol Research Institute for Disabled Consumers explores the role that disability plays in one’s economic situation, with “one-in-three disabled people […] struggling to make ends meet” (Abrdn Financial Fairness Trust, 2023, para 1). A Women’s Budget Group report found that “men have on average £92,762 more in total wealth than women, a gap of 35%.” (Women’s Budget Group, 2023:2). In contrast, UK research on the link between gender identity, sexuality and wealth is limited. Nevertheless, it is clear that cisheteronormativity can inform the material disadvantages faced by those within the LGBTQIA+ community, with gay men being more likely to face homelessness compared to their straight male counterparts (Uhrig, 2015:59 – 61). We cannot avoid the ignorance involved in believing that the wealthy are God’s chosen people.
Prosperity gospel and its flaws
Founded in 2012, Spac Nation was a Christian cult that marketed itself as a safe space for young people, particularly ex-gang members who desired to turn over a new leaf (White, 2022, para 1-3; GOV.UK, 2022, para 1-5). The face of the organization, Pastor Tobi, is known for his high-class lifestyle, constantly showing off his designer clothing and pricey purchases on social media (Instagram, 2014). Though SPAC Nation’s current existence is unclear, and Tobi stepped down from the church in 2020, in its prime, the luxury and designer lifestyle associated with SPAC allowed them to recruit new members (Wait, 2022, para 1-10; Harrison, 2023, para 1-3).
The church was predominantly made up of young Black people in London searching for community. Their vulnerability was exploited, which is evident in accusations of individuals pressuring their members to take out loans to donate to the church (Bryant, 2019, para 1-12). SPAC Nation reflects a practice of Christianity known as the prosperity gospel. Lausanne Theology Working Group defines prosperity gospel as “the teaching that believers have a right to blessings of health and wealth and that they can obtain these blessings through positive confessions of faith and the ‘sowing of seeds’ through faithful payments of tithes and offerings” (Lausanne Theology Working Group, 2010, para 1). It is a conservative movement most often linked to Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, and the practice of Christianity, which believes difficulty can be overcome through religious commitment (Harvard Divinity School, n.d, para 1).
In an interview with presenter Zeze Mills in 2020, Pastor Tobi claimed Black people do not read and have no community, essentially framing Black people as unintelligent, bitter, and jealous of his success (TREND CENTRL, 2020). By this logic, Black people’s inherent inferiority is reinforced rather than challenged in the spiritual realm. Prosperity gospel implies it is Black people’s fault due to our lack of commitment to God and our inability to pray away our suffering and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. An argument historically used to hold a smokescreen over the difficulties Black people all over the world face.
Across the pond in Houston, Texas, Joel Osteen, a megachurch pastor, is another preacher of the prosperity gospel at his Lakewood Church (Phillip Luke Sinitiere, 2015: 60–61). The sixty-one-year-old has a net worth of $100 million (Thomas, 2022, para 6). During the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, Osteen defended not opening his church to those needing shelter due to severe flooding (Rosenblatt, 2017, para 1-12). There is an irony in figures like Osteen preaching that prayer and donating to his church will lead to increased economic prosperity when this is primarily beneficial for his own lifestyle. People without the means to recover from a natural disaster are then “the undesirables” and not worthy of help and support due to their lack of prosperity. However, this behavior contradicts scripture and some of the core values I believe should be at the center of Christianity.
A perfect example of this is within the Old Testament:
“Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. ‘It is written,’ he said to them, ‘‘My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers” (The Holy Bible: Matthew. 21:12-13). In summary, Jesus was furious and confronted the money-chargers who were scamming and making money from patrons in a holy place (Jesus-story, n.d, para 1-12). This scripture can be used to illustrate further why the ruthless pursuit of individual economic success and prosperity with no consideration for others is behavior to be looked down upon.
Christian billionaires are then an inherent contradiction. Despite this, the image of wealth is White, which are both terms perceived as synonymous with positive descriptors like “good,” “smart,” and “hardworking.” These groups are undoubtedly treated as more human and with more respect. However, if we look closely at the history of Whiteness and Christianity, concepts like manifest destiny illustrate how European colonialism was justified through belief systems (Pratt, 1927:795).
European colonialism is a process that involves the violent acquisition and exploitation of the people and lands of countries, later known as territories of its empire. Belgium’s King Leopold II, from 1805 to 1908, extracted the natural resources of Congo, then known as the Congo Free State (Antislavery Usable Past, n.d., para 1; Johnson, 2014: 1-4). The Force Publique, known as the Belgian king’s private army, would force the Congolese into reaching rubber quotas through village burning, rape, mutilation, starvation, and murder (Antislavery Usable Past, n.d, para 1; Johnson, 2014:1-4). The Congo Free State’s population was devastated, falling from “20 million to 10 million” (Johnson, 2014:4).
Like their White counterparts, White Belgians benefited from the violence of their predecessors. Today, the world continues to benefit from the forced labor and exploitation of Congolese people and resources, which fuels the success of conglomerates dominating the phone industry, including the likes of Samsung, Google, Dell, Microsoft, and Apple (Niarchos, 2021, para 1 -12; Toulemonde, 2021, para 1 -3; Kelly, 2019, para 1-8). The treatment of Black people as slaves continues.
In the context of God, should we see those who benefit or enact such violence as part of the “civilizing project” as rewarded and “blessed”? After all, it was Western Christianity that was used to argue it was the divine right of Europeans to rape and pillage the earth in the 1800s. No one is more human than the other; however, an alleged lack of humanity and morality plays a huge role in who is statistically harmed and discriminated against. In my mind, such history, among other things, illustrates why we should not see the wealthy as blessed by God.
Conclusion
All systems impact every inch of society, including shaping how we practice our faiths. This is not an issue exclusive to Christianity or religion per se. However, it is clear how much money and the pursuit of it are a core element of modern life. Figures like Joel Osteen and Pastor Tobi illustrate that religion can be used to dehumanize the poor and the persecuted further. There is then, without a doubt, a case to be made around whether or not social justice should be more present within the Church. It is also clear that in a perfect world, money shouldn’t be our ethos in how we live our lives, regardless of whether we are believers or non-believers.