On Elite Criticism of the Prosperity Gospel

Part 1, On Listening to Kate Bowler

Over the summer, Jana, our boys and I got to hear Kate Bowler speak at the Chautauqua Institution. As expected, Kate was smart, winsome, and insightful. She is a fantastic thinker, public intellectual, and witness for the Christian faith given her visibility at the New York Times. 

If you know Bowler's work she has written extensively about the American Prosperity Gospel, and how her cancer diagnosis caused her to confront her own version of that gospel. One of Kate's big points in the talk we heard is how the pervasive faith of Americans, secular and religious, is characterized by what she calls "toxic positivity." According to Bowler, what drives this uniquely American faith is the belief in human perfectibility. This belief drives the American obsession with self-improvement. Just look, Kate argued, at all the self-help and self-improvement books that fill American bookstores and top the best-seller lists. 

Kate's big sermon is that this belief in perfectibility is "toxic" because human life is filled with failure, disappointment, and, well, cancer diagnoses. As the title of Bowler's memoir says, there is no cure for being human. We cannot, via mind hacks or technology, solve the pain and ambiguities of the human condition. We need to reject toxic positivity to embrace, in the words of Brené Brown, the gifts of imperfection.

To which I say, Amen.

I'm a psychologist, so one of the things I do when I hear talks like Kate's is to observe the effect of the talk upon the audience. I find this fascinating, as I am notoriously hard on audiences. My temperament tends toward the prophetic, so I am prone to challenge audiences. Most audiences, no matter who they are, have a place where they feel smugly self-assured, even a bit self-righteous. I will purposefully seek out and unsettle that assuredness. 

What I noticed, and have noticed about the general reception of Kate's work at my church and university, is that her message about toxic positivity, along with the corrosiveness of the American belief in human perfectibility, falls like a soothing rain upon a desert. The audience at the Chautauqua Institution loved the message, and as a psychologist I wondered why.

The answer, I think, is social location. Kate's main audience is America's striving class. People who read the New York Times. People who read non-fiction books about cancer survivors. People who follow podcasts. The white collar. The college-educated. The wealthy. The elite. 

Basically, Kate's audience are the very people who have bought in to the beliefs about self-improvement and human perfectibility. This was most certainly the case at the Chautauqua Institution. The audience was wholly wealthy, successful, highly educated, and White. Not a truck driver or a Black person in sight. 

So it makes sense why Kate's message was so intoxicating. As members of America's elite, striving class, the audience craved a message like Kate's. Let your cracks show. Embrace being human. Stop pushing so hard. It's okay to fail. You can be depressed. In a world filled with social comparison and competition, a world where appearances at cocktail parties matters way too much, Kate's message about "being human" is medicine for the soul.

And let me be very clear: I think wealthy, college-educated White people need saving. Because as a member of this group, I know I need saving. Darkness hunts everyone. And yet, I do wonder if Kate's message is niche and bounded by elite social locations.

This comes back to criticisms leveled at the Prosperity Gospel. I am in Kate's target audience. I'm a White college professor who goes to lectures at the Chautauqua Institution for fun during summer vacation. I am in the striving class. I live in a world of college professors who attend book clubs reading Kate Bowler and Brené Brown. And among this group, the Prosperity Gospel is a joke, "Ha, ha!" we laugh, "Look at all those stupid evangelicals who believe that God will make you rich and that cancer diagnoses can be prayed away! The fools!"

To be clear, we never say such things out loud. And Kate Bowler herself, as she shares in her memoir, has sympathy, albeit critically nuanced, for the Prosperity Gospel. Still, if you move in elite, college-educated spaces, you've likely seen the scorn directed at the Prosperity Gospel. And yet, if you're a regular reader of mine, you'll now that I've begun, over the last few years, to push back on this attitude of superiority. Much to the dismay of many readers. But just remember that I've warned you! I will seek out and challenge locations of self-assuredness. 

Now, reasons for this defense are not solely contrarian. They have to do with my experiences getting out of my elite, college-centric social bubble. Read Stranger God for the details about how this all happened, but I spend time in prisons and sharing meals with the homeless, places far, far way from the books clubs at my university and lectures at the Chautauqua Institution. And here's what I've noticed sharing life on the margins of elite society: No one out at the prison or sleeping on the streets is in the grip of "toxic positivity." No one behind bars or digging through trash cans is beholden to a belief in human perfectibility. And yet, and here's the point I want to make, these are the very people who find appeal in the Prosperity Gospel. And not just here in America, the Prosperity Gospel, as it gets fused with charismatic Christianity, also has appeal in the global south. And I find it, well, a wee bit colonial, when White, mainline Protestants, like the audiences at the Chautauqua Institution, make fun of thriving streams of South American and African Christianity. Maybe our global brothers and sisters have something to share with the dying churches of the West. 

My point here isn't to say that Kate Bowler is wrong. Just that her theory about the associations between toxic positivity, belief in human perfectibility and the Prosperity Gospel are only explanatory for a very particular demographic: America's elite, educated, striving classes. The appeal of the Prosperity Gospel among the poor and working classes, where it really thrives, in both America and the global south, is left unaccounted for.