God will make you rich! And the rest of us poor.

1.    If X is prospering, then God made them prosper.
2.    X is prospering.
3.    Therefore, God gave them their prosperity.

Going to Catholic school and being raised in a Catholic family meant I was raised to pray every day. Every day I prayed once in the morning, once at night, and so many times in between at school, that praying became routine. It became so routine in fact, that I never actually stopped to think about what I was praying actually for. Most of my praying advice came from teachers, my mother, and of course the local priest. What was their advice? Pretty pedestrian stuff, like praying for help in school, and good health for me and my family; it was up until my mid-teens that I realized that all of my ‘conversations with God’ consisted of me asking for stuff. In retrospect, that’s kind of obnoxious, but to be fair, my requests were pretty benign.

Cue Hanna Rosin’s article in this month’s Atlantic which asks whether or not Christianity, specifically prosperity Christianity, caused the recent housing crash and financial crisis. Prosperity theology is a religious belief that teaches God will provide material wealth to all those who truly believe in him. That’s right, not spiritual wealth, but actual, material, financial wealth.

If that seems kind of perverse, throw in the fact that most of the churches which teach this kind of theology solicit significant tithing (under the premise that all tithes will be repaid through divine intervention) the practice becomes especially despicable. While many within the Christian community have criticized prosperity theology, some of the most prominent leaders in Christian society today promote prosperity gospel, including Pat Robertson, Benny Hinn, and TD Jakes, who led early a morning prayer service for President Obama last January.

Rosin’s article tells the story of Fernando Garay, a Mexican-American pastor who preaches prosperity gospel to his congregation of mostly Mexican parishioners. Every Sunday, Garay tells his congregation to ask God to “... bless my bank account...  fight the attack of the devil on my finances!”

Garay, in addition to being a pastor, also works as a loan officer, for two different banks that specialized in granting sub-prime mortgages. Despite the modest incomes of most within his congregation, Garay not only encouraged, but financed his parishioner’s purchases of several half- million dollar homes. When people within the congregation questioned whether they could afford their new homes, Garay assured them that Jesus would provide. Those that were reluctant to buy from him, were called unfaithful.

As recent evidence suggests, Jesus took his eye off the ball. The areas in the United States that have been hardest hit by sub-prime foreclosures are nearly identical to those regions that have seen the largest proliferation of prosperity churches.

There are several reasons why Rosin's article should make someone mad. First and foremost, the shysters that teach prosperity gospel are ridiculously rich. Televangelist Peter Popoff during his peak took in more than 4 million dollars a month. Benny Hinn was famous for once asking his parishioners to fund a brand new personal 30 million dollar Gulfstream private jet for him and his wife. Even Garay, a relatively low level player in the prosperity gospel game drives a brand new Mercedes-Benz wherever he goes.

But another cause for concern is that prosperity Christianity (and well, all religion quite frankly) encourages people to stop taking responsibility for their own lives. This is not to say that the people of Garay’s parish and Christians in general, are not hard-working. All evidence says they were (most of the people within Garay’s parish were hard working immigrants, doing back-breaking labour for twelve hours a day.)

What the real concern is that people stop using their rationality to make financial decisions, and start using blind faith. There’s some poetic justice in the fact that the worst financial crisis to hit the United States in almost a hundred years came under the watch of a President who might be the most religious.