Attack of the Theocrats!: How the Religious Right Harms Us All—and What We Can Do About It (14 page)

Later, when Reverend Warren was more famous, he made quite the show of tithing from his income and forgoing church compensation. What Rick Warren conveniently fails to mention is the decades of wealth he accumulated in houses and property that he now already owns—thanks in large part to you the taxpayer. Only after that accumulation of wealth at taxpayer expense, and only after his religious enterprises have promoted his book sales to a fare-thee-well, did Warren do a (very successful) publicity splurge about not taking a salary and tithing. (Luckily, his church still acts like a marketing firm for his best sellers.) Ah, well, at least we know the nonreligious (and the Hindus, Buddhists, etc.) got the
chance to subsidize Mr. Warren’s rise to great wealth—before we all go to hell with the Jews.

In 1970 there were fewer than fifty so-called megachurches in the United States whose weekly attendance exceeded two thousand congregants. Often a megachurch boasts more than one minister eligible for a tax subsidy from your pocket. Today there are over two thousand such churches, with many churches boasting congregations many times larger than two thousand members.

There are certainly well-meaning clergy leaders out there, but word has indeed gotten around that a megaminister can pull in serious booty. In fact, a church with a mere 250 to 500 members might be worth a sweet crib or a Cadillac or two. Have you seen what the megaminister McMansions look like in your area? Have you asked to see their tax records? Remember there are often multiple parsonage homes per megachurch. And don’t forget the homes of the leaders’ children, siblings, and cousins who have been called to offer God’s word and just happen to live in a tax-exempt residence. Most will not be as “prosperous” as the Osteens or Joyce Meyer, but thousands are now doing quite well thank you—with the help of your tax dollars.

The fact that Victoria Osteen behaved in a rude and self-aggrandizing manner and the fact that Joel Osteen is a tear-gushing smoothy are noteworthy facts because these characteristics are emblematic of the American huckster tradition gone wild. The “duke and dauphin,” the con men who meet Huck and Jim on the Mississippi, would have been delighted had they been able to parlay their native huckster gifts into a government-sanctioned enterprise, subsidized by the IRS code, and offered the oily veneer of respectability.

The Prosperity Gospel clearly makes people like the Osteens and Joyce Meyer very prosperous indeed, but as Kevin Phillips, the fiscally conservative Republican author, writes, the Prosperity Gospel is having a
detrimental
effect on hundreds of thousands of average people who give to the likes of the Osteens. While the Osteens and their ilk rake it in preaching the Prosperity Gospel, countless Americans, believing in that gospel, assume mortgages they cannot afford and debts they simply can’t pay back.

Kevin Phillips preaches something you don’t hear much from Republicans anymore: actual fiscal conservatism. Giving money to the big ministers and praying for success with risky loans and faith in a Prosperity Gospel does not sit well with a true conservative. The Prosperity Gospel has been marketed professionally and has perhaps affected behavior on a scale like never before, but this insidious creed has deep roots.

Just as intelligent design is creationism by another name, the Prosperity Gospel is the modern descendant of not only traveling snake-oil salesmen but also Norman Vincent Peale’s “power of positive thinking.” A close friend of Richard Nixon and Billy Graham, Peale believed that, rather than working
with
your fellow human beings to solve problems, the average person needs to submissively change his or her attitude
about
problems and not actively focus on addressing the actual substance of the problems. You see, the average person should submissively change his or her attitude rather than be assertive or collaborative when facing the evidence of a problem. After all, the key—for the “little people” anyway—is to get rewarded after you are dead.

The Innovators

Now, for an entirely different attitude, consider the first person to win a Nobel Prize in two separate fields: Marie Curie. Madame Curie believed neither in a deity nor an afterlife. But Curie believed strongly that people “share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.”

Einstein said that Marie Curie was someone who was never corrupted or seduced by the fame she earned for her groundbreaking research in chemistry and physics—research that later saved lives through its use in cancer treatment. Marie Curie never became as full of herself, never felt as worthy of queenly attention as, for example, a Victoria Osteen.

Madame Curie said, “I was taught that the way of progress is neither swift nor easy.” Praying for prosperity? Not enough. Relying on a preacher to pray for your success? That was not the Curie approach.

Marie Curie, the first woman ever awarded a PhD in all of Europe, said, “I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.”

Curie also said, “Scientific work . . . must be done for itself, for the beauty of science. . . . then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become, like radium, a benefit for humanity.”

This nonbeliever was a great believer in human collaboration and in science for the sake of science: “science has great beauty. A scientist in the laboratory is not only a technician [but] a child placed before natural phenomena which impress . . . like a fairy tale.” But this “fairy tale” does not reject inquiry. This great beauty encourages inquiry. Science welcomes skepticism—not gullibility.

Marie Curie had a different philosophy than the “power of positive thinking” and its vapid intellectual descendant, the Prosperity Gospel. Curie sought to improve our shared world, not pretend the world is different from
what evidence tells us it is. Curie said, “Life is not easy for any of us. . . . We must have perseverance. . . . We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.” Curie’s focus was not on the temporary prosperity of acquiring things for herself—but on the greater goal of achieving progress for all.

Now consider the second and only other person to have been awarded a Nobel Prize in two different fields: Linus Pauling. Aside from their two Nobel Prizes, Curie and Pauling shared something else in common: both rejected supernatural beliefs. This may seem like a coincidence, but in fact it’s typical among scientists. A recent survey by the National Academy of Sciences found that 79.0 percent of physical scientists identify themselves as atheist, and 76.3 percent do not believe in an afterlife. Like Curie, Pauling’s lack of religion seems to have enhanced his highly moral world-view. Linus Pauling thought the Golden Rule needed editing: “Do unto others 20 percent better than you would expect them to do unto you, to correct for subjective error.”

Pauling’s first Nobel Prize was for his scientific research. Francis Crick called Pauling the “father of molecular biology,” stating that his work would “save lives for generations to come.” Pauling’s second Nobel Prize was for his efforts to promote peace through the banning of nuclear tests. By contrast President George W. Bush famously pointed to the Book of Revelations regarding his decision to invade Iraq. This biblically inspired war-mongering approach to conflict, seen frequently in modern fundamentalism, is by definition not one you will find among secularists, especially not among those who’ve won two Nobel Prizes.

Linus Pauling earned a reputation for blunt straight talk. This noble American characteristic was shared by his more famous scientific colleague Thomas Edison—he of the phonograph, the light bulb, the motion picture camera, and the electric power plant—who said, “I never did a day’s work in my whole life. It was all fun.” Edison also said, “I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul. . . . No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong.”

With his direct, plain-spoken pragmatism, Edison is a quintessentially American genius who transformed the uses of electricity. Edison is an intellectual descendent of that other American genius scientific tinkerer, Ben Franklin. Franklin is responsible for many of the basic discoveries and even terms that we still use today in discussing electricity, such as “positive” and “negative” and “electric motor.” Franklin said, “I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absented myself from Christian assemblies.”

Franklin, Edison, and Pauling all spoke for a deep current in American thought that takes great joy in learning about our world as it is and working with others to improve it.

Franklin was also deeply involved in politics. His religious skepticism was almost as strong as that of Jefferson. The Founders, while specifically prohibiting a religious test for office and specifically prohibiting establishment of religion, specifically encouraged scientific and artistic progress and patent innovation in the Constitution’s Article I, Section 8: “The Congress shall have Power . . . To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”

Apple Computers and Apple Records vs. the Shiny Shyster Charlatans

When faced with a challenging reality, it is not sufficient to merely emphasize changing your attitude so as to passively accept the reality, nor is it enough to pray. When faced with a challenging reality, we must actually do things to improve our world.

Steve Jobs once said, “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important thing I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

When it comes to innovation, developing those tools and gadgets we all love to use, Jobs chooses to emulate none other than the Fab Four: “My model for business is the Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other’s negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the parts. And that’s how I see business. Great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by a team of people.” Thus, Mr. Jobs eloquently summarizes an essential aspect of the humanist ideal.

The viewpoint that we work with our fellow human beings, and not in subservience to the supernatural, guides innovators like George Soros, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg. Unfortunately, America’s political life is no longer dominated by the likes of Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, and Kennedy.

While demographics give me optimism that the Zuckerberg generation may lead us to a better future, there is an ominous disparity between the rationalism on the rise in our youth and the theocracy on the rise in our politics.

As discussed, extreme fundamentalist sexual dogma is imposed in American law in ways that lead to the discrimination of sexual minorities, the treatment of women as second-class citizens, and the promotion of unscientific sexual propaganda that hurts public health and increases unplanned pregnancy. Meanwhile, many of the ministers who preach that very dogma live luxuriously—subsidized by our tax money with special tax exemptions offered to no one else and required nowhere in the Constitution.

A for-profit business that actually creates something useful? No tax exemption for the housing expenses of its CEO—nor for any of his or her employees.

A secular nonprofit that focuses not on proselytizing but on, say, helping poor children? No tax exemption for the housing expenses of its executive director, nor for any staff.

A secular nonprofit that lobbies for the policy values of Secular Americans? Alas, no tax exemption for its executive director’s home either. And, in seriousness, there shouldn’t be such an exemption for anyone.

We do not sufficiently reward or value innovation in America today. Instead, we reward the shiny shyster charlatan. America’s exceptional heritage is embodied by Franklin’s boundless curiosity, Edison’s endless tinkering, and Pauling’s meticulous analysis. Our government and our culture today devalue these great American virtues.

In today’s American culture, people often ask, what would Jesus do? But let’s consider what Joel Osteen and his ilk actually do in the name of Jesus. Osteen asks for more money—right now—from parishioners with promises of wealth later in this life and salvation in the next. But the cash here and now helps promote products that benefit the wallet of . . . Joel Osteen. That’s what Osteen and his antecedents have always done. Now they play the game with a multimedia sound stage, a topnotch Web site, heavy book promotion, and glossy brochures, but snake oil is snake oil no matter how pretty the bottle.

If innovation is the test, if facing difficult realities and making positive change is the test, we must remember that, all his marketing aside, Osteen’s level of productivity remains nil, zip. What new product has Osteen created? What scientific breakthrough has Osteen achieved? Joel Osteen talks of miracles—but what new medical miracle has he produced?

Madame Curie? Ben Franklin? Thomas Edison? Linus Pauling? They faced the world as it is and used innovation and initiative to learn, to aspire, to collaborate, and to improve our shared human condition. The Osteens produce nothing.

“Carryin’ Pictures of Chairman Mao”

In 1994 we witnessed Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America. In 1995 Gingrich imposed the little-noticed—but watershed—death of the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). The OTA was strictly nonpartisan and issued accurate and technical reports on science and technology on which elected officials and the public could rely for objective analysis. This office had successfully saved taxpayers money through suggesting greater efficiency, including early use of electronic tax filing.