The connection between lucre and salvation, after the long hiatus imposed by Martin Luther, reappeared in the reptilian form of Creflo Dollar and other evangelists of the “prosperity gospel,” which took the metaphor of Malachi 3:10 and made it literal. Tithe a tenth of earnings, and God would “pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it,” a (tax-exempt) rate of return to which Goldman Sachs can only aspire.40 This new form of worship, genuflecting to God-as-vending-machine, was all the salvation with none of the guilt, a doctrine of consumption instead of
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