The Puritans regarded financial success as a possible signal from God—if He had made you wealthy, maybe you were a “visible saint,” already elected to everlasting life. But in contemporary America, cause and effect have been switched. It is no longer just some dull Protestant work ethic that leads to success. As America’s I’m-a-winner individualism extinguished belief in predestination, hopeful Christians decided that prayer could directly result in a high net worth. It was a way of reconciling two irreconcilable pieces of the American character—the extreme religiosity and the refusal to
...more
