The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War

by Jeff Sharlet

Politicians have long borrowed from religion the passion and the righteousness, but no other major modern figure had channeled the tension that makes Scripture endure, the desire, the wanting that gives rise to the closest analogue to Trumpism: the prosperity gospel, the American religion of winning. Trump was impious, but he didn’t reject faith. Instead, he returned it to the roots of Christian business conservatism, which is where he had been all along: Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 bestseller, The Power of Positive Thinking.

“Positive Thinking” isn’t about serving God; it’s about using God, through what Peale called “applied Christianity,” to achieve “a perfected and amazing method of successful living.”

The Christian Right that has so long dominated the political theology of the United States emphasizes a heavenly reward for righteousness in faith and behavior; the prosperity gospel is about what Peale might call “amazing results” you can measure and count. The old political theology was about the salvation to come; the Trump religion was about deliverance, here and now.

It’s satisfying when an expert flattens a false claim. That’s how so many of us believe we’ll resist the undertow of civil war, fact-checking our way back to solid ground. But much like the cross for Pastor Dave, such corrections miss the point. You can’t fact-check a myth.