Christianity and the Crash
Hanna Rosin’s Atlantic article, “Did Christianity Cause the Crash?,” has generated a fair bit of conversation. The core thesis is that something like Joel Osteen’s prosperity gospel planted seeds of greed that overstretched many–and that subprime mortgage sharks found these congregations to be, well, “prime” targets.
The folks at Immanent Frame have pulled together a little symposium of responses from a diverse array of voices, including my friends Anthea Butler, D. Stephen Long, and Michael Horton, along with other scholars such as Harvey Cox, Mark C. Taylor, William Connolly, and Jonathan Walton, and several others (including me). [We were instructed to keep our responses to 300 words; I see some of my peers had a little trouble counting words! ;-)]
Consider joining the conversation over at IF.
This also lends a new frame to my article from last spring, “What’s Right with the Prosperity Gospel?“
