Golden Bulls and Selling Heaven

Back in the late 1920's H.L. Mencken had a field-day mocking booze-snitching preachers he called "red-nosed Prohibitionists". Now, as then, it seems our pious bible-thumpers are quick to damn every temptation save greed. To rid the land of the evils of gin our Christian commanders stomped righteously across the Beatitudes and set neighbor to spy upon neighbor. As the country sank into its Great Depression, America's salvation demanded that every bootlegger be locked in prison, his victims denied the comfort of drink even as they stomached the open thievery of their corrupted government.

Aroused by what might ensue from the taking of alcohol our moral fanatics were not restrained by charity nor the counsels of Timothy (5:23): "Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake..." So consumed had our zealous Christians become with careless vices, that being fixed so long on their neighbors' sins has made them not only lose sight of the Mount of Olives but flirt with idolatry.

Evangelicals pray before a statue of a golden bull on Wall Street.


"We are going to intercede at the site of the statue of the bull on Wall Street to ask God to begin a shift from the bull and bear markets to what we feel will be the 'Lion's Market,' or God's control over the economic systems. While we do not have the full revelation of all this will entail, we do know that without intercession, economies will crumble."

They defend this "innocent laying on of hands" but Matthew objects quite unambiguously: "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money." Matt; 6-24

But with another Elmer Gantry popping up daily spouting a "prosperity gospel" the notion of the meek inheriting the earth seems almost quaint. Why wait to be rewarded in heaven when God promises the blessed shall die rich? It should come as no surprise that when the faithful saw their portfolios shrinking they forgot the fourth and fifth commandments since clearly poverty, like imbibing French wine, was a greater damnation.

The original Bush Doctrine

When in response to the 9-11 tragedy George W. told the worried nation to "go shopping" he revealed the very essence of his faith. For Bush and his religious disciples, Christ died so that the chosen could reap 20% dividends. God's Word was the gospel of globalization with its promise of an ever-expanding bottom line-- that so long as we believed would remain everlasting.

This New Order, for which the sainted Ronnie was sent to prepare the Way, had been years in the making. As Business Week prophesied in 1974--the public would have to be won over to the new religion: "It will be a hard pill for many Americans to swallow - the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more ... Nothing that this nation, or any other nation, has done in modern economic history compares with the selling job that must be done to make people accept this reality."(October 12, 1974 p. 120)

And as with any lasting creed it must first be absorbed and then sold by good surrogates. To this end no paper has published more faithful converts than the devout NYTimes. Brought to the altar by Safire, Brooks and Friedman then finally Kristol, the nations all bowed down to the global free-market-- unburdened consumption was the savior of pensions and manna from heaven for all mankind.

Chris Suellentrop shows the metaphysical reach of Bush's doctrine in his LA Times review of David Brooks' "On Paradise Drive":

"Brooks sees consumption as so imbued with transcendent significance that he describes the transformation of spiritual desire into physical objects that occurs while shopping as a 'transubstantiation of goods.' With shopping, Brooks seems to be saying we commodify our assent to John Winthrop's Puritan dream."

The crash of the free market temple has sent the flat-earth believers into a breathless panic. The faithful blindly scurry on rightwards, shrieking kill the Marxists!--reject the devil's potion of intoxicating socialism! Meanwhile, like the pulpit grifters who continue to grab from their followers' wallets, the discredited Bush-men have set about looting the treasury. No doubt faced with a lengthy banishment to the political wilderness our unrepentant free-marketeers are praying to go on living as they've long grown accustomed to-- at our trusting expense.