Joel Osteen fills a 16,800-seat former basketball arena in Houston on most Sundays. He is one face of a broader movement. This is commonly called the prosperity gospel, and has become one of the most contested intersections of faith and economics in American life. Its core claim, as summarised by Britannica, is straightforward: God wants believers to experience financial prosperity, physical health, and overall success in this life, achievable through positive confessions, faithful tithing, and unfaltering belief. Depending on who’s describing it, that claim is either liberating good news or a theology built to serve capital. Both sides present real arguments, but fundamentally, this disagreement says as much about America’s relationship to markets as it does about theology. The Case Against The most systematic critique comes from academic political economics, and does not offer dull opposition. A 2019 study in the Journal of Economic Issues argues the prosperity gospel functions as a kind of spiritual infrastructure for neoliberalism. It provides believers shelter from the pressures of the market while reinforcing the idea that an individual’s decisions alone are responsible for their outcomes. This same academic paper draws a direct structural parallel between the two belief systems: both the market and the divine promise function on a cemented meritocracy where guaranteed, efficient, and fair rewards are offered for the faithful or the diligent. If poverty is a faith problem rather than a structural one, as hypothesised in this philosophy, there’s no need to organise, unionise, or vote for redistribution. The answer is just believing harder. The socialist magazine Jacobin makes the class argument more bluntly, remarking that most megachurch pastors adopted their organisational model straight from the corporate world, coming to see themselves as businessmen rather than clergy. This critique is reminiscent of how Marx framed religion as being less about truth or falsehood, but instead a social product shaped by, and shaping, material conditions. A piece from Freethinkers International pushes this idea into electoral politics, arguing the same pastors who preach wealth as divine favour also conveniently preach that God wants people to vote for tax cuts, deregulation, and cuts to social programs; a closed loop in which reliance on the church is preserved by opposing the public alternatives to it. Christian critics ultimately arrive at overlapping conclusions from a different direction. As summarised by EBSCO Research Starters, evangelical pastor Rick Warren has argued prosperity theology is flawed because it favours the wealthy when many people of strong faith remain poor or ill, and therefore it risks turning wealth and happiness into false idols. The Vatican has taken a similar line, with Pope Francis explicitly criticising what La Civiltà Cattolica calls prosperity theology’s “different gospel.” Follow the Money Let us set theology aside for a moment and ask a blunter, more material question: where does the money actually go? Legal scholarship gives an uncomfortable response. Research cited by Sojourners found that megachurches on average spend less than a quarter of their income on missions and programs, with some spending less than three per cent. Unlike secular nonprofits, Britannica’s overview of the church-tax debate notes, churches are automatically exempt from federal income tax and aren’t required to file the Form 990 that discloses finances to the public, a legal disclosure all other charities must provide. A staffing study reported by the Christian Post found roughly half of megachurch budgets go toward salaries, and at most churches, specific salary figures are known only to the board or senior staff. When Senator Chuck Grassley investigated six prosperity ministries in 2007, only four of the six ever turned over their books. None of this proves fraud, but it highlights the need for transparency. If the prosperity gospel really is, as critics describe, capitalism wearing a preacher’s designer suit, the lack of financial transparency is the tell. A genuinely charitable institution built around collective gain would have no reason to leave such information undisclosed. The interrogation worth pressing isn’t only “is this theology true?” but “who is accountable for the money that theology generates, and to whom?” So far, the honest answer is: almost no one, and not the public. The Case for and the Complication Defenders don’t concede the ground easily. Britannica’s summary of the debate notes that supporters point to supportive Bible verses, individual success stories, and the hope the theology inspires, citing passages like 3 John 1:2’s blessing of prosperity and good health. Theologian and pastor Richard Beck complicates the picture further with an on-the-ground account: he describes a colleague and formerly incarcerated man who found Joel Osteen’s message genuinely helpful, since spiritualized self-help boosts self-efficacy, sustains motivation, and staves off demoralisation for people rebuilding their lives with few resources. Beck’s description is pointed: elite critique of the prosperity gospel often comes from people who have never needed the hope it supplies. That’s the tension a purely economic critique can miss. The Marxist reading treats prosperity theology as ideology serving capital, and the institutional evidence for that (corporate-modelled megachurches, political alignment with deregulation, undisclosed finances) is substantial. But reducing it entirely to false consciousness risks flattening why tens of millions of people, many in genuinely precarious circumstances, find it meaningful rather than merely useful to the system. If the theology is purely manipulation, why does it work on people who have every reason to distrust institutions that have failed them before? That question doesn’t have a clean answer from either side, and it’s worth sitting with rather than resolving too quickly. What’s Actually at Stake The prosperity gospel isn’t just a theological dispute; it’s a live test case for how Americans metabolise the relationship between faith and market logic. The Marxist critique offers a coherent account of why this particular theology flourished when it did, as the postwar boom made prosperity feel inevitable. Pastors began, as one commentator in RELEVANT put it, to resemble CEOs. But the movement’s staying power, especially among people with the least structural power, suggests it’s doing more than manufacturing consent. It’s also doing the work religion
By Adia May
LinkedIn as Late-Stage Capitalism LinkedIn is easy to mock because it often feels ridiculous. Feeds are lined with posts of people claiming corporate prestige with saturated jargon that no one really understands. Layoffs become “new chapters”, and desperation is portrayed as being “open to new opportunities”. Ordinary employment is narrated as a moral awakening, with those who can’t follow the cryptic lexicon as being simply not on their level. The language is so polished it begins to feel inhuman, as if every post is passed through a motivational filter and carefully stripped of any real insight. But the absurdity of LinkedIn is not the most interesting thing about it. The surface-level jeering about its content and audience, while amusing, overshadows the more serious question of whypeople feel compelled to perform this way at all. In the United States, work has never been just a job. One’s profession has been treated as evidence of character, discipline, education and personal worth. LinkedIn takes this philosophy and gives it a platform and a name. It repackages the worker into a public profile, an SEO project, and hosts a space to permanently market employability. It seems the point is not just being suited or capable for the job, because having the right requirements and a well-established CV is outdated in this age of corporate recruitment. Instead, you need to accompany this with a digital, legible mandate with at least 500 connections, or else who are you? The platform is the epitome of late-stage capitalism. It not only connects people to jobs, but it also teaches people how to behave in a labour market where employability itself is theatrical. In 2025, LinkedIn reported 1.2 billion members globally and $17.8 billion in revenue, a staggering amount in any case. Following suit with many other social platforms, they have introduced new AI tools for job seekers, hirers and sales. This is important because not only do you have to perform within this stagnant job market, but you are also judged on this by AI. Reuters reported that LinkedIn’s AI hiring agents were projected to bring in $450 million annually by “helping” recruiters identify suitable profiles across the network. This shifts the focus entirely. In this respect, the game is no longer about experience; it’s about SEO and corporate literacy. The worker is not simply applying for jobs. They are processed as a signal, not a human; transformed into a set of keywords, a network, and a history of ambition within the confines of AI-approved jargon. The introduction of AI in workplaces across the U.S. has undeniably reduced job openings and is now cutting into the recruitment sector. Not only did you lose your job to AI, but you were denied your next one because you didn’t meet the lexical quota. To Karl Marx, this advent is unsurprising. He argued that capitalism turns labour power itself into a commodity: the worker must sell their capacity to work in order to survive. LinkedIn expertly shows how far that logic has travelled, and how conceited the job market has become. The worker is no longer selling only time, skill or effort. They are expected to sell personality, resilience, digital consistency, network capabilities, and a narrative of constant self-improvement. One becomes part of the package. This commodification is the real poison of the platform. It makes the crisis of work, or lack thereof, a flaw of self-presentation. If you cannot get a job, the implied solution is to optimise your profile. If nobody replies, message better. If you are invisible, post more. If none of the above work, you can buy an “affordable” subscription of around $40 a month to help boost your presence. The subscription becomes even darker when it’s realised that visibility has become monetised. Of course, capitalism and the ruling class have always understood this premise, as has society. But LinkedIn has attempted to remove these barriers in a way that fills its own pocket instead. The premium advertises AI-powered tools for job searches and profile optimisation, InMail, profile view numbers, personalised insights and access to “top applicant” jobs. There is something dystopian about a labour market in which workers are already forced to compete for attention, then offered, as a necessity, a plethora of paid tools to become more visible in the competition. These class politics are not subtle. Despite LinkedIn’s attempts to profit from class visibility, they present as a neutral space for opportunity. They reward those who already understand the architecture of professional culture, have polished profiles, institutional confidence, internship language and established networks. A working-class person may boast intelligence, be capable, reliable and perfectly suited for a role, yet still be punished for not knowing how to read themselves in the approved style. Pew Research Centre found that LinkedIn use in the U.S. is sharply divided by education. In 2024, a reported that 53% of Americans with at least a bachelor’s degree said they use LinkedIn. This compares sharply to the 28% who have a college education, and 10% of those who have high school degrees or less. This disparity paints an illustrative picture. If LinkedIn becomes part of how opportunity is accessed, then paradoxically, the unequal access to LinkedIn’s culture becomes yet another class barrier. This is why LinkedIn is not just bad, it’s an active obstacle for those trying to find work in modern society. It is bad because it reveals a labour market that increasingly demands shallow performance. It is bad because it asks people to translate fear into marketable self-growth and instability into ambition. It turns structural insecurity into an expensive subscription. The cruellest part is that opting out becomes even harder. Online resources are more essential than ever for American job seekers. Pew found that as early as 2015, a large majority of recent US job seekers had solely used online resources to look and apply for work. The point is that digital presence has become increasingly difficult to
By Adia May
Joel Osteen fills a 16,800-seat former basketball arena in Houston on most Sundays. He is one face of a broader movement. This is commonly called the prosperity gospel, and has become one of the most contested intersections of faith and economics in American life. Its core claim, as summarised by Britannica, is straightforward: God wants believers to experience financial prosperity, physical health, and overall success in this life, achievable through positive confessions, faithful tithing, and unfaltering belief. Depending on who’s describing it, that claim is either liberating good news or a theology built to serve capital. Both sides present real arguments, but fundamentally, this disagreement says as much about America’s relationship to markets as it does about theology. The Case Against The most systematic critique comes from academic political economics, and does not offer dull opposition. A 2019 study in the Journal of Economic Issues argues the prosperity gospel functions as a kind of spiritual infrastructure for neoliberalism. It provides believers shelter from the pressures of the market while reinforcing the idea that an individual’s decisions alone are responsible for their outcomes. This same academic paper draws a direct structural parallel between the two belief systems: both the market and the divine promise function on a cemented meritocracy where guaranteed, efficient, and fair rewards are offered for the faithful or the diligent. If poverty is a faith problem rather than a structural one, as hypothesised in this philosophy, there’s no need to organise, unionise, or vote for redistribution. The answer is just believing harder. The socialist magazine Jacobin makes the class argument more bluntly, remarking that most megachurch pastors adopted their organisational model straight from the corporate world, coming to see themselves as businessmen rather than clergy. This critique is reminiscent of how Marx framed religion as being less about truth or falsehood, but instead a social product shaped by, and shaping, material conditions. A piece from Freethinkers International pushes this idea into electoral politics, arguing the same pastors who preach wealth as divine favour also conveniently preach that God wants people to vote for tax cuts, deregulation, and cuts to social programs; a closed loop in which reliance on the church is preserved by opposing the public alternatives to it. Christian critics ultimately arrive at overlapping conclusions from a different direction. As summarised by EBSCO Research Starters, evangelical pastor Rick Warren has argued prosperity theology is flawed because it favours the wealthy when many people of strong faith remain poor or ill, and therefore it risks turning wealth and happiness into false idols. The Vatican has taken a similar line, with Pope Francis explicitly criticising what La Civiltà Cattolica calls prosperity theology’s “different gospel.” Follow the Money Let us set theology aside for a moment and ask a blunter, more material question: where does the money actually go? Legal scholarship gives an uncomfortable response. Research cited by Sojourners found that megachurches on average spend less than a quarter of their income on missions and programs, with some spending less than three per cent. Unlike secular nonprofits, Britannica’s overview of the church-tax debate notes, churches are automatically exempt from federal income tax and aren’t required to file the Form 990 that discloses finances to the public, a legal disclosure all other charities must provide. A staffing study reported by the Christian Post found roughly half of megachurch budgets go toward salaries, and at most churches, specific salary figures are known only to the board or senior staff. When Senator Chuck Grassley investigated six prosperity ministries in 2007, only four of the six ever turned over their books. None of this proves fraud, but it highlights the need for transparency. If the prosperity gospel really is, as critics describe, capitalism wearing a preacher’s designer suit, the lack of financial transparency is the tell. A genuinely charitable institution built around collective gain would have no reason to leave such information undisclosed. The interrogation worth pressing isn’t only “is this theology true?” but “who is accountable for the money that theology generates, and to whom?” So far, the honest answer is: almost no one, and not the public. The Case for and the Complication Defenders don’t concede the ground easily. Britannica’s summary of the debate notes that supporters point to supportive Bible verses, individual success stories, and the hope the theology inspires, citing passages like 3 John 1:2’s blessing of prosperity and good health. Theologian and pastor Richard Beck complicates the picture further with an on-the-ground account: he describes a colleague and formerly incarcerated man who found Joel Osteen’s message genuinely helpful, since spiritualized self-help boosts self-efficacy, sustains motivation, and staves off demoralisation for people rebuilding their lives with few resources. Beck’s description is pointed: elite critique of the prosperity gospel often comes from people who have never needed the hope it supplies. That’s the tension a purely economic critique can miss. The Marxist reading treats prosperity theology as ideology serving capital, and the institutional evidence for that (corporate-modelled megachurches, political alignment with deregulation, undisclosed finances) is substantial. But reducing it entirely to false consciousness risks flattening why tens of millions of people, many in genuinely precarious circumstances, find it meaningful rather than merely useful to the system. If the theology is purely manipulation, why does it work on people who have every reason to distrust institutions that have failed them before? That question doesn’t have a clean answer from either side, and it’s worth sitting with rather than resolving too quickly. What’s Actually at Stake The prosperity gospel isn’t just a theological dispute; it’s a live test case for how Americans metabolise the relationship between faith and market logic. The Marxist critique offers a coherent account of why this particular theology flourished when it did, as the postwar boom made prosperity feel inevitable. Pastors began, as one commentator in RELEVANT put it, to resemble CEOs. But the movement’s staying power, especially among people with the least structural power, suggests it’s doing more than manufacturing consent. It’s also doing the work religion
By Adia May
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