Perhaps God gives us a hint about whom God favors through physical and material prosperity. So those who are doing well are probably favored by God.

What we ought to be trying to do is limit the harm that Christian communities and other religious communities can do. But we can't rely on them to make a world of difference. It's just not going to happen.

So long as there's been black churches in the United States, there's been a relationship between spiritual well-being and material acquisition. This has always been the case.

Churches can easily bring together, in a short period of time, a substantial number of people, and politicians have to assume that these folks have the potential to vote. Although there's supposed to be a separation of church and state, they want to go to these churches to say hello to the people, and they assume their hello might turn into votes.

The key figure in the Christian faith involves a story of suffering so that others do well. You're only going to get so much liberation, you're only going to get so much transformation, from a system that is based on suffering.

I think of the US as an empire. The UK at one point, because of its reach, was an empire. But these megachurches - for me the concern is to not assume they have more authority than they actually have, to not give them a kind of reach that they really don't possess.

Churches typically argue is that God wants God's people to have a good life, and that a good life involves prosperity. This prosperity is not just emotional well-being, spiritual well-being, or physical well-being - it's also having good stuff. Having a nice house, a nice car, good clothing, etc. It's a package deal.