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.

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.

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 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.

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.

The American Dream has really good PR. It's kind of difficult to live in the United States and not on some level be pulled into the allure of the American Dream. It's in the DNA of the country. So, for a population coming out of slavery, desperate to become part of the full life of the United States, it only makes sense that they would embrace this route to the American Dream.