God-Backed Mortgages

The idiotic Prosperity Gospel played a part in the mortgage mess:

Has the so-called Prosperity Gospel turned its followers into some of the most willing participants and hence, victims of the current financial crisis? That's what a scholar of the fast-growing brand of pentecostal Christianity believes. While researching a book on black televangelism, says Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California Riverside, he realized that Prosperity's central promise that God would "make a way" for poor people to enjoy the better things in life had developed an additional, toxic expression during sub-prime boom. Walton says that this encouraged congregants who got dicey mortgages to believe "God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and blessed me with my first house." The results, he says, "were disastrous, because they pretty much turned parishioners into prey for greedy brokers."

I stand by what I wrote about the Prosperity Gospel back in 2006.