In January 2008, my mission companion and I met up with two other missionaries at one of the biggest mega-churches in the country.
Officially, the purpose of our trip was to better understand the religious culture in Dallas so that we could more effectively teach our investigators.
Unofficially, though, we were there to satisfy our curiosity and maybe even find a little Sunday morning entertainment.
Among the missionaries in the Texas Dallas Mission, Pastor T.D. Jakes and his church, the Potter's House, were legendary.
The non-denominational church in west Dallas boasts a membership of 30,000 — and any missionary who had tracted a middle-class or lower-income neighborhood within a 50-mile radius of the enormous worship center had heard plenty about Jakes and his electrifying sermons.
Sure enough, the Sunday we attended provided an adrenaline-pumping experience, complete with a stirring gospel choir and a knock-your-socks-off performance by Pastor Jakes. His sermon, which occasionally slipped into a rhythmic sort of rap, revolved around the story of the woman with an issue of blood.
I remember thinking, "You know, this type of worship certainly isn't for me, but I don't know if T.D. Jakes is really doing any harm here. He's teaching thousands of people about Christ's healing power. Sure, it's a bit simplistic, and it lacks some important details of the Atonement, but overall, it's better than nothing."
Then came the pleas for donations.
I wasn't so much bothered by the fact that the service spent time encouraging members to open their wallets. I had become accustomed to the common Bible Belt practice of preachers collecting "tithes" from their members. But what struck me was the loftiness of the temporal blessings T.D. Jakes was promising his congregation.
He didn't just quote Malachi 3:10 — about the "windows of heaven" being opened to faithful tithe-payers — he ensured his followers that the scripturally promised blessings would be financial: a better job, a new car, a higher salary, etc.
The cover of the December issue of The Atlantic is plastered with the provocative headline, "Did Christianity cause the crash? How preachers are spreading a gospel of debt." The article itself, written by Hanna Rosin, is a bit less inflammatory, but it describes a philosophy that is permeating mainstream American Christianity — namely, the "prosperity gospel."
The fundamental teaching of the prosperity gospel is that faithful followers of Christ will unconditionally be blessed with financial success and upward mobility. T.D. Jakes was named in the article as one of the most popular prosperity preachers, and he's not alone. According to a study cited in the article, 50 of the 260 largest churches in the country teach this belief. And a Pew survey found that 66 percent of Pentecostals and 43 percent of "other Christians" believe that the righteous will be rewarded with wealth.
The consequences of adopting such a belief are obviously dangerous. There are the economic outcomes which The Atlantic points out: risky investments made with no real foundation other than faith, foreclosures by people who thought that access to a subprime mortgage was a blessing from God.
But I think the implications go even further than that. If we believe the result of righteous living is always, without exception, financial success, many of us will end up only one bounced check away from a crisis of faith. Wealthy members of the church can become self-righteous, believing their SUVs and million-dollar homes somehow make them morally superior to the poorer families in their congregations.
Silent judgments, inaccurate assumptions and frequent gossip become the norm. Prudent living and staying out of debt suddenly lose their appeal. Seeking for riches becomes synonymous with seeking the kingdom of God, and if we haven't ended up losing both, we at least end up losing perspective.
I saw all of this unfold to one degree or another on my mission, among the poorest Pentecostals in South Dallas and the richest Baptists in Plano.
My only question left is this: How many Latter-day Saints will allow themselves to fall prey to the prosperity gospel?