The Cheap Prosperity Gospel of Trump and Osteen
Natural disasters like Hurricane Harvey are the worst kind of crises for people like Mr. Trump
and Mr. Osteen, who purvey their own versions of the prosperity gospel.
When asked about the delay, Mr. Osteen said that “the city didn’t ask us to become a shelter.”
President Trump, too, revealed his morally bankrupt soul during the storm when he said
that he timed his pardon of the racist former sheriff Joe Arpaio to coincide with the hurricane’s landfall because he assumed that it would garner “far higher” TV ratings than usual.
“Government cannot solve every problem,” Mr. Bush said in 2002, “but it can encourage people and communities to help themselves and to help one another.” What
that really meant was churches, rather than the government, needed to administer social aid programs.
Consider when Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson said in March
that poverty was a “state of mind.” Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama echoed this in a May interview when he said that “people who lead good lives” don’t have to deal with pre-existing medical conditions.
They have already cut millions from federal disaster aid, and if an uptick in disasters occurs, many more people will die.
