Blessed for Success

"You have to decide. You have to convince yourself: 'This is for me. This is what God wants for me.'"

It's a September evening at the Christian Faith Center, a large evangelical church in SeaTac. The room is cavernous and bland, with a 1970s look about its green carpeting and green chairs. The preacher, though, is anything but bland. With his image broadcast on four screens above him, Pastor Casey Treat is a live wire: His thin frame, lit from above by bright red hair, is bursting with the energy and charisma that have made him the Northwest's best-known televangelist. If the room needed any further enlivening, it is found in tonight's topic for discussion. What Treat is saying God wants for usthe subject that has brought hundreds here for the $15-a-person "Kingdom Builders" seminaris prosperity.

"If you don't have the right attitude," Treat singsongs, "you can't live a prosperous lifestyle. So we've got to get right in us. First of all, you have to believe, receive, and embrace the principles of prosperityfor you." While the process he describes is spiritual, linking personal prosperity and God's plan, it is also exceedingly practical. Treat talks about behaving like a winner just as successful football players do, talking on the phone with self-assurance, dressing for success by ironing your shirts.

Prosperity is a recurring theme in Treat's ministry, and tonight the pastor has brought in a heavy-hitting speaker to back him up, someone with Old World authority: Rabbi Daniel Lapin. The Mercer Island rabbi, who preaches conservative politics along with Judeo-Christian ethics through his syndicated radio show (based at Seattle's KTTH-AM) and his national, nonprofit group, Toward Tradition, has recently penned a book, Thou Shall Prosper: Ten Commandments for Making Money. In it, he writes that "God wants humans to be wealthy because wealth follows large-scale righteous conduct." A polished performer who sprinkles his talk with one-liners like a scholarly Borscht Belt comedian, the suited, yarmulke-wearing Lapin explains to tonight's crowd that money "is God's gift for human interaction" because acquiring it requires people "to connect with as many people as possible, to be obsessed with the needs of as many people as possible."

They're a seductive duo, the charismatic preacher and the worldly rabbi, but their get-rich, self-help messages strike an odd note. Even if you see nothing wrong with making money, isn't religion supposed to be about a higher purpose?

Perhaps, but the mixing of religion and money has a long tradition in this country, according to Patricia Killen, professor of American religions at Tacoma's Pacific Lutheran University. She cites 19th-century preacher Russell Conwell, who became famous with a talk called "Acre of Diamonds." Preaching on financial success has become ever more prevalent in the past decade or two and seems to be finding particular resonance in these tough economic times. Witness the runaway success of The Prayer of Jabez, a little book published a couple of years ago by an obscure Christian publisher in Oregon. Centered on a prayer that envisions a life of abundance, the book set a record for the number of copies sold in a single year.

Though its preachers don't like the term, some call this notion that religion will lead the righteous to riches the "prosperity gospel," or the "gospel of wealth." It finds particularly receptive ears in the Northwest, according to Killenperhaps no surprise, given the strike-it-rich mentality that launched this former frontier. While she thinks Treat is probably its best-known practitioner, similar teachings can be found in a number of evangelical churches, where God is understood to be, in Killen's words, "real and intimately involved in our life," including our financial life.

Accordingly, there is a growing movement to offer financial ministries in church, not just to preach the gospel of wealth but to teach nuts-and-bolts tools for financial management: how to balance your checkbook, save for retirement, avoid debt. A foundation tied to Overlake Christian Church, the powerhouse of evangelical churches in Redmond, has spent many months planning a national financial conference set for next spring that it hopes will attract as many as 7,000 people, spur similar seminars across the country, and inspire new financial ministries among churches. Despite the religious overtones, such practical education has been deemed a public service by a host of government agencies and nonprofits that are working with religious leaders on the conference. Among them: the Social Security Administration, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the American Savings Education Council.

THESE RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS about finance aren't always congruent. Ask David Bragonier, executive director of nonprofit Barnabas, which conducts financial seminars for churches, what is causing the financial crisis he thinks afflicts so many Americans, and his answer is succinct: "Greed." Doesn't that belief conflict with the prosperity gospel's inducement to get rich? Bragonier, who has been reading Rabbi Lapin's book, doesn't think so. "There's nothing wrong with wealth. It's just how wealth is used," he says, meaning that wealth used for God's work is admirable.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin doesnt shy away from the association between Jews and money. (Tim Johnson / Strode McGowan Photography)