Trump, Kushner, and the Religious Crusades of Greed

Never have men in government made such a cash-grab in the name of God

There is a sermon that American audiences have heard so many times, delivered in so many registers, from so many pulpits and podiums and cable news green rooms, that it has acquired the smooth, worn quality of a river stone. The sermon goes like this: God rewards the righteous with prosperity. Wealth is evidence of virtue. And when the government comes for a man of faith, it is not justice arriving at his door. It is persecution. It is Caesar reaching into the temple. It is, in the most operatically self-serving formulation available to the English language, an attack on religious freedom itself.

Jim Bakker preached this sermon from a theme park in South Carolina before he went to prison for fraud. Jimmy Swaggart preached it between scandals. Joel Osteen preaches it still, from a former NBA arena in Houston that seats sixteen thousand worshippers, each of whom has been assured by a man with dental work that costs more than most of their cars that God’s favor manifests in the material w…