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Thursday, May 24, 2012
November 7, 2010

Nina Berman: Prosperity Gospel

Photographer Nina Berman has been going to a lot of mega-churches, including Bishop Eddie Long’s New Birth Missionary Baptist in Lithonia, Georgia, near Atlanta. Eddie Long was in the news recently, accused of using his position to coerce gay sex with young men, even as he espouses explicitly anti-homosexual views from the pulpit.

But as Nina explains, what is more salient is that “There is a ‘Prosperity Gospel’ movement. What’s most overtly preached is that to become rich is to be closer to God, especially by giving money to the church. To be poor is a sin, to not give enough to the church. More traditional ideas of modesty, charity, humility are not part of this celebration of material possessions. It used to be a little shameful to flash your bling, but no longer. Nor is this exclusive to African-American churches.”

At the end of each service, Long sets up rope lines and tables, complete with credit card machines, to sell and sign his books. Surrounded by his entourage, this is usually the only chance that a parishioner might have to exchange a few personal words with him, while buying a book. Here he laughs at a joke. Long is above all a successful CEO, a consummate performer perfecting his brand, to a middle-class and wealthy congregation of 25,000.

Nina notes that Eddie Long is “super pumped, he’s a body builder” and that the art in the church is intensely masculine, depicting Christ as a warrior, not a peace-and-love figure surrounded by lambs.

Elaborating on her experience at the New Birth Church, Nina also observed that it was men in suits who distributed communion in those platters, while young women managed the plastic buckets collecting donations.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Atlanta, Pastor Creflo Dollar runs the equally large Creflo Dollar Ministries in College Park, Georgia. There, if the World Dome is filled to capacity, worshippers have to go into overflow rooms where they watch the sermon on television screens. Nina saw that “Creflo Dollar demands money with intensity, even though his audience is much poorer than Eddie Long’s. There was more desperation.”

–Alan Chin

PHOTOGRAPHS by NINA BERMAN / NOOR

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  • black dog barking

    3. And God said, Let there be GAAP & double entry bookkeeping: and there was GAAP and double entry bookkeeping.

    4. And God saw GAAP & double entry bookkeeping, that it was good: and God divided the rich from the poor.

  • http://ralfast.wordpress.com Rafael

    Having grown around these hucksters I know all their tricks and how desperate people flock to them in search of hope. Like playing the lottery, but with bigger production values.

  • http://narayan.visualsociety.com Narayan

    I first saw Nina’s photos from this project in a Harper’s Magazine article about the prosperity church movement. I don’t know if she is working on this as a long-term project, but I hope she is. Aside from being great images, it’s an important and intriguing story.

    For anyone interested in reading more about this movement, here is a link to the Harper’s piece- http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/03/0082868
    and to the Atlantic piece- http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/12/did-christianity-cause-the-crash/7764/

  • thomas

    These are really great shots.
    I’ve always thought prosperity gospel preachers have a pretty easy target with we Americans. I mean, they’re operating within a larger culture that is already enthralled with materiality and power, preaching to an enormous audience already convinced that spending leads to transformation. So I tend to think of these personalities and their operations less as products of a religious tradition—though they certainly are that—and more instead as the inevitable hyper-competitive, niche-seeking showboating creatures of capitalism and consumerism. It’s a match made in heaven for achievetrons like Eddie Long. As ever, caveat emptor.

  • Glenn May

    I don’t see the difference between “prosperity gospel” and any other religion. Sure, some hawk philosophical satisfaction as opposed to material, but what’s the difference? Religions are sets of superstitions devised to help us get through our days and years.
    Of course, selling this ‘roided-up homoerotic religion while at the same time condemning homosexuality is laughable, but then so is a church led by “celibate” pedophiles. Who says humans are ever consistent?

  • thomas

    Thanks for thse links, Narayan.

    and re: “I don’t see the difference between “prosperity gospel” and any other religion.” That’s a fairly easy problem to correct for anybody willing to take the time.

  • http://www.kusales.com Benny_s

    ^^

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