There are an awful lot of people in the US who spout what they think is “traditional” religion (it really isn’t; what they mostly put forth is a 20th century invention) and seem to be able to convince big crowds to come listen to them talk (they talk a lot) and to donate money or sign up with dues or buy merch or…something, always involving money.
Maybe I’m being cynical, and I can admit to a lot of cynicism, but for many years I have wondered whether all of these people are grifters and con artists who just latched onto an effective scam. Do they really believe the stuff they spew? Do they really study the Bible and try to distill significant lessons and truths from it? There are certainly some in there. But there’s a lot of other stuff in there too, and the folks with the big audiences seem to really cherry-pick what they decide to include and omit.
Here’s an example who’s been in the news lately: the late Charlie Kirk. I think it’s bad form to speak ill of the dead, and I think it’s truly a tragedy that he was killed in cold blood, apparently for either the things he said or for just being a prominent personality. But I gather that a fair amount of what he espoused was relatively religious, at least in its chain of justification. And I wonder if he really believed it all, or if it was a performance. An act.
These people who spew religious and quasi-religious verbiage at big crowds are sometimes pretty obviously just performing. There’s a whole movement, with some number of performers, spouting something that I’ve heard called the “prosperity gospel” or “prosperity bible” or something like that. That seems to me a prima facie act. Not a single thing Jesus said was about how you should get rich; quite the opposite.
And I suspect there are probably true believers who happen to be charismatic actors, and manage to gather crowds to listen to them; they probably really do believe what they espouse, and maybe the money they collect is really for charitable causes.
But then there are all those in between. I can’t help thinking about L. Ron Hubbard, who was a very prolific author, mostly of science fiction, who said “If you want to make a little money, write a book. If you want to make a lot of money, create a religion.”
