Inside the megachurch theology that says God wants you rich — and the poor just need more faith.
You might think that Jesus and today’s Evangelicals are all playing on the same team. However, it is a rather hard “no” on that one.
If you are familiar with what Jesus both said and did, then you will soon appreciate that there is a rather glaring contrast in play. So how does that work, how do Evangelicals manage to justify what they both say and do in his name?
I’m not religious. Where I’m going here pivots off a recently published paper by a Ph.D. candidate at The Ohio State University named Dawson Vosburg. It concerns something rather glaring. Jesus was very much into helping the poor and he also very openly condemned excessive wealth as highly problematic. Take for example this quote …
Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. – Matthew 19:23–24
Meanwhile, you have modern day evangelicals looking upon poverty as “your fault”, and any lack of wealth is simply you not having enough faith and so god is not blessing you with heaps of cash.
I should add, “Not all Christians“. But yes, for far too many this is true. There is also data. Take for example a 2017 survey …
- A poll by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation, conducted 13 April–1 May 2017 among 1,686 U.S. adults, asked: Which is generally more to blame for a person’s poverty — lack of effort or difficult circumstances beyond their control?
- Among Christians: 46% said lack of effort is generally to blame. Among non-Christians: 29% said the same.
- Among white evangelical Protestants: 53% said lack of effort, while 41% said circumstances. Catholics: 50% said lack of effort, 45% said circumstances
So how do believers square this circle and handle the contrast between the actual teachings of Jesus and what they themselves now believe. It is this question that the paper digs into.
What exactly did the study do?
The question being pondered over was this – How can Evangelicals accept and justify economic inequality when Jesus himself condemned it?
To address this one of the fastest growing and popular megachurches in the US was selected and then all their sermons delivered over a ten year period (2013 to 2023) were analysed. This involved filtering them with appropriate words such as “rich”, “money”, “tithe”, etc… to identify the subset that discussed personal finances.
The study does not explicitly identify which church it was, and for the sake of the study they refer to it “New River”. Actually, it is easy enough to work out, and so I name them at the end.
The results are truly interesting and demonstrate how Evangelicals bend and twist the actual teachings of Jesus.
Titled ““I Thank God We’re Rich”: Justifying Economic Inequality in an Evangelical Congregation” it was published on Aug 25, 2025 within the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. It is open access, so you can read the entire paper without hitting a paywall.
The abstract reads …
Christianity has been the inspiration for a variety of responses to economic inequality in the United States and beyond. However, evangelicalism has been associated in the literature with consistent justification of unequal economic circumstances. To investigate how evangelical leaders confront the conflict between inequality and egalitarian passages of the Bible, I conducted a sermon analysis study of New River, a Midwestern suburban megachurch, leveraging their sermon archive of 395 recorded messages spanning 10 years. New River’s pastors justified economic inequality in several ways: proclaiming that God did not condemn ownership of vast wealth; minimizing domestic inequality in comparison to global inequality; selectively spiritualizing economic passages of the Bible; and saying that God owns everything and thus the status quo distribution is justified. My findings provide a detailed portrait of the process of evangelical clergy inequality justification and discussion of the social forces that incentivize justifying inequality.
OK, so what do we actually discover via this study?
What is apparent to many is that Evangelicals favor the status quo of inequality and are not in any way motivated to call for any change, so what we gain is an insight into how they persuade their flock to go along with this.
There already exists a lot that has been documented about the process by which evangelicals, both laity and leaders, justify gender and racial inequality. This paper now builds upon such insights to demonstrate the parallel tendency for the justification of economic inequality.
I should add, that they don’t just justify economic inequality, but they also generally oppose any attempt to enact policies that might reduce inequality.
The analysis conducted identified the following four themes of inequality justification:
- Criticizing “rich shaming”
- Trivializing domestic inequality by pointing to global inequality
- Selectively spiritualizing economic passages of the Bible
- Using the notion that “God owns everything” to dismiss inequality complaints
Before we get into the details, I should add that the paper does discuss exactly where “New River” fits in within the context of modern religious movements.
New River in context
I mentioned it earlier, that New River, and also the pastors name are not the real names. So here is how they describe the setup …
New River, just over 10 years old, is one of the fastest growing megachurches in America, according to Outreach Magazine. According to the church’s most recent publicly available annual report, average in-person attendance in January to February of 2020, prior to COVID-related closure, was around 5700, and they report an average weekly virtual attendance during the subsequent months (where services were only virtual) of around 22,000. Though New River first met at a movie theater near a public university, they now meet in four physical campuses located in and around the city—one in the expensive, hip arts district, two in suburbs of the central city, and one beside a near-suburban mall, a church that was previously independent but merged with New River just before the pandemic. New River is part of an evangelical megachurch-planting association with over 600 churches around North America, but no official denomination, meaning all authority over the congregation is from within. The pastor, Tray Jarett, is in his late 30s and moved to the city with a group of a dozen or so other adults and planted the church with his wife Bekah Jarett. His college area of study was business rather than ministry or theology, gaining ministry experience as a youth pastor. His hair is smoothly styled and nearly always fresh-cut, and he dresses in what is increasingly the norm among pastors of “cool” flocks such as Steven Furtick of Elevation Church or the now-disgraced Carl Lentz of Hillsong NYC: a contemporary, casual street style with various pairs of expensive and collectible sneakers on display.
New River is part of what may be called a second wave of evangelical megachurches. In contrast to the business–casual formalism of earlier evangelical megachurches like Saddleback Church in California or Willow Creek Church in Illinois, this wave is typified by high-tech services complete with cinematic multicamera projections on the screen, digital art splashed across the back of the stage, and loud, professionally produced worship music in a dark auditorium. Whereas earlier megachurch styles mimicked the corporate design familiar to baby boomers, New River’s minimalist aesthetic resembles online and millennial-focused brands. The services are highly casual, and it is clear that the “target audience” is young professionals. Though the church presents itself as “urban,” “diverse,” and city-focused on its website and in its sermons, all its locations are in majority-White and relatively affluent parts of the area. Pastor Tray has said, when interviewed by a church planting-focused publication, that his goal in planting New River was to reach millennials with a kind of Christianity that put “authenticity” and “excellence” at the forefront. From my in-person exploratory visits, I found the church’s flagship campus to be architecturally more similar to a mall or department store than a traditional church, evoking no religious connotations in its style or with traditional visual symbolism such as crosses.
Despite this slick, contemporary presentation, New River self-proclaims a conservative reading of the Bible, “male headship” in marriage and leadership, and teaches heterosexual marriage to be the exclusive realm for legitimate sexual activity. Frequent references are made to widely known evangelical leaders such as David Jeremiah and Andy Stanley, with guest preachers from Stanley’s church making frequent appearances. At the time of study, New River’s website hosted an About section which contained typical statements of evangelical beliefs about the Bible, Jesus’ crucifixion, and the afterlife. There is little indication that New River associates with typical figures of “prosperity theology.” Although, as we will see, New River does engage in some prosperity theology practices, it remains aligned with mainstream evangelicalism.
The above offers enough clues to work out who this really is, but I’ll save that for the end.
OK, let’s dive into what we learn from the study.
Discovery 1- No Rich shaming
Quote from the pastor – “We’re not rich shaming anyone.”
A theme regarding the goodness of being rich repeats itself across multiple sermons. The pastor loves money, or to be a tad more precise, he loves those with lots of money and no doubt he also loves their willingness to tithe.
What is clear is this – While New River occasionally links wealth with the duty to be generous, it stops short of asceticism. Pastor Tray (remember, that’s a fake name for the real pastor) encouraged congregants to pursue wealth without guilt, even as a personal dream: “Maybe your dream’s to be rich. There’s nothing wrong with that.” Luxury goods, large houses, and “lake houses” were celebrated as blessings from God to be enjoyed — as long as believers stay spiritually attentive. (I’d translate that as – stay involved in the church and keep giving to it).
Ultimately, New River’s sermons promote a theology that justifies economic inequality by portraying wealth as a divine blessing rather than a moral risk. Rich Christians are not to be judged but celebrated, and prosperity is framed as compatible with — even evidence of — God’s favor.
I do have to add this hopefully rather obvious thought – The “no wealth shaming” stance distorts Scripture by detaching it from its historical and moral context. It is true that the Bible doesn’t condemn money itself — but it unambiguously condemns wealth hoarding, exploitation, and complacency in the face of inequality. Jesus, James, and the prophets called not for guilt, but for justice, generosity, and solidarity with the poor — precisely the message this whacky Evangelical reinterpretation avoids.
Discovery 2 -We’re All Rich: Minimizing Inequality
Apparently when compared to the rest of the world, nobody in the US is poor, there is no real inequality.
Huh!
The stance being taken is basically this (and this is a quote from the Pastor) – Anyone earning more than $300 annually is among the global top 25%, and those earning over $33,000–$45,000 fall in the top 1%. By this logic, even America’s poorest citizens count as wealthy “if you can see the world as God sees it.”
This framing serves several purposes: it shifts attention away from domestic inequality, portrays U.S. poverty as relative rather than real, and reinforces the message that wealth is not morally suspect. By asserting that “even the homeless are abundantly blessed” compared to others globally, Tray presents inequality as spiritually insignificant.
Theologically, this argument depends not on scripture but on the preacher’s own authority, claiming that viewing inequality this way is equivalent to “seeing as God sees.” The effect is to promote solidarity among Americans as “blessed” people and to justify vast disparities in wealth as part of God’s providence and individual freedom.
I just have to step in at this juncture and point out a few very obvious things that are oh so very wrong here.
Comparing U.S. incomes to global averages ignores the radically different costs of living between countries. A person earning $33,000 a year in the U.S. is not “globally rich” when rent, healthcare, transportation, and food prices are factored in. According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, $33,000 barely covers basic living costs for a single adult in most U.S. cities, and falls far below the poverty line for a family of four.
The U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2024, about 12% of Americans (≈40 million people) lived below the official poverty line, and many more experience “material hardship”—lacking secure housing, food, or medical care. Feeding America estimates that 1 in 8 children live in food-insecure households. This contradicts the claim that “even the poorest are abundantly blessed.”
The Federal Reserve’s 2023 Survey of Consumer Finances shows that the top 1% of households hold nearly one-third of all U.S. wealth, while the bottom 50% hold just 2.5%. These utterly absurd and morally repugnant disparities translate into vastly different life outcomes—health, education, and life expectancy—not mere differences in comfort.
Moral and economic concern for inequality does not depend on being absolutely destitute. By the same logic, no social injustice would ever merit concern because someone elsewhere suffers more. This argument relativizes suffering and discourages social responsibility, contrary to both Christian ethics and sound moral reasoning.
And finally, claiming that “to see as God sees” means to downplay domestic inequality and also replaces theological reasoning with rhetoric. Biblical scholarship overwhelmingly recognizes that both Hebrew prophets and Jesus condemned exploitation and warned against indifference to the poor. The message of James 5 directly challenges, not excuses, economic inequity.
The bottom line is this – the claim that “all Americans are rich” is quite frankly deeply offensive – it is statistically misleading, economically inaccurate, and theologically inconsistent. It confuses global averages with local realities, minimizes genuine hardship, and inverts the moral intent of the biblical texts cited.
Discovery 3 – Spiritualized Bible Interpretation
This next bit is an old trick used by both the fake prophets and many others. If you remember Harold Camping making his infamous rapture prediction for a specific date and then watching as that date came and went with absolutely nothing happening, what he did next was to deploy this trick as an excuse – “But it did happen, you just don’t see it because it happened on a spiritual level only“. Well guess what, New River, who are a church that made a big deal of being biblical literalists, will also use this trick whenever they trip up over a verse in the bible that does not align with what they need it to say.
What the study reveals is that at New River Church, sermons frequently reinterpret biblical passages about wealth and poverty in ways that neutralize their material implications and support existing economic inequality. In a sermon series on the Beatitudes, Pastor Tray Jarrett initially seemed to affirm social justice as part of “hungering and thirsting for righteousness,” citing Jesus’s mission to “preach good news to the poor.” However, he immediately clarified that “the poor” referred not to those who are financially poor, but to the “spiritually impoverished.” This move—redefining economic poverty as spiritual poverty—recurred across every sermon that referenced the poor, effectively stripping these passages of social or economic meaning.
When preaching on the story of the rich man and Lazarus, Pastor Tray similarly denied that the text condemned wealth or inequality, insisting instead that the story was about spiritual readiness for death, not about the moral dangers of wealth or the suffering of the poor. The “problem” of the rich man was his lack of a relationship with God, not his material abundance. In contrast, the poor man’s salvation was attributed solely to his faith, not his economic condition. By emphasizing that “God’s not against wealth, just wealth having people,” the sermon removed any challenge to material inequality from the biblical text.
As I mentioned above, despite routinely spiritualizing biblical warnings about wealth, New River does not apply this principle consistently. When preaching about tithing, Pastor Tray insisted on literal, material obedience—giving 10% of one’s income to the church. The tithe is presented as a divine guarantee of financial protection and prosperity: those who tithe are “the most insulated and protected people on the planet,” while those facing financial hardship are said to have “turned from God.” This teaching implies that economic outcomes directly reflect one’s faithfulness, transforming structural inequality into a matter of individual spiritual responsibility.
In other words, New River’s theology selectively materializes or spiritualizes biblical economics to reinforce inequality. Passages that critique wealth or uplift the poor are rendered symbolic and non-material, while those that serve church interests—like the tithe—are taken literally and tied to promises of divine material reward. The overall effect is a theological system that legitimizes wealth accumulation, blames the poor for their condition, and aligns spiritual righteousness with financial success.
I’d love to be there just once to see the look on the pastor’s face as I explain, “But Pastor, I have tithed, I did it on a spiritual level, that’s why you can’t see it in your bank account“
Discovery 4 – God Owns Everything
New River’s final major justification of inequality rests on the claim that “God owns everything.” Pastor Tray Jarrett uses this idea to argue that wealth accumulation is not morally wrong and that believers should feel no guilt about possessing more than others. Because everything ultimately belongs to God, the logic follows that God has intentionally distributed resources unequally—those with more have simply received more of God’s blessings. Even when acknowledging that wealth can be used oppressively, Pastor Tray frames wealth itself as a divine gift that must only be used responsibly, not as something that could be unjustly acquired.
This theology also preserves meritocratic reasoning. While claiming that God owns all things, Pastor Tray insists that people’s ability to generate wealth is itself a gift from God, thereby validating unequal outcomes as both earned and divinely ordained. In sermons, he discourages questioning inequality, teaching that God gives everyone exactly what they need “according to their ability” and warning congregants not to “worry about what others have.” Ultimately, inequality is framed as the natural and righteous result of God’s will—questioning it would mean questioning God’s wisdom.
In other words, their stance is this – if I have money then it is my divine right to have it, and if you don’t have money then it is the will of God, and I have no obligation to give you any help or donations.
If you have not already done a few face-palms, then about here would be an appropriate place to do so.
One last Reveal
The study paper masks the name of the church and the pastor’s real name, but there are enough clues to work out which church this really is. Using when it was founded, the fact that they have 5 locations, and the numbers that attend all give good solid hints.
The reveal – it’s Rock City Church in Ohio and the pastor’ real name is Chad Fisher.
I should also once again add that not all embrace such thinking. The challenge however is that way too many do, and so 81% of Evangelicals happily voted for their beloved Lord and Saviour to be in the White House, and so here we are now, living in a hell of their own making.
You can also most probably guess that if Jesus really did turn up at their door one day, they would most probably toss him out.