Acting on complaints from the public, Senator Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, recently launched an investigation into alleged financial wrongdoing involving six high-profile televangelists, all of whom run "non-profit" organizations. The allegations involve governing boards that are not independent and which allow exorbitant salaries, housing allowances and luxuries such as private jets and Rolls Royces. One of the ministers under investigation is the aptly-named Creflo Dollar, the pastor of World Changers Church International, who is well-known for preaching the "Prosperity Gospel." And he's not just mouthing off -- The Reverend Dollar is himself apparently a living model of the Word Made Flesh. He owns several Rolls Royces, a private jet, a million-dollar home in Atlanta and a $2.5 million Manhattan apartment.
In response to Grassley's concerns, Dollar's attorney has expressed concern about giving documents to the government, arguing that such action could trample on the constitutional rights of people to practice religious beliefs without government interference. But this futile back-and-forth seems somehow beside the point. Better Senator Grassley should simply acknowledge that money has long served the ritual function of religion. Money, that purest of symbols, is the most natural of gods; our belief in it, our conformity to its standards, simply goes without saying. Like the god of the Old Testament, money is vengeful, strict and demanding. If you don't conform to its laws, you'll be severely punished, perhaps --depending on which state you live in -- even put to death; but if, like the Reverend Dollar, you accept its power and preach the "Prosperity Gospel," you can achieve eternal life, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.
In his book, Escape From Evil, originally published in 1975, cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker marshals convincing cultural and historical evidence to make the case that since the beginning of time, human beings have used and discarded what historians sometimes describe as "immortality symbols" -- in other words, representations of cosmic power and divinity. Coins are physical mementos of these idealized mental images; the circular coin, for instance, represents the crown, the halo, and the orbs of sun and moon; banknotes bear the images of kings, presidents, and other heroes.
Today's immortality symbols take a more abstract form than gold under the floorboards or moneybags in the safe; now they take the form of wills, estates, memorials, grants, legacies, ministries, and, most substantial of all, foundations. Through the foundations named after them, Bill and Melinda Gates, Robert Wood Johnson, William and Flora Hewlett and their fellow donors have achieved eternal life by attaching their names to the most powerful symbol of immortality: money. A foundation assures the donor will be remembered in perpetuity -- or, at least, until their money runs out. The power of these enormous foundations is just one indication of the profound role still played by money rituals in modern society. Founding a wealthy institution is a significant way of shoring up defenses against the fear that terrifies all of us when we face the inevitability of death -- a fear that the Reverend Dollar, perhaps, knows better than most.