Christianism and Money

Virginia Postrel helpfully reminds us that many parts of red state America are affluent, highly educated, high-tech and completely secure in the knowledge that one day soon, the rapture will come. I think it misunderstands the nature of contemporary fundamentalism to think of it as a back-woods, rural, uneducated phenomenon. New ideologies – especially totalist ones that fuse politics, faith and culture – are often very popular among the well-off. (It doesn’t hurt that the new Christianity celebrates wealth and acquisitiveness, rather than condemning it as, er, the Gospels do.) The needs that this kind of ideology fulfills are psychological and spiritual, not economic. Mickey doesn’t seem to understand that any better than he understands how gay people in rural America in the 1960s and 1970s might have their heads kicked in.