Rev. Wright vs. the pro-Republican 'prosperity gospel'

Sara Robinson, who also writes about the FLDS, has a new article explaining the historical context of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's theology and why conservatives are so eager to take him down. First, you have to understand the evangelical concept of the "prosperity gospel," also called the "Word of Faith." The following explanation is from Sarah Posner:

Politically, Word of Faith is essentially a conservative movement that benefits from conservative policies....The prosperity gospel doesn't need regulation or legislation. A believer doesn't need the government to regulate corporations. If you don't make enough money, it's your own fault for not believing enough, for not speaking the word, for not claiming what is divinely yours. A believer doesn't need a government safety net if things go wrong. As [televangelist Rod] Parsley says, "The best thing government can do to help the poor is get out of the way. If government reduced taxes, removed industrial restraints, eliminated wage controls, and abolished subsidies, tariff[s], and other constraints on free enterprise, the poor would be helped in a way that AFDC, Social Security, and unemployment could never match." ...His gospel is the ultimate laissez-faire capitalism, regulated only by the invisible hand of God.

Robinson continues:

Needless to say: not everybody welcomed this new gospel with open arms. Millions of devout Evangelicals who've read their Bibles and noted Jesus' contempt for greed, as well as those who hew to older and more rigorous theologies like the Social Gospel and King-style liberation theology, find the whole thing beyond offensive and verging on blasphemy. From the beginning, some of the country's leading ministers, both black and white, have taken public exception to the idea of reducing God to the status of a personal ATM machine — and have pushed back hard against a movement that they feel is a not only an IRS-sanctioned form of fraud, but also a heresy against 2,000 years of Christian teaching.

And here's where Jeremiah Wright comes into the story. According to Posner, Wright has been a visible and articulate critic of the GOP's new pet theology over the years — one of a noisy clutch of ministers who've made no bones about the mischief inherent in this new theology. He's also a respected and insightful proponent of black liberation theology, holding King's torch high in the face of unscrupulous preachers who think they're helping poor people by cajoling them to vote away their safety net and toss their government checks in the offering plate. [...]

[T]urning Wright into a national demon was a two-fer. They could not only tank the Democrats' front-runner; they'd also take down a serious and persuasive theologian who's been calling them out hard on one of their longest-running and most successful efforts to sell the conservative worldview to the very people who stand to be most harmed by it.