I was once told by a man of the cloth, one of the old-fashioned kind who still believed the Red Letters were more than just a stylistic choice by the printer, that the quickest way to lose your soul is to find a way to sell it at a profit. Now, I’ve seen many a curious thing in my travels, but nothing quite so peculiar as the modern American spectacle where a man can be convinced that the path to the Pearly Gates is paved with high-interest newsletters and a healthy dose of loathing for his neighbor.
It seems we have entered an era where the Good Book has been traded for the Ledger, and the Sermon on the Mount has been drowned out by the static of the “closed-loop” ecosystem.
Take, for instance, these fine folks at Salem Media. They’ve built themselves a regular spiritual fortress. On one floor, you’ve got a radio host hollering that the world is ending and the heathens are at the gate—it’s a brand of fear that would make a ghost turn pale. Then, before the listener can even catch his breath to say an “Amen,” they’re whisked away to the “Eagle Financial” wing. Here, the “solution” to this impending apocalypse isn’t prayer or a helping hand to the poor; no, it’s a subscription to an investment newsletter. It’s a marvelous bit of engineering: first you set the house on fire, then you sell the owner a bucket of water for the price of the house.
I recall a fellow from my own time, a sort of Studs Terkel before his day, who sat on a porch and watched the world go by. He’d tell you that a man’s character isn’t found in the flag he waves, but in how he treats the fellow who’s got no flag at all. Yet, in this new “Christian” narrative, we see a movement—the GOP, the MAGA crowd—that seems to have read the Beatitudes and decided they were actually a list of things to avoid.
“Blessed are the merciful,” said the Carpenter.
“Blessed are the merciless, for they shall own the libs,” says the new creed.
They claim to follow a Man who had no place to lay His head, yet they worship at the altar of a golden-haired tycoon who builds towers with other people’s money and calls it a blessing. They preach “family values” while cheering for the separation of families at the border, forgetting—perhaps conveniently—that their own Savior was a refugee in a foreign land.
It’s a strange sort of Christianity that requires a 30% stake in a news app co-owned by a politician’s son to feel spiritually nourished. They’ve got “The Fish” and “The Word” playing music that sounds like a summer breeze, while their “Townhall” sites are busy churning out a hurricane of vitriol. They use the language of the faith—words like “grace” and “redemption”—as a coat of paint to hide the rust of greed and the rot of selfishness.
If Jesus were to walk into one of these “closed-loop” studios today, I suspect He wouldn’t find much use for a financial newsletter. He’d likely be more interested in why the widow’s mite is being used to fund a political PAC, or why the “fear-mongering” emails are more popular than the commandment to “love thy neighbor.”
It’s an old trick, really. You take a man’s deepest beliefs, wrap them in a flag, and tell him that anyone who doesn’t buy the whole package is an enemy of God. But as any honest prospector will tell you, just because something glitters under the studio lights doesn’t mean it’s gold. Sometimes, it’s just a brass coin with a hole in the middle, and the only thing it’s good for is making noise.