You know, I lived in Detroit for a long time, which is a majority Black city, and in most neighborhoods an almost 100% Black city. I mention that because I want to talk about Prosperity Gospel a little bit, which is something of a different phenomenon among economically disadvantaged people than among rich white huckster preachers.

(That said, I don't know anything about the guy you wrote about, so this is more of a riff than a direct comment.)

It's just that Prosperity Gospel was pretty popular among my Black friends and neighbors in Detroit, almost to the point that it seemed like an expected part of faith for them.

I thought that was pretty ridiculous at first, until I started thinking about how my black friends and neighbors in Detroit had a little to no expectation of prosperity by simply playing by the rules. It's not like all Black people are poor in Detroit, but the deck is certainly stacked against them. It's systemically stacked. Public schools are crumbling and mostly dysfunctional. White flight in the 60s and '70s emptied out whole neighborhoods, and you can walk down entire streets were only one out of every three houses or so is occupied.

There isn't enough property tax base to take care of the city anymore, and the state legislature, dominated by Republicans, ignores and neglects Detroit, often with barely disguised racist contempt.

Food is more expensive for people in Detroit than in many places, because grocery stores don't want to locate there, at least not outside relatively prosperous islands that dot the city.

Many Detroiters have limited horizons, because they can't imagine leaving the city. They try not to, at least not if they're driving, because cops in the surrounding municipalities are very fast to pull over cars with Black drivers, usually on flimsy pretext.

So anyway, here you have this culture where people live in a developed nation surrounded by wealthy neighborhoods, but whose own world is defined in important ways by poverty and hopelessness.

Looking at it like that, Prosperity Gospel feels more like justice than hucksterism. I'm not saying it's any more valid, but when a preacher stands up and says God wants you to be successful, wants you to overcome the obstacles the white man puts in your place to keep you down, that resonates.

And sometimes it's a positive force. It might look crass that people are thinking and talking about money all the time, but when you don't have any money and have little hope of ever having any, it's kind of natural.

And if that turns into people working hard together to further their educations, to go into business, and to become more prosperous than they thought they could, well ... it's hard to argue with that.

That's more what Prosperity Gospel is in Detroit than what it is in the white world. And yes, sometimes there's bling and gold chains and fancy cars. That turns me off, but I grew up with no doubt that I could drive a car if I wanted to and afford nice clothes and a decent place to live.

So when I diss Prosperity Gospel (and I do), I try to leave systemically disadvantaged people out of the conversation.

Again, I'm not saying that has anything to do with the guy you wrote about or his congregation. But I thought about Detroit when I watched that YouTube video.