Natural disasters like Hurricane Harvey are the worst kind of crises for people like Mr. Trump and Mr. Osteen, who purvey their own versions of the prosperity gospel. Hurricanes and catastrophic floods do not provide the winning narratives crucial to keep adherents chained to prosperity gospel thinking. This empathy-less prosperity gospel also permeates attitudes about the role of our government. Mr. Trump and Mr. Osteen aren’t the first to display such tone deafness. Mr. Trump and Mr. Osteen unwittingly revealed its ugly underbelly: the smugness, the self-aggrandizing posturing.

Source: New York Times August 31, 2017 00:00 UTC