ON FIRE FOR GOD

A tale of rural misery, religious charlatans, and the rise of MAGA Christianity.

“Nothing makes me angrier than a rigged game where the participants are told it’s easy to win yet end up walking away with their heads bowed in shame,” writes journalist Hesse. That’s what the “prosperity gospel” preachers of his rural Iowa youth promised: Trust in God, and riches will follow—and be sure to leave a healthy donation in the collection plate. Far-right Republicans have conned pastors and parishioners in turn to believe that Jesus loves the rich and despises the poor, says the author. A swirl of influences is in play: the loss of jobs and family farms to megacorporations and offshoring, the resentment of working-class whites when nonwhites received the same welfare benefits (aka “government assistance”) that they did, and a widespread feeling among rural people that they’d been left behind. There’s not a lot new in that analysis, but at least it comes from firsthand experience. It might be thought of as the antidote to J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy. Indeed, Hesse has some choice words for Vance, who, he holds, “ignores all the factors increasingly narrowing the options of working-class people, and only recognizes the shortcomings of the individual.” It’s the prosperity gospel all over again. Hesse lands many good points, linking the Jesus Freak movement of the early 1970s to the antinomian tendencies of QAnon and MAGA, filtered through erstwhile intermediaries like Rush Limbaugh, “the corpulent clone of Billy James Hargis.” Hesse’s book wants to be a memoir, a history of religious flimflammery, and a study of how the predatory, politicized Christianity of today came about; some of the narrative goes deep, but some just skims the surface. A good effort all the same, it asks a meaningful question: “Have you ever seen Donald Trump emit a hearty belly laugh?”

Worthy of attention for its personal view of an “American theocracy” in the making.