Many pixels have been spent in recent years trying to sort out how and why American society—and American Christianity in particular—is so divided. In the church, a new cottage industry has emerged promising to help us mend our fences.
The usual suspects make regular appearances in our stories about church division: the boomers who never got on board with the seeker-sensitive movement, the white southerners who largely failed to heed the testimonies of their Black-church neighbors, the vehement partisans on both sides of the aisle.
In recent years, much work has been done to address these divisions over theology, race, and politics. But another source of division, one identified in Scripture more than any of these, has largely been ignored: wealth.
If we’re looking for what pulls American Christians apart—both throughout culture and within particular churches—we cannot make full scriptural sense of the problem without thinking about money. And our hesitancy to bring it up is all the more reason to do so, for the Bible is full of counsel about the divisiveness of wealth.
Before I continue, however, it’s important to name what I do not mean. To speak of money as a source of division is not to say we as Christians should feel bad about being able to pay our bills and provide for our families. Some Christians are called to voluntary poverty, sure, but not all. I’m also not suggesting Christians are uncharitable with our wealth. On the contrary, a growing body of evidence suggests that Americans who go to church (and other houses of worship) give more money to charitable organizations, and that generosity with time also corresponds to religious belief. Even after the tumult of the pandemic, Christian giving has mostly stabilized.
We should also recognize that the Old Testament—where wealth is often seen as a sign of divine favor—can complicate how we think about money. The wealth of Abraham marks him as blessed by God, for example. Job’s initial wealth is connected to his faithfulness (1:1–3, 9–10), and Ecclesiastes says possessions come from God’s hand (5:19–20).
But for every equation of material wealth with blessing, the Old Testament also gives us pictures of wealth creating division among God’s people. Consider Solomon, who oppressed his own people to build the temple and homes for foreign dignitaries (1 Kings 5:13–14; 12:4), or David, rebuked as a rich man oppressing a poor peasant (2 Sam. 12).
The New Testament makes even clearer the temptations of wealth and money’s ability to divide God’s people. The Letter from James alone should give us serious pause: It links our desire for wealth to preferential treatment (2:1–7) and to murder, covetousness, fights, and quarrels (4:1–3). James warns the rich in particular that hoarded wealth corrodes, distorts, and leads to other sins, like defrauding and oppressing the poor (5:1–6). We should take note. And when Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell us the story of a law-abiding man who did not follow Jesus because of his wealth, we should take note of that too (Matt. 19:16–30; Mark 10:17–31; Luke 18:18–30).
The teachings here are stark and consistent. It is not that those with money are necessarily immoral but that wealth attracts tempting problems: prestige, power, luxury, flattery, the illusion of self-sufficiency.
In 1 Timothy 6:17–19, Paul identifies not just the love of money as an issue but wealth itself as a dangerous source of alternative hope:
Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.
This sheds light on James’s wisdom of how wealth divides a congregation. Money shapes us, schooling us in how we hope, how we think of ourselves and others, what kind of lives we seek. This is how wealth can divide a congregation.
When early Christians pondered these passages and wealth’s power, some, like Clement of Alexandria, emphasized the disposition of the heart: Great wealth is not a problem, he taught, so long as one is generous, for the virtuous could not be hurt by their possessions. But Clement also recognized that, realistically, few are capable of this kind of virtue.
A more common interpretation was that of John Chrysostom, who preached six different sermons on Lazarus and the rich man to demonstrate the dangers wealth poses. And as eminent historian Peter Brown demonstrates, Chrysostom was far from alone in his approach. Early Christians frequently understood wealth to be toxic to the soul, and they encouraged rich to rid themselves of their wealth throughout their lives. As church historian Helen Rhee has shown, preachers in the early church warned of the dangers of riches for the sake of wealthy souls.
Evaluating this status in absolute terms is notoriously difficult: One can be manifestly poor in America and yet wealthy by global standards. But in any case, Scripture and the early church, in their warnings about wealth, emphasize persistent generosity and persistent use of our resources for the sake of others. To treat wealth as indifferent is to invite it to shape our loves, our practices, and ultimately, our ways of gatherings as the people of God. The point in these warnings is that wealth and the pursuit of wealth does work on us, and that the Christian should hold wealth loosely as a result.
So what do we do if wealth finds us? Sometimes this may happen to us as Christians through no fault of our own—inheritance, hard work, or skills that particular societies value may bring great money our way, like it or not.
Whatever the circumstances, the counsel of Scripture and the early church is clear: Wealth comes with danger. We may like to think we’ll be virtuous enough to handle it well, but if we are wise, we will doubt that instinct. The greater our wealth, the greater our folly to think we will succeed where David and Solomon failed. Sin, including division from other Christians, is more often than not how Scripture depicts such stories ending.
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Looking at wealth as an explanation of divisions in the American church doesn’t require us to dismiss or downplay other factors like age, race, and politics. Rather, it helps us see a fuller picture. For example, older generations have typically been able to accumulate more wealth than younger generations. Partisanship correlates with income, too. White Americans have more wealth than any other Americans, and average incomes vary substantially among Christian denominations.
Wealth shapes who our companions are. We might not want to admit it, but studies consistently demonstrate the role wealth plays in shaping where we go to church, whom we befriend, who is beside us in the pews. And if we only attend to other sources of division, wealth operates unseen, an invisible influence over every part of our lives, a silent danger.
Thankfully, the guidance of Scripture and the first Christians still holds: Use wealth for good, and quickly.
Accumulation of great wealth is not an opportunity for license, for building bigger barns (Luke 12:16–21). It presents Christians with an obligation to prompt service and generosity. In the congregations of the New Testament, we see a mixture of rich and poor, of those with great means and those with less. The wealthy have responsibilities the poor do not. Paul fittingly names and thanks those who host the churches’ gatherings because they are the ones with the means to make those meetings possible—and often to cover the expenses of the church at large, to pay for buildings and the livelihoods of ministers and missionaries.
“Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required” (Luke 12:48, RSV). As Henri Nouwen wrote in his little-read book on fundraising, the giving of wealth becomes a way for the giver to share in the mission of the church. Generosity redirects wealth to meet real needs, not least the need to avoid the grave spiritual risks of riches.
Myles Werntz is author of From Isolation to Community: A Renewed Vision for Christian Life Together. He writes at Taking Off and Landing and teaches at Abilene Christian University.
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