Bobby Ross brings together some religious reporting on both candidates and gives us one of those instantly clarifying paradigms. I’ll summarize after the jump.
Hillary Clinton, with her early activism in the Methodist Church, exemplifies the Social Gospel. This is the strain of liberal theology that teaches that the business of the church is not to save individuals for the Kingdom of God in eternity, but to save society by building the Kingdom of God on earth.
Donald Trump, whose family when he was growing up attended Norman Vincent Peale’s congregation, exemplifies the Prosperity Gospel. In fact, it’s the TV preachers of the Prosperity Gospel who constituted his earliest “evangelical” supporters. The Prosperity Gospel teaches that if you just believe hard enough, God will give you earthly success. Notice, for example, how Trump doesn’t give policy details about exactly how he will fix America’s problems, but rather treats them as fixable by the sheer force of his willpower and his positive thinking, exhorting voters to “believe me!”
Both the Social Gospel and the Prosperity Gospel promote a “this worldly” faith. As opposed to the actual Gospel of Christ dying for sinners and giving them eternal life.See Bobby Ross, Jr., Prosperity gospel vs. social gospel: What religion means to Trump, Clinton & Co. — GetReligion
