Consecrating Colorblindness: The Symbiotic Rise of the American Prosperity Gospel and Colorblind Conservatism, from Brown to Bakke

This paper analyzes the relationship between prosperity gospel theology and colorblind conservatism in the years between Brown v. Board and the 1978 Bakke ruling. It argues that the boom in prosperity gospel churches and platforms in the 60s and 70s is both a product of and contributor to the rise of colorblind conservatism during those decades due to the way the prosperity gospel's highly individualistic theology paints a lack of success as stemming exclusively from personal moral failure and not from systemic barriers to upward mobility for non-white Americans. Because God and the free market would bless and chasten individuals as they deserved, under this framework, any policies that took into consideration a degree of racial preference—like affirmative action or today's DEI policies—could and would be labeled an infringement on the rights and freedoms of those they passed over—namely, white Americans.