The perfect moral justification of the far-right for its agenda of cuts, exclusion, and savage individualism
There are marriages of convenience that end up changing the course of history, and not precisely for the better. Today we witness one of the most disconcerting and destructive pacts of our time: the increasingly evident idyll between the far-right political movements and prosperity theology. This religious current, born in the evangelical laboratories of the United States and rooted in a poorly digested Calvinism, has found its perfect ally in radical nationalism to land in Europe and colonize our societies.
We are not facing a simple coincidence of agendas; we are facing an ideological fusion that seeks to change the very idea of what is just, what is moral, and what is sacred.
The “Gospel of the Dollar”: Calvinism stripped of community
To understand this phenomenon, one must look at the DNA of prosperity theology. This current took the old Calvinist idea that material success in work could be a sign of divine favor. But it stripped it of all the ethics of austerity, sobriety, and communal responsibility that the original Puritans defended.
The result was a hypercapitalist caricature: If you have faith, if you make a pact with God (and if you leave your money in the mega-church), God will return it to you multiplied with wealth, health, and success. The great danger of this discourse is not only its spiritual emptiness but its human brutality, as it turns poverty into a sin. Under this logic, the poor, the unemployed, or the sick are because they lack faith or have not tried hard enough. Compassion disappears, and inequality is blessed from the pulpit.
The pact of convenience with the far-right
Why has the European far-right decided to align itself with this dynamic imported from America? The answer is simple: because it offers them the perfect moral justification for their agenda of cuts, exclusion, and savage individualism.
In Europe, social tradition has always defended that caring for the weak—through public healthcare, social aid, or common services—is a duty of justice. The far-right needs to break this consensus of solidarity to impose its policies. And this is where the Trojan horse of prosperity proves extremely useful.
We are not facing a purely spiritual influence, but a real financial infrastructure. Mass fundraising techniques and the capital of US religious corporations today nourish large international networks that inject funds into Europe. They finance political summits, sponsor social media campaigns, and advise European far-right leaders on strategies to mobilize votes based on fear.
In Europe, social tradition has always defended that caring for the weak—through public healthcare, social aid, or common services—is a duty of justice. The far-right needs to break this consensus of solidarity to impose its policies. And this is where this Trojan horse of prosperity proves extremely useful, deploying its strategy on four clear fronts:
Legitimizing selfishness: By preaching that success is an individual divine reward, taxes and social spending begin to be seen as theft from the citizen whom God has blessed.
Disdain for the vulnerable: Xenophobia and rejection of immigrants or the marginalized are no longer presented as cruelty but as a defense of the values of good citizens. The far-right discourse provides the wall; prosperity theology puts the crucifix on top of it.
Religion as an identity weapon: They are not interested in the revolutionary message of the Gospel, but in religion as a cultural label to signal who is inside and who is outside the homeland.
The smokescreen of the “culture war”: They use the obsession with the anti-gender agenda and the supposed defense of the traditional family as a magnet to capture believers. Once inside the net, the message subtly transforms: to defend the faith, one must defend the free market and cuts. Sexual morality becomes the perfect anesthetic so that the citizen accepts the loss of their own labor and social rights.
The consequences: A soulless temple
The consequences of this political-religious virus taking root in our soil are devastating. Faith is emptied of all its prophetic strength and becomes a simple tool of political marketing. The bridges of empathy and coexistence are destroyed, replaced by fear of the future and the worship of material success.
The greatest achievement of this alliance has been to unify the vocabulary of exclusion globally. The same concept of “good citizens” coined by Trumpism in the U.S. and which Bolsonaro repeated until satiety in Brazil to justify abandoning the most vulnerable is what the far-right uses today on our continent. A perverse label that divides the world between those who produce and succeed (the supposed blessed) and those who need state help (the eternal suspects).
When the politics of hate embraces the theology of money, society becomes a much colder and more hostile place. The churches and parties that fall into this net end up defending a system where human beings are only valuable for what they produce or what they have in the bank. In the end, this God tailored to the far-right and the markets is not the God who liberates and accompanies; it is simply the old golden calf dressed in the national flag.
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