The Era of the Jesus Grifter
an examination of sorts
We’re knee deep in it: the era of the Jesus Grift.
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Nearly everyone online with over 3,000 followers is selling, selling, selling. The internet is not a digital journal; it is a digital marketplace, an overflowing Mall of America where people hawk relics and rosaries and rituals.
Let me say this: I obviously believe there’s a moral way to make a living while sharing your faith. (I literally charge money for this substack. There is a subscribe button in this very post!)
In 1 Timothy, Paul writes that the “laborer is worthy of his wages”. Church workers are frequently expected to do a ton of work for very little pay, as anybody who works at a church will tell you.1 When people in the church ask for wages, they’re frequently shamed, belittled, and asked why they don’t understand that their job is more of a vocation than a career, as if the Kroger workers are going to just hand you free chicken when you explain that you don’t have a career, you have a vocation! The digital space is, in many ways, a new corner of the church. People who are working diligently to bring up the kingdom of God are not automatically wrong for seeking payment for that work. I have a decade and a half of professional writing experience; I am not a volunteer.
There’s truth to the fact that when things are made well, they’re more attractive and reach more people. The Chosen wouldn’t be one of the most popular television shows in the world if it didn’t have world-class (ie., EXPENSIVE) writing, lighting, and costumes.2 SEEK conferences wouldn’t be so crowded if the music was some volunteer with a guitar and free time. Bishop Barron’s YouTube videos wouldn’t gain much traction if they were edited by the bishop himself in his free time using tutorials he found online. But all three of those things have made massive impacts on people’s very real faith lives.
Fewer people are tuning into cable news and talk radio as they instead prefer to get their news from podcasts, YouTube, and social media. You can dislike that trend, but it doesn’t make it less true. Why should an anchor on EWTN be paid a fair and living wage while someone reporting Catholicism news on substack or YouTube isn’t? I would pay for
before I would pay for an old-school physical Catholic newspaper, due to the season of life I’m in.There’s often a gendered aspect to this conversation—many people don’t bat an eye at a male YouTuber, but chastise a female Instagrammer for being a #JesusGirlie. The Very Online Woman is one of the last group of people we can feel free to mock openly, and a lot of people thoroughly enjoy using those they view as fitting that category as the sounding boards for their own Christian superiority.
Things cost money. I very frequently get yelled at via e-mail that too many of my pieces are paywalled. My favorite comment lately was “I want to read that, but I’m not willing to pay for it.” Okay? Please picture me walking into Target and saying “I want this platter, but I’m not willing to pay for it.” I now bless + delete, but back in the day I would spend precious time reminding the person that it costs me money to keep old podcast episodes up for free, send my children to childcare so that I can write well, and have a roof over my head so that I’m not on the literal street. My upcoming pilgrimage is expensive. Do you know why? Because plane tickets across an ocean are expensive. Because gas is expensive and pilots deserve to be paid and yes, perhaps some airline owner is padding her thick pockets but she also does probably work hard to own a successful airline and you know what? None of that matters because I don’t set the price of airline tickets! The South of France? Expensive!
With all of that throat-clearing out of the way, let’s talk about identifying what I like to call Jesus Grifters.
Jesus grifters are not people that are simply trying to make a living.
They are people who are trying to make money off of your spiritual, existentail fears. They’re pouring seeds of anxiety into your heart, and making you believe that if you only open your wallet, Heaven is before you.
There are always—always—going to be loud arguments about what’s Christian and what isn’t. Are open borders Christian? Are international aid programs Christian? Is supporting this war or that war Christian? And when people are anxious and glancing around and trying their best to make holy decisions, there’s a group of people who will capitalize on that fear all the way to the bank. These are the people whose favorite bible verses are about Jesus flipping tables or bringing a sword instead of peace; the people who will respond to literally any slightly negative piece of feedback with “that’s just your guilty conscience talking”. Jesus grifters are obviously not new (see: Simon the Magician from Acts 8:9-24). But our online world has made it so much easier for these types of people to gain prominence, power, and pennies.
So how do we tell the difference, sorting the wheat from the chaff?
If someone says “you need this product”, RUN.
I often view paid spiritual resources like personal training. If you want to lose weight and get fit, you already know how to do that—move more, eat vegetables. This is basic knowledge that nearly everyone on the planet has. But some people like to spend money on training for individual help, speedier growth, and accountability. This isn’t a perfect analogy as spiritual growth isn’t linear, but I hope you see what I’m trying to say. You do not NEED personal training to get fit, and you do not NEED my substack, that person’s book, or this person’s pilgrimage to grow closer to God. I spend money on things like printables, pretty Catholic decor, and substacks—but I know I don’t need any of them and could do without them tomorrow if need be!
If someone puts clickability over morality, RUN.
If I go to Hell, it will involve being forced to look at YouTube thumbnails for years on end. Those looks of confusion or shock, with titles like Should WOMEN PREACH?! and My RESPONSE to THIS ANTI-CATHOLIC! They’re meant to “stir up discord among community”3 and get you to clickity-click so that their stats go up, up, up.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting people to see your creative projects. I take time and care to craft my headlines so that they’re enticing! But if someone is intentionally trying to start fights or seem outlandish, that’s where they err. I specifically remember one huge Catholic influencer having a ridiculous YouTube video title last year, and when they were called out, they indignantly responded that don’t you know how YouTube works? My assistant is trying to get you to click. Yes, we know how it works, you dingbat—that doesn’t mean you need to give into it! And don’t blame your assistant when your face is on it! Do you know how much money I could make if I changed some of these headlines to Can you BELIEVE what Harrison Butker said?!
If someone says “you’re struggling with your money mindset”, RUN.
You (and your spouse, if applicable) are the only one who knows your budget. The money-shaming I see on the internet is mind-boggling. I would never dare to assume that you’re wrong when you’re saying you can’t afford something. Times are really tight and a whole lot of us are living paycheck-to-paycheck, calculating the cost of ground turkey vs. ground beef per pound at the grocery store. Six dollars a month is not a small amount of money to a lot of people. And if you do have mental blocks around money, that’s your business, not mine. Work it out in therapy, not in my sales emails.
If someone is over-spiritualizing material things, RUN.
Of course, the spiritual is material and the material is spiritual. There’s something to be said for not letting ouija boards in your house—they aren’t just hunks of wood. And it would be, for instance, a sin to keep a person enslaved and force them to make you clothes, then wear those clothes around town.
But the shady way that some influencers will lean into spirituality to sell you art, skincare products, exercise equipment, or clothing drives me bananas. It’s fine to sell a modest swimsuit because you feel convicted about the topic and you create beautiful swimwear, and it’s even fine to point out the benefits of modesty. It’s not fine to shame women through your advertising copy and insist that YOUR product is what will free them from sexual sin. It’s fine to sell skincare products. It’s not fine to imply that if someone is struggling with acne it’s probably because of spiritual warfare. It’s fine to sell linen dresses because they’re pretty and comfortable (my olive green linen dress is my most-worn wardrobe item, hands down). It’s not fine to tell women that by dressing more feminine, with your product, they’re becoming closer to the kind of woman God wants them to be.
If someone is not being very open that they are making money from you, RUN.
Influencers are legally required to disclose affiliate links, free gifts, or partnerships they’re being compensated for. Does the use of those things mean they aren’t genuinely excited about the product? No. But if they’re being sketchy about disclosure, it’s a red flag.
If someone is offering therapeutic or spiritual direction services without a license, RUN.
I’ve had many conversations with friends about this and been all over the spectrum, because I do think the American Psychological Association has serious issues and I think plenty of licensed therapists are, pardon my French, full of shit. But! Operating without any licensure terrifies me. People’s mental health is too important to hand over to someone who has no training and no idea what they’re doing. Spiritual direction should only be done by a priest or a licensed layperson, not that person on the internet who seems, like, really holy. I don’t know what the hell “faith coaches” are but more and more of them are popping up in my feed and I don’t like it. There are no regulations, no license requirements, no guidelines—it seems like a recipe for disaster, and your spiritual life should literally be the most important thing to you.
At the end of the day, we can’t read hearts.
It’s easy and simple to assign judgement where we want to. Clearly, this person (whose opinions are similar to mine—huh! Funny how that works!) is doing this for all the right reasons and is a laborer worth their wage, but that person is just a Jesus grifter.
It’s easy and simple to spot the Stanley cup in the background of a post and assume you know someone’s financial situation.
It’s easy and simple to climb one little rung higher on the pride ladder, smugly thinking that you’d never do such a thing like use affiliate links or sell an e-book. You have a real job.
But the faith isn’t easy or simple. The other day I told my spiritual director, in a slightly whiny voice, that what he was asking me to do felt like walking a tight rope over the ocean. His response? “Um, yeah. Faith’s hard.”
As
recently wrote, “Maybe the first step is simply to refuse to let God’s love be stripped for parts and rebranded as just another identitarian ideological commodity, to be worn and worn out as quickly as your last Shein purchase.”Faith’s hard. Focus on what you can control, which is knowing your own smallness and attempting to grow in virtue. It’s not your job to monitor the internet for Jesus grifters, but it is your job to do your best not to fall into the webs they weave.
On My Nightstand
Nobody is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood: This is an extremely bizarre book about a social media influencer whose niece is diagnosed with a terminal illness. It’s not going to be for everyone, but it was for me. It’s short, but it gives you a lot to chew on in terms of what social media is doing to our brains and really, how it’s transformed our humanity.
Trump Comments on Ukraine War Insult Ally: Every. Single. Word. “It used to be said that a liberal is too broad-minded to take his own side in a fight. Trump is too consumed with pursuing a deal to acknowledge Ukraine is on our side.”
Does More Gender Equality Lead to More Babies?: I’m so glad my old friend
launched a substack because her writing is top-notch. This data-driven piece on the effect gender equality is having on fertility rates in Sub-Saharan Africa is fascinating.
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; writers and church workers are the two groups of people who we just expect to do mountains of work for completely free, and if they don’t, we accuse them of all sorts of moral wrongdoing.
They also recently partnered with Amazon Prime, so you now have to wait three months to stream the show if you don’t have prime. Now…is that frustrating for people? Obviously. And I find Amazon a very distasteful company. But will this money help create an amazing show and get it across the world? Yes. The amount of people I’ve seen online saying that they’re “abandoning” their audience for people with more money is absolutely bananas. It’s still a free TV show! It’s not the literal Bible! You do not need this to have a fruitful, fulfilling faith life! It is not a right!
Proverbs 6:19
I think the fitness analogy is spot on. I have to check myself all the time, that buying a class pass is not the same as working out, and buying a devotional is not the same as praying more. Not to say that those things can't be genuinely helpful or good but it can be so hard to push past the "spend money, problem solved" mindset.
On the coach/self-marketed spiritual directors/etc- I would love a post around recommendations on how to find and assess a spiritual director for fit, if that’s something you’d be interested in writing about!
It seems like it’s often particularly difficult for women when I talk to friends, and I think that’s also where some of the market for dubious coaching comes from. Priests are great and I’ve had excellent spiritual direction from priests, but many (not all!) seem to sometimes have a hard time with challenges of single women, moms, and/or working parents. (I include dads who consider balance in that group too!) Also basic NFP-literacy, though I find younger priests often have a higher baseline awareness. (Bless the super well-meaning pre-Cana priest who said NFP usually has five days of abstinence…) Most people I know with good spiritual direction are either continuing something from a college/missionary phase or work for the church.
I think that the lack of accessible spiritual direction options feeds the market for grift very similarly to how cultures of SAHM emphasis and/or lack of flexible work options for women feed MLMs.