If you google for the psychology of televangelism, you'll find the Gospel of Wealth. Of if you're into "do it yourself" thinking, you could just watch the news anytime Trump is mentioned.
http://www.larryhollon.com/blog/2008/12/01/televangelists-culture-and-authority/ This article is a good line of thought if you wish to stay within the institutional and historical Christian category. I do not. One of the reasons for me stepping away from Christianity (not just the narrow interpretations) is that four narratives about a man with no documented trace plus the ambitions of one former Christ-hater (formerly named Saul) are not enough. Not even relevant.
What Larry Hollon suggests is that people who want to become wealthy must turn off the television, the pretend life, and simply explore structure and access. Keeping secret practical matters -- what contacts to make, how to get organized, and how to translate big goals by taking small steps -- is one way televangelists try to keep their status as the only door to success.
But there is another aspect of Christian theology, which is the metaphor of God as a kingpin in the sky and his son as a human embodiment of the best and most definitive features of that God. This avatar for the forces of Fate and Circumstance emphasizes "discipleship and servanthood," "the graciousness of a loving god," the abiding of parenthood authority and protection one so loved as a child, if your childhood was lucky.
This is where Trump shows himself as a non-Christian. If this were a different era, he would be bowing down to the Devil and his avatar of the Golden Calf. But too many in our times have used "science" to erase evil, to make bad people simply the victims of stigmatized societies, and to excuse the deaths of millions as simply a nasty but necessary convenience. One wonders whether Trump and the others are capable seeing themselves through other eyes than the mirrors of their own impressiveness. (That's a rhetorical question.)
Larry Hollon is a Methodist minister and leader though he doesn't make a big deal out of it. http://www.umcom.org/news/a-conversation-with-larry-hollon He talks about "technological IQ's" and restructuring the denomination to attract more young people. He does NOT talk about the emptiness of most Christian chatter. But he DOES talk about going to the people: "We will have to lean on our Wesleyan understanding. Wesley got outside the pulpit of the Anglican churches and went to the street corner because that's where people were." He suggests that young people are interested in hunger, so that's what the denomination should talk about, but he sees it in an old-fashioned way. He says Methodists can attract young people by doing something about hunger, but what? And does he know young people are starving? I mean, literally?
He says, "We are a node on a global network that is interactive, connected and sometimes disconnected. We participate in that global network, and it will move with or without us. We have to stay ahead of the curve and be as interactive as we can in order to be of value to the church and to ensure the church has a presence and a voice in that interactivity."
If you can substitute "America" for "church", you'll see how to escape from the charlatans that substitute bellowing and hand-waving for reality.
I quote a wise Cheyenne "Indian" writer, Adrian L. Jawort, who is nothing like the stereotype Tonto many believe in. "Ppl become so emotionally invested in politics they can't be neutral. With less spirituality/people going to church etc, politics becomes a filler & sense of belonging. Ergo it becomes a dogma unto itself & political leaders are deemed infallible & must be defended at all costs."
Jawort knows about both evil and politics, which are perfectly capable of working in cahoots.
Long ago, as an undergrad just leaving the Christian context ('57 to '61), I attended a performance of "J.B." by Archibald Macleish in Chicago. When I saw it, the Devil was Christopher Plummer and God was John Carradine, whose sons became proponents of Asian martial arts. (Later, in Hollywood at a supermarket, I witnessed one of the sons kick-box a pyramid of canned tomatoes. No grasshoppers were involved.)
This play, "J.B." was an attempt to address the evils of WWII, like the Holocaust of Jews, Gypsies handicapped, and Gays -- all the hatred of the German right wing fascists that so fascinate some now. WHY? the play asks. HOW? did people get this way? (Notice that nepotism -- father/son -- is built into Christianity.) In some ways it was effective because the language was so beautiful and so powerfully performed. The other way was by pointing out human loving relationships and the natural world -- nothing grandiose, just a forsythia in bloom at the end of the bridge where Mrs. J.B. goes to commit suicide, but can't, thus redeeming J.B. himself.
Some say that Methodism is a bridge between dogmatic Christian faith and golf. That is, it leads nowhere. Ask Trump. Is a golf course anything more than poisoned cut grass with a little hole in the middle? In my case, I acted as the Blackfeet Methodist Mission clergyperson in 1988-89, not for pay but because by taking my compensation by living in the Methodist parsonage, thus sparing it from taxation. On the books I was simply a lay leader, because my ordination was Unitarian Universalist, where it is possible to be atheistic but still religious.
(I have never played golf. When I lived in East Glacier, I used to walk every morning on the golf course but quit when a moose started doing the same thing. I respect a moose. They are not sacred but they can be dangerous.)
The problem was what I should preach. My approach was twofold: first was using the Christian lectionary which is a calendar version of the Bible that fits together on every Sunday a psalm, an Old Testament quote, one of the New Testament letters, and a gospel quote. Because this writing, all of it, is for an agriculture and small-town audience, a stigmatized group in a world dominated by Rome, I followed the themes by talking about the rez itself: the weather, the animals, the seasons, the ripening and reaping, the families. The congregation was hardly Methodist -- just generic Christian -- except that it is a Methodist "mission" originally meant to convert "Natives." But everyone lived in the same place and recognized what both the Bible and I said.
Are these things, basic to Christian thought, what the televangelists talk about? No. Those bigshots talk about money, mystical but sexual ecstasy, and dominance. Evil. Even Satan has more honor and subtlety than that. The Devil doesn't depend upon his father.
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