Pentecostals Go Picketty

The United States is rapidly becoming an economically polarized place. While everyone recognizes economic inequality’s obvious effects — more poverty, less social mobility — one likely outcome of the growing wealth gap could surprise you: wilder, more intense religious movements.

A recent report shows that the top 1% of U.S. earners take home 20% of all the nation’s income. Other studies, such as French economist Thomas Picketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, make it clear that it’s becoming harder for the working and lower-middle classes to advance in the ranks. This growing economic stratification is so bad for the country that even writers at Forbes magazine – not exactly a hothouse of revolutionary populism — agree that wealth inequality is harming the nation’s long-term outlook.