Out of the depths of the Great Depression came a modern American religion that still exerts a powerful influence. It has two strands.

One started in 1934, when a stockbroker and chronic drunk named Bill Wilson was attempting, yet again, to dry out in the Towns Hospital in New York City. Wilson writes:

“Suddenly the room lit up with a great white light. I was caught up into an ecstasy which there are no words to describe. It seemed to me, in the mind’s eye, that I was on a mountain and that a wind not of air but of spirit was blowing. And then it burst upon me that I was a free man.”

Wilson managed to keep his fragile sobriety, but only just. He nearly lost it after a business deal collapsed in May 1935. Alone and depressed in an Akron, Ohio hotel, Wilson was tempted by laughter coming from the hotel bar. Instead of going in, he called a church and asked if the clergy knew of any local drunks. Wilson was directed to a man named Bob Smith, a doctor whose drinking was destroying his health and medical practice. By reaching out to a fellow sufferer Wilson held on to his own sobriety. The day Bob took his last drink–June 10, 1935–was the day Alcoholics Anonymous was born.

The second strand of American secular religion was born in an eerily similar way. A desperate Virginia man named Napoleon Hill was living off relatives, ashamed that he was unable to buy Christmas presents for his children. To battle his depression he would walk at night, trying to get his head straight. What made his dilemma so painful is that Hill had known success before, as a promoter of business extension schools. Hill walked and walked, trying to break out of his depression.

“I was thoroughly disgusted with myself, but I entertained a hope of salvation. Then, like a flash of lightning out of a clear sky, an idea burst into my mind with such force that the impulse drove the blood up and down my veins: This is your testing time. You have been reduced to poverty and humiliated in order that you might be forced to discover your other self.”

Napoleon Hill’s other self would eventually write Think and Grow Rich, the business and personal motivation classic. It has sold more than 70 million copies since its publication in 1937 and continues to sell robustly today.

The self-help movement that grew out of the desperate 1930s is neglected by historians and is little taught in schools. This is a shame. One of the disturbing features of American life today is the hardening of economic classes. It’s now easier to jump from being poor to comfortably middle class–the American Dream–in Denmark than it is in the U.S.

How did this happen? Political progressives such as Paul Krugman are quick to blame this trend on Reagan-omics, the flattening of the tax code and the decline of unions. Conservatives see the rot in other places: public schools with little accountability, regulations that hamper small businesses and creeping credentialism that requires that applicants for ever more jobs have pricey degrees and certificates.

The American religion of self-help has always been the poor kid’s best friend. Benjamin Franklin, proud of his working-class background, launched American Self-Help 1.0 with his Poor Richard’s almanac and The Way To Wealth. In the 19th century Horatio Alger wrote stories of plucky boys who made good.

Napoleon Hill and Bill Wilson took a metaphysical turn with their “white light” salvations–thus I refer to their movements as essentially religious. Hill in particular paved the way for such positive-thinking preachers as Norman Vincent Peale in the 1950s, who led directly to Robert Schuller in the 1980s and Joel Osteen today.

Sadly, the self-help doctrine has been hijacked by a movement called the prosperity gospel–i.e., preachers who say that God wants you to be rich. Familiar to viewers of late-night cable TV, its practitioners resemble carnival barkers who prey on the poor and pick their pockets. Dodgy franchise and multilevel marketing schemes are often promoted on prosperity gospel themes.

Faith, self-help and prosperity are noble words and should not be conceded to the hucksters. My simple faith is this: If we are created in God’s image, then we were born to create, and to create is to prosper.

In June a previously unpublished Napoleon Hill manuscript titled Outwitting the Devil: The Secret to Freedom and Success (Sterling) will be released. I’ve read it and recommend it.(03/23/2011,Forbes)