The Good News: Financial problems are plaguing America's prosperity
megachurches.
The Bad News: It's not happening fast enough.
MUNSTER | While the Family Christian Center
was spending millions of dollars annually on leadership compensation, travel,
meals and jet fuel, it was falling behind on its mortgage payments and racking
up a list of past-due bills, a Times investigation found.
We could
forgive prosperity gospel ministries if it weren't for the awful architecture.
And the gaudy showmanship. And the cult-like congregations.
And the un-Christianlike greed.
There are millions of Americans who are in need of money, struggling Americans
who still manage to help their friends as best they can, still helping others
to survive. They do not gamble on the Lord providing future wealth or
prosperity. For flights of fantasy, they occasionally buy lottery tickets.
After all, the results are just as good as any prosperity cult, maybe even
better, since prosperity preachers take in everything and return very, very
little.
According to mortgageorb.com, Pastor
Munsey only informed his congregation of the 2011 lawsuit last summer,
explaining that he never told them earlier because he "really didn't know
what to do but trust God."
Foreclosing
On The Prosperity Gospel
Although Senator Chuck Grassley (IA - R) helped focus on the excesses of
prosperity gospel preachers in 2007, he didn't go far enough:
According
to the report, only two of the six ministries -- Joyce Meyer Ministries and
Benny Hinn's World Healing Center Church -- fully cooperated with the
investigation and even implemented financial reforms.
The other four ministries, meanwhile, did not provide responses or
provided incomplete ones to inquiries made by the Senate Finance Committee.
These groups include Creflo Dollar's
World Changers Church International, Eddie Long's New Birth Missionary Baptist
Church, Kenneth Copeland Ministries, and Without Walls International Church --
formerly pastored by both Randy and Paula White, who are now divorced. The
Florida megachurch is currently being led by Paula White.
Despite their lack of cooperation, no penalties were handed out.
And why not?
Capitalism Is As Capitalism Does
America, as a capitalist society, must come to terms with
capitalist leaders of capitalist religious cults. We have the freedom of
religion - religion that panders to the greed of the 1%. Although his political
positions have been helter-skelter (to say the least) on many issues,
Grassley's dedication to capitalism cannot be stressed enough. Then there is
his link to The Family, the controversial, covert quasi-religious operation,
and his 100% approval rating by such organizations as the Family Research
Council. In order to keep those good graces, it may have been necessary for him
to back off on the prosperity preachers.
Meanwhile, Back At the Scandal Trough...
There is no denying that Eddie Long has a cult on his hands: despite financial
and sexual scandals, people still keep going to his church and witnessing a
outpouring of ego which is over-the-top, even by today's televangelist
standards. Now Long is embroiled in a new lawsuit:
Bishop Eddie Long has been sued by
former New Birth Missionary Baptist members who say the megachurch pastor
encouraged them to invest money with a company despite being told the investor
was running a $3 million capital deficit.
Too Big To Fail?
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