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conuly
Prosperity gospel. Huh. I'm not a Christian, but I'm fairly damn certain that's not actually supported in any canonically accepted scripture. Accepted by anybody.
People want to throw away their money, that's their business, but it's wrong to scam them out of it any faster. Comments in bold are mine.
Believers Invest in the Gospel of Getting Rich
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
FORT WORTH — Onstage before thousands of believers weighed down by debt and economic insecurity, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland and their all-star lineup of “prosperity gospel” preachers delighted the crowd with anecdotes about the luxurious lives they had attained by following the Word of God.
Luxurious lifestyles they attained by scamming the faithful and foolish, they mean.
Private airplanes and boats. A motorcycle sent by an anonymous supporter. Vacations in Hawaii and cruises in Alaska. Designer handbags. A ring of emeralds and diamonds.
“God knows where the money is, and he knows how to get the money to you,” preached Mrs. Copeland, dressed in a crisp pants ensemble like those worn by C.E.O.’s.
You mean YOU know where the money is, and you know how to get it in your own greedy pockets.
Even in an economic downturn, preachers in the “prosperity gospel” movement are drawing sizable, adoring audiences. Their message — that if you have sufficient faith in God and the Bible and donate generously, God will multiply your offerings a hundredfold — is reassuring to many in hard times.
And where is the proof? Because they happen to be rich and lazy?
The preachers barely acknowledged the recession, though they did say it was no excuse to curtail giving. “Fear will make you stingy,” Mr. Copeland said.
But the offering buckets came up emptier than in some previous years, said those who have attended before.
Many in this flock do not trust banks, the news media or Washington, where the Senate Finance Committee is investigating whether the Copelands and other prosperity evangelists used donations to enrich themselves and abused their tax-exempt status. But they trust the Copelands, the movement’s current patriarch and matriarch, who seem to embody prosperity with their robust health and abundance of children and grandchildren who have followed them into the ministry.
“If God did it for them, he will do it for us,” said Edwige Ndoudi, who traveled with her husband and three children from Canada for the Southwest Believers’ Convention this month, where the Copelands and three of their friends took turns preaching for five days, 10 hours a day at the Fort Worth Convention Center.
God didn't do it for them! You did, a dollar at a time, dollars and cents you surely can't afford in this economy!
The crowd of more than 9,000 was multiracial, from 48 states and 27 countries. There was no fee to attend. There were bikers in leather vests, pastors, blue-collar workers, professionals and plenty of families with children.
A large contingent came in wheelchairs, hoping for miraculous healings. The audience sat with Bibles open, flipping to passages cited by the preachers, taking notes on pads and laptop computers.
“The folks who are coming aren’t poor,” said Jonathan L. Walton, a professor of religion at the University of California, Riverside, who has written about the movement and was there doing research. “They reside in that nebulous category between the working and the middle class.”
Sitting in Section 316, eight rows up, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on a Bible at lunch time, was a family who could explain the enduring loyalty the prosperity preachers inspire.
Stephen Biellier, a long-distance trucker from Mount Vernon, Mo., said he and his wife, Millie, came to the convention praying that this would be “the overcoming year.” They are $102,000 in debt, and the bank has cut off their credit line, Mrs. Biellier said.
Wait for it....
They say the Copelands rescued them from financial failure 23 years ago, when they bought their first truck at 22 percent interest and had to rebuild the engine twice in a year.
Bam! They didn't get $102k in debt in one year, this has been building probably the past... oh, two decades. I wouldn't be surprised if they've been on the line ever since that bad year.
Around that time, Mrs. Biellier first saw Mr. Copeland on television and began sending him 50 cents a week.
Others who bought trucks from the same dealer in Joplin that year went under, the Bielliers said, but they did not.
So the dealer was cursed?
“We would have failed if Copeland hadn’t been praying for us every day,” Mrs. Biellier said.
So, wait. That $26 - which could've gone to pay off some debt, or to an actual charitable cause - was worth it because it paid for the Copeland's prayers? Their prayers are BETTER than yours? Because they're... rich? Nice? Preachers? (Scammers?) This is a pay-to-pray scheme? They don't pray just because they think it's the right thing to do?
The Bielliers are now among 386,000 people worldwide whom the Copelands call their “partners,” most of whom send regular contributions and merit special prayers from the Copelands.
Oh, of course. The Copelands don't spend any of their (ill-gotten) gains, they just let it sit around while they spend all day praying for 386,000 people. Individually, and by name.
A call center at the ministry’s 481-employee headquarters in Newark, Tex., takes in 60,000 prayer requests a month, a publicist said.
The Copelands’ broadcast reaches 134 countries, and the ministry’s income is about $100 million annually.
HOLY SHIT! But that money goes to a good cause... right?
The Bielliers were at the convention a few years ago when a supporter made a pitch for people to join an “Elite CX Team” to raise money to buy the ministry a Citation X airplane. (Mr. Copeland is an airplane aficionado who got his start in ministry as a pilot for Oral Roberts.) At that moment, Mrs. Biellier said she heard the voice of the Holy Spirit telling her, “You were born to support this man.”
She gave $2,000 for the plane, and recently sent $1,800 for the team’s latest project: buying high-definition television equipment to upgrade the ministry’s international broadcasts.
Yup, that's a good cause all right. HDTV FTW!
Mrs. Biellier said some friends and relatives would say the preacher just wanted their money. She explained that the Copelands did not need the money for themselves; it is for their ministry. And besides, even “trashy people like Hugh Hefner” have private airplanes.
Mrs. Biellier, do YOU have a private airplane? You've got one thing right - some folks with private airplanes sure are trashy. And scammers. At least Hugh Hefner earned his money. Nobody ever pretended that asking people to pay for pictures of naked boobies was somehow spiritual or a higher calling.
“I remember Copeland had to once fly halfway around the world to talk to one person,” she said. “Because we’re partners with Kenneth Copeland, for every soul that gets saved, we get credit for that in heaven.”
And he could not POSSIBLY have flown coach. Gosh, that would just be tacky, guys!
Not to mention... credit in heaven? For helping some criminal fly around the world in style? What if he uses his plane to fly around the world and kill somebody and it becomes the subject of a particularly boring episode of CSI or Psych or something? Do you get credit in Hell for that? Does it go both ways? If he joins the Mile-High Club, is it like YOU had sex in a particularly cramped and cheesy setting? Or is it a good-faith thing and only those GOOD things he does get you credit and God kinda overlooks the cliched or bad things?
But while a band primed the crowd, Professor Walton called the prosperity preachers “spiritual pickpockets.”
“To dismiss and ignore the harsh realities of this economic crisis,” he said. “is beyond irresponsible, to the point of reprehensible.”
Indeed.
The Copelands refused an interview request, but one of their daughters, Kellie Copeland Swisher, and her husband, Steve Swisher, who both work in the ministry, spoke for them.
Mrs. Swisher said the ministry gave away “a minimum of 10 percent of what comes in” to other charities. Her father’s current favorite, she said, is a Roman Catholic orphanage in Mexico.
Oh wow! TEN PERCENT! Where does the REST of it go? And if this is all on the up-and-up, why not have his flock donate directly to that Roman Catholic orphanage in Mexico themselves? Then they could get the full 100% with no overhead and no middleman.
The ministry has resisted providing the Senate investigation with all the documents requested, she said, because the Copelands did not want to publicly reveal the names of the “partners.” The investigation, which could result in new laws, is continuing, a committee spokeswoman said. Among those being investigated is Creflo Dollar, one of the ministers at the Copelands’ convention.
Does she even believe this? Is she as taken in as their suckers?
Mr. Swisher said that even in the economic downturn, the ministry’s income going into the convention was up 3 percent over last year. Asked if they had adjusted the message for the economy, Mrs. Swisher patted the worn Bible in her lap and said: “The message they preach is the Word of God. The Word doesn’t change.”
Except for that one about rich men having trouble getting into heaven. I believe camels and needles are mentioned?
Oh! Wait! I get it! They're doing this to take cash off of other people so it doesn't burden their souls! They're trying to help all those thousands of people get into heaven by making their pockets and souls lighter, at great spiritual cost to themselves! And all that "prosperity gospel" nonsense is just white lies so folks do what's good for them, like a bitter pill coated with lying, lying sugar.
At the convention, the preachers — who also included Jesse Duplantis and Jerry Savelle — sprinkled their sermons with put-downs of the government, an overhaul of health care, public schools, the news media and other churches, many of which condemn prosperity preaching.
Gosh, I wonder why.
But mostly the preachers were working mightily to remind the crowd that they are God’s elect. “While everybody else is having a famine,” said Mr. Savelle, a Texas televangelist, “his covenant people will be having the best of times.”
Because God picks and chooses whom to take care of...? God likes some people more than others?
“Any time a worried thought about money pops up in your mind,” Mr. Savelle continued, “the next thing you do is sow”: drop money, like seeds, in “good ground” like the preachers’ ministries. “Stop worrying, start sowing,” he added, his voice rising. “That’s God’s stimulus package for you.”
Fuck you.
At that, hundreds streamed down the aisles to the stage, laying envelopes, cash and coins on the carpeted steps.
I gotta get into this business. Just gotta find a way to square it with my conscience first. I've actually got one of those, you know.
People want to throw away their money, that's their business, but it's wrong to scam them out of it any faster. Comments in bold are mine.
Believers Invest in the Gospel of Getting Rich
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
FORT WORTH — Onstage before thousands of believers weighed down by debt and economic insecurity, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland and their all-star lineup of “prosperity gospel” preachers delighted the crowd with anecdotes about the luxurious lives they had attained by following the Word of God.
Luxurious lifestyles they attained by scamming the faithful and foolish, they mean.
Private airplanes and boats. A motorcycle sent by an anonymous supporter. Vacations in Hawaii and cruises in Alaska. Designer handbags. A ring of emeralds and diamonds.
“God knows where the money is, and he knows how to get the money to you,” preached Mrs. Copeland, dressed in a crisp pants ensemble like those worn by C.E.O.’s.
You mean YOU know where the money is, and you know how to get it in your own greedy pockets.
Even in an economic downturn, preachers in the “prosperity gospel” movement are drawing sizable, adoring audiences. Their message — that if you have sufficient faith in God and the Bible and donate generously, God will multiply your offerings a hundredfold — is reassuring to many in hard times.
And where is the proof? Because they happen to be rich and lazy?
The preachers barely acknowledged the recession, though they did say it was no excuse to curtail giving. “Fear will make you stingy,” Mr. Copeland said.
But the offering buckets came up emptier than in some previous years, said those who have attended before.
Many in this flock do not trust banks, the news media or Washington, where the Senate Finance Committee is investigating whether the Copelands and other prosperity evangelists used donations to enrich themselves and abused their tax-exempt status. But they trust the Copelands, the movement’s current patriarch and matriarch, who seem to embody prosperity with their robust health and abundance of children and grandchildren who have followed them into the ministry.
“If God did it for them, he will do it for us,” said Edwige Ndoudi, who traveled with her husband and three children from Canada for the Southwest Believers’ Convention this month, where the Copelands and three of their friends took turns preaching for five days, 10 hours a day at the Fort Worth Convention Center.
God didn't do it for them! You did, a dollar at a time, dollars and cents you surely can't afford in this economy!
The crowd of more than 9,000 was multiracial, from 48 states and 27 countries. There was no fee to attend. There were bikers in leather vests, pastors, blue-collar workers, professionals and plenty of families with children.
A large contingent came in wheelchairs, hoping for miraculous healings. The audience sat with Bibles open, flipping to passages cited by the preachers, taking notes on pads and laptop computers.
“The folks who are coming aren’t poor,” said Jonathan L. Walton, a professor of religion at the University of California, Riverside, who has written about the movement and was there doing research. “They reside in that nebulous category between the working and the middle class.”
Sitting in Section 316, eight rows up, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on a Bible at lunch time, was a family who could explain the enduring loyalty the prosperity preachers inspire.
Stephen Biellier, a long-distance trucker from Mount Vernon, Mo., said he and his wife, Millie, came to the convention praying that this would be “the overcoming year.” They are $102,000 in debt, and the bank has cut off their credit line, Mrs. Biellier said.
Wait for it....
They say the Copelands rescued them from financial failure 23 years ago, when they bought their first truck at 22 percent interest and had to rebuild the engine twice in a year.
Bam! They didn't get $102k in debt in one year, this has been building probably the past... oh, two decades. I wouldn't be surprised if they've been on the line ever since that bad year.
Around that time, Mrs. Biellier first saw Mr. Copeland on television and began sending him 50 cents a week.
Others who bought trucks from the same dealer in Joplin that year went under, the Bielliers said, but they did not.
So the dealer was cursed?
“We would have failed if Copeland hadn’t been praying for us every day,” Mrs. Biellier said.
So, wait. That $26 - which could've gone to pay off some debt, or to an actual charitable cause - was worth it because it paid for the Copeland's prayers? Their prayers are BETTER than yours? Because they're... rich? Nice? Preachers? (Scammers?) This is a pay-to-pray scheme? They don't pray just because they think it's the right thing to do?
The Bielliers are now among 386,000 people worldwide whom the Copelands call their “partners,” most of whom send regular contributions and merit special prayers from the Copelands.
Oh, of course. The Copelands don't spend any of their (ill-gotten) gains, they just let it sit around while they spend all day praying for 386,000 people. Individually, and by name.
A call center at the ministry’s 481-employee headquarters in Newark, Tex., takes in 60,000 prayer requests a month, a publicist said.
The Copelands’ broadcast reaches 134 countries, and the ministry’s income is about $100 million annually.
HOLY SHIT! But that money goes to a good cause... right?
The Bielliers were at the convention a few years ago when a supporter made a pitch for people to join an “Elite CX Team” to raise money to buy the ministry a Citation X airplane. (Mr. Copeland is an airplane aficionado who got his start in ministry as a pilot for Oral Roberts.) At that moment, Mrs. Biellier said she heard the voice of the Holy Spirit telling her, “You were born to support this man.”
She gave $2,000 for the plane, and recently sent $1,800 for the team’s latest project: buying high-definition television equipment to upgrade the ministry’s international broadcasts.
Yup, that's a good cause all right. HDTV FTW!
Mrs. Biellier said some friends and relatives would say the preacher just wanted their money. She explained that the Copelands did not need the money for themselves; it is for their ministry. And besides, even “trashy people like Hugh Hefner” have private airplanes.
Mrs. Biellier, do YOU have a private airplane? You've got one thing right - some folks with private airplanes sure are trashy. And scammers. At least Hugh Hefner earned his money. Nobody ever pretended that asking people to pay for pictures of naked boobies was somehow spiritual or a higher calling.
“I remember Copeland had to once fly halfway around the world to talk to one person,” she said. “Because we’re partners with Kenneth Copeland, for every soul that gets saved, we get credit for that in heaven.”
And he could not POSSIBLY have flown coach. Gosh, that would just be tacky, guys!
Not to mention... credit in heaven? For helping some criminal fly around the world in style? What if he uses his plane to fly around the world and kill somebody and it becomes the subject of a particularly boring episode of CSI or Psych or something? Do you get credit in Hell for that? Does it go both ways? If he joins the Mile-High Club, is it like YOU had sex in a particularly cramped and cheesy setting? Or is it a good-faith thing and only those GOOD things he does get you credit and God kinda overlooks the cliched or bad things?
But while a band primed the crowd, Professor Walton called the prosperity preachers “spiritual pickpockets.”
“To dismiss and ignore the harsh realities of this economic crisis,” he said. “is beyond irresponsible, to the point of reprehensible.”
Indeed.
The Copelands refused an interview request, but one of their daughters, Kellie Copeland Swisher, and her husband, Steve Swisher, who both work in the ministry, spoke for them.
Mrs. Swisher said the ministry gave away “a minimum of 10 percent of what comes in” to other charities. Her father’s current favorite, she said, is a Roman Catholic orphanage in Mexico.
Oh wow! TEN PERCENT! Where does the REST of it go? And if this is all on the up-and-up, why not have his flock donate directly to that Roman Catholic orphanage in Mexico themselves? Then they could get the full 100% with no overhead and no middleman.
The ministry has resisted providing the Senate investigation with all the documents requested, she said, because the Copelands did not want to publicly reveal the names of the “partners.” The investigation, which could result in new laws, is continuing, a committee spokeswoman said. Among those being investigated is Creflo Dollar, one of the ministers at the Copelands’ convention.
Does she even believe this? Is she as taken in as their suckers?
Mr. Swisher said that even in the economic downturn, the ministry’s income going into the convention was up 3 percent over last year. Asked if they had adjusted the message for the economy, Mrs. Swisher patted the worn Bible in her lap and said: “The message they preach is the Word of God. The Word doesn’t change.”
Except for that one about rich men having trouble getting into heaven. I believe camels and needles are mentioned?
Oh! Wait! I get it! They're doing this to take cash off of other people so it doesn't burden their souls! They're trying to help all those thousands of people get into heaven by making their pockets and souls lighter, at great spiritual cost to themselves! And all that "prosperity gospel" nonsense is just white lies so folks do what's good for them, like a bitter pill coated with lying, lying sugar.
At the convention, the preachers — who also included Jesse Duplantis and Jerry Savelle — sprinkled their sermons with put-downs of the government, an overhaul of health care, public schools, the news media and other churches, many of which condemn prosperity preaching.
Gosh, I wonder why.
But mostly the preachers were working mightily to remind the crowd that they are God’s elect. “While everybody else is having a famine,” said Mr. Savelle, a Texas televangelist, “his covenant people will be having the best of times.”
Because God picks and chooses whom to take care of...? God likes some people more than others?
“Any time a worried thought about money pops up in your mind,” Mr. Savelle continued, “the next thing you do is sow”: drop money, like seeds, in “good ground” like the preachers’ ministries. “Stop worrying, start sowing,” he added, his voice rising. “That’s God’s stimulus package for you.”
Fuck you.
At that, hundreds streamed down the aisles to the stage, laying envelopes, cash and coins on the carpeted steps.
I gotta get into this business. Just gotta find a way to square it with my conscience first. I've actually got one of those, you know.
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no subject
Date: 2009-08-16 08:45 am (UTC)Excuse me? I don't disbelieve in hearing voices (I'd better not, considering that I'm a Spiritualist), but just because she heard a voice doesn't mean it's the Holy Spirit. People who believe in or listen to these tyes of messages have business to keep a firm grip on 1 John 4:1, as well as 1 Corinthians 12 -- and, Gabriel would add, 1 Timothy 5:8.
I can't stand St. Paul but at least he had this part straight.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-16 03:26 pm (UTC)I may not be a practising Christian but I still remember everything I learned and THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS, LADY. Augh. Preaching the word of God, my ass. They're taking specific verses out of context to serve their own purposes, more like.
God will take care of his covenant people? True enough. He did take care of the Jews. By which I mean, he kept them alive in the desert. But it sure as hell wasn't fun, and they sure as hell weren't prospering and having the best of times while wandering for those 40 years. Somebody needs to read his bible again.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-16 09:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-16 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-23 04:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-24 03:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-24 06:12 am (UTC)