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Sarah Posner reports on the Republican's recently announced investigation of six leading prosperity televangelists:
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, has opened an investigation into the finances of six of the leading prosperity televangelists, Kenneth Copeland, Joyce Meyer, Eddie Long, Creflo Dollar, Benny Hinn. Grassley is looking into whether these celebrity preachers abused their tax-exempt status by using proceeds to enrich themselves with luxury items like mansions, private jets, and fancy cars. Three of the targeted evangelists (Dollar, Copeland, and Hinn) sit on the Oral Roberts University Board of Regents, which is supposed to be investigating similar charges of financial mismanagement and other abuses there. (John Hagee, whose own use of church funds has been documented in the Prospect, also serves on the ORU Board of Regents.)No word yet on whether the Democrats will join him, and so far no subpoenas have been issued, just requests for financial statements. Grassley is acting on information from the Trinity Foundation, a religious fraud watchdog group in Texas whose investigations have launched many of the leading media exposes of televangelists. But none of those exposes have resulted in changes in the tax law, which shields “church” finances from public view.All six are politically connected -- sought by candidates for implicit or explicit endorsements and mobilizing the shock troops on issues like abortion, homosexuality, Middle East policy, or the separation of church and state. (You can read much more about all of this, and in particular about Copeland, Long, and Hinn, in God’s Profits.) There already have been cries of protest of this government “intrusion,” so stay tuned for how all of this will play out.Read the rest here.--The Editors
