Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa sent letters to six media
mogul preachers Monday asking for documentation detailing their
finances. The Senate Finance Committee targeted televangelists
including the wonderfully named Creflo Dollar, Joyce Meyer, Benny
Hinn, Eddie Long, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, and Randy and Paula
White.
The committee says that those evangelists should spend donors’
money “as intended, and in adherence with the tax code.” The implication
being that these preachers offer donors a range of services from healing
to spiritual salvation and returned financial prosperity in exchange for
their offerings without necessarily mentioning the private jets, Rolls
Royces, and Manhattan condos these preachers sport thanks to their
earnings.
This is a particularly timely development considering this week’s Flyer cover story focusing on the money and power within the Memphis-based
Church of God in Christ, Inc. (COGIC).
Though none of the preachers
currently under Senate investigation are affiliated with COGIC, the
denomination’s most prominent leader, the late presiding bishop G.E.
Patterson built a global media ministry worth millions. Patterson’s
successor, for now at least, is Charles E. Blake, pastor of the “church of
the stars” at West Angeles COGIC in Los Angeles, California. Blake pays
himself a salary that nears a million dollars to the chagrin of one former
member who asks, “what pastor needs to be paying himself almost a
million-dollar salary, living in a mansion in Beverly Hills off the tithes
and offerings of a congregation from one of the low-income areas of Los
Angeles? The money he makes could be going back into the community.”
Meanwhile, in the wake of the Flyer‘s story, we’re told that Blake’s wife has gone
to great lengths to defame us, reportedly referring to our humble
publication as a rag.
Well, amen to that.