It's true that I'm not a religious person, and I've been critical here about aspects of religiosity — especially the prosperity gospel and religious posturing by politicians and sports figures. But I've also communicated with followers of Kenneth Copeland and Mac Hammond, and I know they responded to the larger message, not just the money part.
So I don't usually ridicule religion or faith as it really plays out in most people's lives, because it works for them — often in situations where other interventions simply don't.
For a moment last night — after Josh Hamilton put on an amazing display of hitting in an otherwise meaningless pre-All Star Game Home Run Derby and then credited his savior — I was tempted to do a satirical news item about Obama calling for an end to players injecting God in baseball .
Want to know why I passed up on what could have been a funny bit? And it has nothing to do with this.
Minnesota men's basketball coach Tubby Smith thinks college recruiting of middle school kids may be going too far. That doesn't mean he's ruling out getting into such commitments.
"I don't think I would," Smith said about signing a player who's too young to drive. "But I'm not saying I wouldn't, either."
Protecting their long term interests. Isn't that what the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) "coaches" are up to?
"The church has more than a century-long tradition of marrying young," said elder Brigham Barlow of the FLDS community located in rural Silt, Colorado. "The good ones of marrying age, around 14 or 15, tend to go quick. As time goes on, well, naturally, you start looking a little younger. The competition for wives does favor early identification of matrimonial talent."
That can mean signing ceremonies as early as third grade, said Garfield County deputy sheriff Bud Rulison. "It can be hard to know which ones are really gonna prove out after puberty hits, but I guess that's a chance they're willing to take, given they can recruit more than one wife. That way, one porks out or goes lesbian on you, you're not totally out of the money."
Outsiders underestimate the pressure in small communities to find suitable mates, said Barlow. "The supply of girls who want to marry a 50 year old truck driver with three other wives and live in a rural commune is not infinite, yet there are a lot of us guys out there. We do our best to condition them for this life, but you know it's really best for all concerned if they get married before they get corrupted by the world. Once they learn women don't all wear long dresses and put their hair up in buns, well, there's hell to pay."
I meant to do this a week ago, and it's rapidly getting stale now. But if we're picking presidents based on pastoral associations, we should have a handy voter's guide.
I may be a little too isolated out here, or else I should get a television. Until yesterday I had managed to miss the unfolding Max Mosley Nazi bondage scandal.
No links to the released video here. Not worth the trip, unless you're into unimaginative scripts, cheap costumes, unconvincing readings and poorly framed shots — surrounded by other lurid promos from Rupert Murdoch's News of the World. Less excitement than watching video of somebody else's kid fishing for sunnies on a foggy day — and not catching any.
No, what you had in mind would've been much better than this sad little episode.
Mosley was probably not thinking about reputation management when he commissioned this set piece, but had he consulted PR professionals, they might've counseled the son of notorious Nazi sympathizers to go with a Penguin theme and hope none of the hookers belonged to PETA.
Meanwhile, an honest-to-god bondage storyhas been playing in this country, again involving supposedly willing women. (No one has found the girl whose calls alerted authorities to abuse at the Texas ranch where sex with underage girls has been elevated to a sacrament. An expert on the church believes she's been spirited to another Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) community, after being caught making one of the calls for help.)
Whether ritualized, tribalized, sacramentalized or simply carried out in the privacy of one's home, the practice of subjugating women to male authority follows a disturbingly similar pattern.
Well, he didn’t start out with the fundy stuff right away—I suppose you
could call him a charismatic, because he believed in speaking in
tongues, all that crap. It had nothing to do with religion at first; he
never talked about it, then he became possessive, wanting me to be
around all the time (he had no qualms about living together BTW),
wanting me to quit my job, wanting me to quit school, not see friends,
break off with my family, worrying about “seeing me in heaven,” etc.,
and he crossed a physical line, so I walked out. That cost me.
Isolation is key, because it allows the controller to distort the victim's sense of what's normal and to cut off paths of aid and escape. FLDS has been able to perpetuate these practices on a large scale, thanks to the cloaking of the First Amendment, the isolating expanses of the rural West and a mythology that feeds off persecution.
"Maybe our legislators have
cunningly laid a snare to catch the innocent just because they believe
in an unpopular religion," Jessop continued. "So it was on the days of
Jesus Christ. So it was in the days of Joseph Smith. So it was in the
Days of Warren Jeffs."
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann almost had it right when she spoke out at an EdWatch National Education Conference when she denounced:
Personal bondage, personal despair, and personal enslavement.
And that's why this is so dangerous.
Of course, she was talking "the gay and lesbian lifestyle."
I confess, I've been remiss in tracking a certain prodigal preacher's progress in resisting Sen. Charles Grassley's investigation of the Big Six prosperity gospel televangelists. Once Mac Hammond got his new plane from Kenneth Copeland, I moved on to other things.
But at the start of the week, Copeland — or his Washington tax attorney — responded a second time to the Grassley committee's request for information. The letter was a bit more temperate than Copeland's defiant stance at his minister's conference or in a letter to contributor/partners:
The enemy is not going to steal what the Lord has won
through this ministry, and he is not going to use this attack to bring
harm to the rest of the churches and ministries in America!
The attorney put it differently, but basically reiterated what Copeland has been saying: If you want my financial information, go ask the IRS for what it has. That will protect our rights as a church and safeguard the privacy of our information. Privacy is important, because
the Church is deeply concerned that the information Senator Grassley is
seeking could be used to subject the Church and its members to public
stigma, scorn, and obloquy.
Most obloquy slingers have managed to get along fine without Copeland's tax returns. But Grassley, being more serious than most bloggers, would like to see whether there's actual substantiation for the claims these ministers are enriching themselves in part by skirting the tax code.
You can see here what Copeland considers a stigma-proof level of financial accountability — a pie chart, showing proportional ministry expenditures but no totals, that is less detailed than one appearing on the web site prior to the inquiry. It's meaningless even to the faithful, who don't require even this level of reassurance.
If Grassley were to request the information from the IRS, about all he would see are tax returns, unless the IRS were to launch an actual investigation. Only an audit would have a chance of untangling the various enterprises of Kenneth Copeland Ministries (KCM), and Copeland and his lawyers know it.
In addition to rules prohibiting public disclosure of KCM's tax information there are rules governing the timing and extent of any IRS investigation. The IRS, with a greater workload driven by more complex schemes and fewer auditors, has to prioritize who it goes after, and a church isn't likely to be high on the list — even one running as close to the edge as this one.
The regulations that Grassley himself sponsored years ago were designed to protect legitimate churches from harassment while still being able to root out fake enterprises like a Church of Mortgage Flipping or Sucking Equity
Ministries. (Though a lawyer could contend that the real estate scamming seminars were church services, I'm sure.)
Basically, if Copeland gets his way, the church appears to comply and keeps its privacy. The Grassley inquiry still doesn't get the information it really wants. At least, that's a non-lawyer's reading of the latest legal response.
Lawyers aren't the only advisors who have been busy down Ft. Worth way. KCM has revamped its web site and filled it with some kinder, gentler information, including a little bit about Copeland's short, pre-Christian stint as a teen idol.
In 1957 at 20 years of age, with a hit album [sic; it appears to have been a single only], Pledge of Love, at
#14 on the national charts and #1 on the local charts Kenneth looked to
be on his way to a successful singing career appearing on American Bandstand and featured next to Ricky Nelson in Dig Magazine.
Copeland had a good voice. But the record was a reverb-drenched, do-wop-choir-backed, plodding pop ballad. It met the basic one-hit-wonder requirements of the era: A simple tune that can be learned on first hearing and sung by even the most musically challenged, coupled with lyrics that express obsessive longing. Lacking any specific description of the love object, it allowed the projection of universal, deeply sublimated, teenage sexual desire.
His attempt at Rockabilly with a Jimmy Lloyd tune went nowhere, and Copeland soon turned to God and gospel music. That's where his real pop idol success eventually came — translating the faithful longing theme to a different stage, and this time, singing of fulfillment instead of waiting.
Mac Hammond's Citation 1 wasn't the first aircraft Kenneth Copeland has given away. Copeland likes to hand out million-dollar jets as the spirit moves him.
According to Lynne Hammond, speaking to a prayer service about the gift, Copeland has given away 28 aircraft. A source who has worked in Copeland's KCM empire says the generosity was consistent the prosperity gospel teaching of giving leading to greater blessings:
It was a source of pride to him that he was able to give a plane away when the Lord told him to... and every time he did, he was able to believe for a better one.
He's given Mac Gober several [Gober was a leader in the campaign to acquire two $17-million Citation Xs for Copeland]; Jerry Savelle [who, like Hammond, serves on Copeland's board and would presumably have oversight of such transactions] at least two, Keith Moore one (I think) and I can't remember who else, besides some individuals that just 'hit him right' if you know what I mean.
These gifts, of course, are ultimately funded by the tithes and contributions of the faithful — presumably intended to spread the word of God and advance the ministry's work,
In the convoluted teaching of the prosperity gospel, Copeland and other evangelists don't "expect" followers to pay for their aircraft, and donors give out of love, without strings attached. They are "believing" God for the next jet, the next building or the new television studio. Donors give to God, though the checks are made out to Copeland, who will take it up with God to see if the jet is the right thing for him to have.
It usually is.
Jets aren't the only asset transfers among the ministerial friends and fellow board members. Gifts of luxury cars and cash are being investigated by the Grassley Senate Committee. A lawsuit by a former Oral Roberts University accountant alleges the school had an unrestricted account that funneled money to regents, who included some of the evangelists Grassley is investigating.
The roundelay of mutual payments allows these ministers to report to their churches that they are supporting other ministries around the world – including some of the very people involved in overseeing the organization's finances.
While the churches do sponsor schools, chemical dependency counseling, elder care and other forms of community outreach, much "ministry work" is virtually indistinguishable from marketing and fund raising. Especially where the jets are involved. Honoraria sometimes change hands for these visits, though the reports to churches don't disclose who receives what.
A week ago, the Copelands were in town for the Hammonds. This week, the Hammonds will be helping an Alexandria, LA, church with its "Great Expectations" campaign, while the Copelands show up in Branson, MO, for Keith Moore's "Victory Campaign."
A week later, Moore is in Minnesota, perhaps arriving on one of his Kenneth Copeland jets.
Not dizzy yet? There's another ministry in Branson run by Billye Brim, who like Hammond and Moore, appeared at Copeland's Ministers Conference. Brim has given a jet to Copeland, and so has Creflo Dollar, one of the Big Six being investigated by Grassley.
These men of the Lord might teach drug lords a thing or two about laundering money and getting away with it.
It took a few days longer than I originally predicted, but the blessing did arrive.
Prosperity gospel minister Mac Hammond has a new plane.
Hammond's ministry has been retrenching — cutting back its hour Sunday broadcast, eliminating the print editions of its magazine and newsletter, stopping live broadcasts to its satellite churches in Duluth and Eau Claire, and cutting loose its affiliations with its outreach ministries in Orono and Club 3 Degrees in downtown Minneapolis.
And, most humbling for a televangelist hovering just below the top tier of prosperity gospel ministers, Living Word Christian Center was offering its Citation 3 jet for sale.
When Hammond flew to his mentor Kenneth Copeland's now notorious Ministers Conference in late January, I had a hunch that he would be the recipient of a Copeland-orchestrated outpouring of support from the attendees. But a late appeal from Mike Huckabee for help from his friend Copeland and the assembled ministers may have sucked a million dollars out of the room that otherwise could've kept the jet in the family.
Hammond found no buyer for his plane in Texas. But it turns out he did not have to wait long after his sermon on earnest expectation for his believing to be realized.
Near the end of the Ministers Conference, Hammond later informed church members, he was called into Copeland's office and was told that the debt on the airplane was the bottleneck for his church's finances. The Lord, speaking through Brother Copeland, revealed "Your willingness to sell it has broken the bottleneck. The bottleneck is gone!"
Hammond said he first wondered why the debt on the airplane would be more of a bottleneck than the $14 million owed on the church building. And then it came to him. "Because I wanted the Citation 3 and borrowed the money to make it happen. My motive in acquiring that airplane wasn't right"
Now that the blessing was free to flow, Copeland said, "I'm going to give you a Citation 1" — without a dime owed on it.
Starting
today, prosperity gospel stars Kenneth and Gloria Copeland are in
Minnesota for five days of "Stewardship Week" at Mac Hammond's Living Word Christian Center. Stewardship means giving money commitments to the church.
This may be a special revival week in more ways than one.
To its credit, the ministry acknowledges it has fallen $40,000 to
$70,000 short of its weekly budget in recent months, through Brian
Sullivan, a spokesman for the church. Both recession and closer
scrutiny of televangelists like Copeland are contributing to the money
woes.
A few months ago, the spokesman was pastor Marc Redman, who had been
with LWCC since 1998. A year ago, Redman served as one of Living Word's
associate pastors and as the
executive director of Mac Hammond Ministries, plus as the
operations director for CFAITH.com, which provides faith-based
content and a nonprofit, family-oriented ISP.
Redman is no longer listed among the church associates. Hammond's
son John has taken over Redman's duties; his responsibilities no longer
include aviation.
Will Hammond sell an airplane this weekend? We'll see.
Meanwhile, you're all invited to participate in Blessing without Measure, a campaign to raise 17 million "commitments" (aka dollars) so that
[W]e will be completely debt free, better positioned to finance the end-time
harvest that is coming in these last days. We will be ready to
experience Blessing Without Measure!
As I watched the video feed from Kenneth Copeland's 2008 Ministers Conference, Copeland wasn't on the top of my list of must-see TV.
Sure, I've written about his ministry, its tentacles and the Grassley Senate investigation, and I was hoping for something directly from Copeland's mouth on that. I wasn't disappointed. The big news I stumbled across — about fundraising for Mike Huckabee during the conference — came while watching the between-sermon sessions, looking for any updates about the fate of Mac Hammond's jet.
My earnest expectation was that the ministers in attendance, inspired by subtle and not-so-subtle signals from the pulpit, would kick in the money Hammond needed, and perhaps turn the aircraft back to his ministry.
As far as I was able to determine, the Lord intends to work a little slower on that one.
But we have learned that the ministers raised $111,000 in cash and pledged another million dollars to Huckabee's presidential campaign. They observed the letter of the law prohibiting churches from explicitly advocating for a candidate by temporarily adjourning the conference, sending attendees outside, and inviting those who wished to come back in for a private session on behalf of Huckabee's campaign.
You can bet there was some hooting when Copeland and the lawyers hatched this one.
Announcing the cash total during the conference itself may still prove to have been a slip-up, but Copeland might argue that's simply like reporting the score of a football game the ministers missed because they were in a meeting. It's something many of the assembled were interested in, but there's no connection with the church.
Back to Huckabee and Hammond. Did the Huckabee fundraiser knock the props out from under the jet buy that seemed to be developing on Wednesday morning?
Choosing between two friends and two appeals, did Copeland take Huckabee's call and decide the candidate's need was more urgent? Clearly Huckabee prevailed, since there was no further mention of Hammond's plane during the broadcast
portions.
Meanwhile, here's how thin the veils were in the dance of legality the ministers were led through in order to give to Huckabee...
Imagine yourself one of the thousand or so ministers at the conference who have come to learn and profess, but also to make connections, climb in Copeland's estimation and demonstrate your godliness to peers. You do that by showing you enjoy God's abundance.
The leaders of your faith defend their personal wealth by appealing to scripture and pointedly asking any believer who questions it by asking, "What's your problem? Why hasn't God Almighty blessed you?"
In an environment where money is an expression of your godliness, dropping a $100 check in the basket and pledging another thousand or more is not a political act — nor even simply a finger in the eye of the Washington devils attacking your religion.
It's an expression of your godliness. That you are worthy to sit at the right hand of Kenneth Copeland.
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