Franklin Graham, president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse, back in his smiling days. (Samaritan’s Purse Image)
I always figured Franklin Graham was doing great work through his Samaritan’s Purse charity organization, helping the needy around the world and riding around on his motorcycle when he was back in the States. And he was always smiling.
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Because it’s becoming so difficult to parody the political primary races, here’s a bit of good news to distract us all (courtesy of Heeb Magazine): The UFO worshiping Raëlians are no longer Zionists. (See their powerful video above)
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[Update: ‘CBS This Morning’ interviewed Trinity Foundation president Ole Anthony in a follow up to John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” piece.]
John Oliver skewered televangelists, the Prosperity Gospel and abysmal IRS oversight in a way that’s uniquely his own during an episode of Last Week Tonight, which aired Sunday on HBO. Oliver put it all together in one of his signature takedowns. (See above)
Nowhere in the program does it mention the source of most of this information: Trinity Foundation, a Dallas-based, public religious non-profit charged with keeping tabs on religious fraud and helping its victims.
Could the same IRS that is unwilling to prosecute blatant religious fraudsters shut down the only organization that is keeping an eye on them?
Trinity worked for months with the program, providing video, photos and reams of documentation. The result, of course, was hilarious. But after we’ve all had a good laugh and the smoke clears, the televangelists will continue to ply their trade, defaming the Christian gospel and the selfless work of millions of believers around the world, many suffering fierce persecution.
And that’s the way it’s been going for Trinity Foundation since it started monitoring religious broadcasting in 1974, before many in John Oliver’s audience were born.
In a rather sad retrospective of its history earlier this year, the foundation’s newsletter ticked off its failed attempts to get something done about religious fraud, and laid out the problems:
Just before throwing in the towel, Trinity President Ole Anthony saw a disturbing piece of information that rekindled the flame.
A respected scholarly missions journal – The International Bulletin of Missionary Research – reported that money embezzled by Christian workers and religious leaders around the world will exceed the total funding for world missions again in 2015, and then will double in the next 10 years to $100 billion.
Trinity President Ole Anthony, who ain’t gettin’ any younger.
Anthony was stunned.
“In the past, we’ve estimated that the business of televangelism rakes in $3-5 billion annually through fraudulent promises and techniques,” Anthony explained. But because religious TV is ubiquitous around the world, the lavish lifestyle it models and the prosperity gospel it preaches create an atmosphere of spiritual entitlement that can overwhelm other moral considerations.
“More generally, the example of opulent mega church buildings or lavish lifestyle all send a subliminal signal that says God’s plan is all about the success of self.”
“For years, we’ve been criticized for concentrating on a fringe problem, putting energy into something that wasn’t important to the mission of the church; it was even seen by some as an attack on the church itself,” Anthony said. “These current findings show – to the contrary – that our concern has been directly relevant to the church’s overall mission.”
So instead of quitting, Trinity broadened it scope to include religious fraud around the world, not just in the United States.
But Trinity has a problem.
In the past it has benefited from a small number of people giving (very) occasional donations to fund it’s meager staff [Its office is in one half of a duplex in old east Dallas]. But IRS regulations require that, as a “public” foundation, it must have a broader public base, with a multitude of small donors.
That’s right. The same IRS that is unwilling to prosecute blatant religious fraudsters could shut down the only organization that is keeping an eye on them.
Anthony, although gifted in investigations and gaining access to the media, is so averse to (and inept at) asking for funds himself that the organization could falter within months. I believe that would be bad for America and for the cause of Christ. So, this is really a plea for everyone to throw a little money Trinity’s way.
You can do that by going to their website here.
Many thanks!
North Korea’s 32-year-old Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un shocked a crowd in Pyongyang, reappearing after a month-long absence from public view and flexing his newly bulked up physique.
Kim Jong-un / Before
Despite speculation he was the victim of a coup or in failing health, Kim shocked a meeting of party dignitaries with a new look and a new attitude.
His personal trainer Kim Yung-ho explained that the Dear Leader put himself on the diet of a normal citizen of his country, eating small servings of tree bark and grass for an initial weight drop, and then bulked up with steak and eggs, protein powder, human growth hormone and steroids.
Later Kim stripped off his drab Korean People’s Army uniform, oiled up his torso and posed for the crowd to loud and sustained applause.
“Dear Leader sent a delegation to the Asia Games last month in South Korea to scope out the competition, since he’s planning on training for the weight lifting tryouts at the next games in 2018,” his trainer explained.
What was his training regimine?
“As I understand it, to buff up, and to stave off his gout, Kim had to cut out smoking, drinking expensive whiskey and spending late-night hours binge-watching episodes of House of Cards. Instead, he woke at 4:30 a.m. for a morning run, then to the pool for 30 laps and finally to the weight room, “ said latest trainer Kim. “ His first trainer was fired and fed to wild dogs. This is my third week on the job.”
The Rev. Carl Keyes and his wife, the Rev. Donna Keyes, who jointly led the Glad Tidings Tabernacle in Manhattan, have agreed to repay $1.2 million that they took from their congregation to buy a BMW and an 18th-century farmhouse on seven acres in rural New Jersey.
Other funds were used to finance family trips to California, West Virginia, Africa and Florida. The funds included $500,000 the church loaned to an anti-poverty charity controlled by Carl Keyes, called Aid for the World.
An Associated Press investigation uncovered the transactions. The AP found that Keyes had embellished stories about relief work he performed in New York in the months after the 9/11 attacks. In some cases, Keyes took credit for things that other people had done.
In The Stocks returns us to the era before mass media, when village miscreants were pilloried for public mocking and ridicule. Feel free to virtually throw a piece of rotten fruit.
• The Center for Moral Ambiguity
See all the old archived, classic Rick Perry Devotionals here!