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GUEST: Sarah Posner, investigative journalist and author of “God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters”

Republicans have counted on evangelical voters to put them in office for several years now. The George W. Bush presidency in particular has embraced the religious right like no other president before him. But this year, political pundits are predicting that the evangelical vote won’t be as crucial as in previous years. But Republican Mike Huckabee’s candidacy for his party’s nomination is proving otherwise. Still, the questions arise each election, what drives the religious right to consistently vote against their own economic interests? Why are they such a reliable voting bloc? In a new book called God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters, investigative journalist Sarah Posner seeks to answer these questions. Posner takes a detailed look at the strategies of leading figures in the evangelical movement, who, despite scandals involving sex and corruption, remain infallible to their followers.

Read an excerpt of Sarah Posner’s book here: http://www.alternet.org/story/74440/.

Rough Transcript:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Thank you so much for joining us today. There is so much to talk about. I read your book and it was very interesting. It reminds me a little bit, or it’s very complimentary, I think, to the book by Chris Hedges “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.” But let’s talk about, first of all, the sort of new version of Christianity that many evangelical leaders have used to drive their agenda, what is called the Word of Faith movement. I have to admit I hadn’t really heard about this very much before reading your book. What is the Word of Faith movement? Where did it come from?

Sarah Posner: Well, the Word-Faith movement might be known to some of your listeners as the prosperity gospel, because it emphasizes personal financial prosperity, but it really grew out of a movement in the 1950ies that was spread initially through Pentecostal revival tents. It really focuses on the believers’ ability to call things into existence for themselves. So it really believes in what is known as Positive Confession, which means that if you say you want something, you can call it into existence through your faith. It believes in revelation knowledge, which means that you can base your decision making and your view of the world based on revelations from God as opposed to what you might sense around you with your observational senses. It also believes in the believer’s right, divine right, to health and wealth, and their ability to be almost like a little God based on their belief in Jesus Christ as their savior. And so, televangelists, the people that I write about in the book, have taken this gospel and turned it into sort of a modern-day merger between consumerism and religion. They have also taken Oral Roberts’ Seed Faith theology, which says if you plant a seed you will reap a harvest, to take all these principles to say to their listeners, to say to their congregations, you know, “Tithe to me. Give your money to me. That’s evidence of your faith in God and that will result in supernatural return on your investment, and not just a supernatural spiritual return, but a supernatural financial return.”

Sonali Kolhatkar: I want to talk more about the tithing aspect of it in a bit, but let’s first talk also about how these televangelists have essentially collaborated with politicians to push their agenda across the United States in government policy etc. But actually maybe we should even talk about what their main issues are. I mean, for conservative voters across the board in general, the abortion issue is a big one, the gay marriage issue is a big one, but what about the religious right as embodied by these televangelists? What are their bread and butter issues?

Sarah Posner: Well, they are a part of the religious right that, despite many conservative Christians’ concerns about the prosperity gospel, that it distorts the teachings of Jesus, they have been embraced by other leaders in the broader Christian right. Embraced by people like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, embraced by people like Jerry Falwell when he was alive, embraced by people like James Dobson. So they really collaborate with the Christian right on the issues of gay marriage and abortion, those are their big issues, separation of church and state, but what differentiates them from the broader evangelical movement is this emphasis on personal prosperity. This emphasis on being able to reap your own economic return based on your faith. And what I argue in the book is that this fits really well with Republican economic ideology, which says that government programs aren’t what will help you achieve financial success, you will have to do that on your own.

Sonali Kolhatkar: So dismantling the social services network is definitely something that they are very interested in?

Sarah Posner: Absolutely. I mean, some of them even believe that that’s satanic because it interferes with the churches ability to preach the gospel, their version of the gospel, to their followers, so that their followers will achieve the financial success that they promise them.

Sonali Kolhatkar: What is their problem with the NEA?

Sarah Posner: Their problem is not with the NEA, it’s with the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, which is the organization that evangelical non-profits can belong to. They have to apply to belong. They have to demonstrate certain financial accountability and transparency in order to basically get like a “good housekeeping” stamp of approval that they are transparent to their donors. These ministries are not transparent to their donors. In fact, they operate under strict secrecy. And that’s one of the controversies about them, because they are constantly asking their congregations and their viewers for money, but then they don’t give their donors the right to know how that money is spent, and that actually is one of the things that Senator Charles Grassley, who is investigating some of these television ministries, is looking into. He is trying to get them to be more transparent, like ordinary non-profits are.

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, apart from the dismantling of social services, does their agenda also include bringing religion into schools?

Sarah Posner: Yes, absolutely. I mean, they pretty much buy into the more general Christian right agenda, which includes wanting to restore prayer in schools, wanting to have Bible curriculum in public schools, vouchers for students to go to Christian schools instead. And they are very much anti-abortion, they are very much anti-gay, a lot of them lobbied against the Matthew Shepard bill, the hate crimes legislation, and against the amendments to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would have included sexual orientation in the groups of people protected by that legislation.

Sonali Kolhatkar: How have some of these leaders tried to rewrite the history of the origin of the United States, to say that the separation of church and state aspect of the US’s origin is really a myth?

Sarah Posner: Well, they rely very much on this fellow named David Barton, who works for an organization in Texas called WallBuilders. Barton fancies himself a historian, and he is really the leading person that the Christian right turns to for “scholarship” on what the original intent of the Founders was on the separation of church and state. And he is really a quite prolific writer and has written books and pamphlets and gives countless presentations, has actually worked as a consultant to the Republican Party going around telling pastors what their rights are in terms of being able to campaign or not campaign for a presidential candidate or any other candidate. And so, like much of the rest of the Christian right, the prosperity preachers have turned to Barton for that type of information, and helped in advancing the myth that there is no separation of church and state, that that was a creation of activist judges in the 20th century at the behest of secularists who are trying to ruin everything for the Christian rightists.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Sarah, in your book you go through so many of these personalities, most of them men. In particular you focus on a man named Rod Parsley that your book opens with and I believe you attended one of his sermons. Can you describe that experience, what that was like and particularly, what your view was of the people around you?

Sarah Posner: Well, this was a faith healing service that he had in a megachurch in Texas. He is actually from Ohio, so he was guest preaching there, and it was nationally televised by TBN, which is the Trinity Broadcasting Network, which is the biggest religious broadcaster in the world. The faith healing service had been hyped on TV for months ahead of time and Parsley had been giving out, by mail and at the event, prayer cloths, which he claimed that he was placing his anointing on. He claims that he has an anointing from God and if he touches the prayer cloth and then gives it back to you, you can use it to heal yourself of anything from debt, homosexuality, marital problems, your physical ailments. He claims that it will work for any of those things. So, at this megachurch that I went to, where he was having this service, people lined up very early in the day to get a seat. And I got there hours before it was supposed to start and I barely got a seat. Everyone was crammed into the pew then. You could hardly move. The music was getting everybody very hyped up. There was a lot of what they call praise and worship music, which is basically like Christian pop tunes, but they very much serve to get people very riled up for the upcoming service. And people were in wrapped attention to Rod Parsley. I mean, he claimed that he was healing people on the stage, he was slaying people in the spirit, he was walking on the pews and people were in a euphoric state around me. People were speaking in tongues, they were trembling, they were reaching up to get the anointing from Parsley and really believed that this would make a change in their lives. It was almost like it was like a drug.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Wasn’t Rod Parsley the one who was exposed as being the one whose church took donations from people with these cloths that people were sending for him to anoint and he took the donations and threw away the cloths?

Sarah Posner: There were a couple of exposés in the 1990s and early 2000 of Benny Hinn and Robert Tilton, who also essentially preached a very similar type of theology and used the same type of method. And Tilton in particular was exposed for taking the money out of the envelopes and throwing away the prayer requests. I mean, people would write these very heartfelt prayer requests to him and the exposé, which was televised on, oh, now I can’t remember whether it was Dateline or Primetime, one of those major network news magazines, and he was exposed for throwing away the prayer requests and keeping the money.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Now, does that sort of exposé, I mean there have been so many exposés in recent times, Ted Haggard, of course, comes to mind. What impact do those have on the followers of these men, these televangelists?

Sarah Posner: Well, it really has little effect, surprisingly. I mean it is surprising to you and I, because it is hard to see how somebody could see those exposés and still want to follow somebody like that. But, you know, I’ll point you to the opening quote in my book, which is from one of the psalms in the Bible, which says “Touch not my anointed ones, and do my prophets no harm.” The prosperity preachers use that particular quote from the Bible to say “Don’t question me. I’m anointed by God and you should not question anything I do. And anyone who does is just trying to bring me down, the forces of Satan, you know, the devil is behind it.” And people are so convinced of that, that they think that it’s just satanic forces that are trying to come against the anointed ones.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Even when they admit to the wrongdoing?

Sarah Posner: Well, none of these prosperity preachers have admitted to wrongdoing. So that’s a huge factor. I think that maybe if they admitted it that would make a difference, but I interviewed a former member of John Hagee’s church for the book and she had actually, after 10 years of belonging to the church and believing that he was a God, finally sort of seen the light. She described to me how that whole spiritual authority worked. So the congregants are led to believe that this person is speaking through God and you should not question them.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Going back to Rod Parsley. You mentioned he is from Ohio. What role did Parsley play in Ohio in the last presidential election?

Sarah Posner: A lot of people credit Parsley for turning Ohio for Bush and, as you remember, Ohio was the decisive state for the Electoral College count. Before the 2004 election, Parsley was pretty unknown outside his televangelism circles, but that really catapulted him onto the national stage and, you know, by design, this is something that he wanted to do. And he campaigned with the Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell, who was the Bush-Cheney campaign co-chair for Ohio. He campaigned around the state for the gay marriage ban that was on the ballot at the same time. And because there was such a huge turnout in favor of the gay marriage ban, it was thought that he played a big role in getting voters out for Bush.

Sonali Kolhatkar: So these are people who are very, very seriously playing a role in US politics. George W. Bush, as I mentioned, was among the first presidents to really embrace the religious right. His father, as you describe in your book, did so sort of reluctantly, but certainly did count on them. How do Republican politicians play to this Word of Faith movement while still trying to not offend their broader base? I mean, it seems like there is quite a tightrope that they have to walk.

Sarah Posner: Yes. And you know, as I describe in the book, both Bushes were very concerned about that, because the broader base sees the whole televangelism/prosperity gospel movement as somewhat embarrassing and peculiar and outrageous. Mike Huckabee, in contrast to that, has been unabashed in embracing some of the prosperity gospel preachers. And he, to me at least, he seems like he is trying to embrace the broadest possible segment of the religious right. You know, not just worried about appeasing the mainline evangelicals or not just worried about appeasing his own denomination, the Southern Baptists, but really reaching out to other components of the base as well. And he appeared for an entire week on Kenneth Copeland’s television program. Copeland is probably the leading spokesperson for the prosperity gospel right now. And that was taped just a short time before Copeland came under investigation by Senator Grassley. Huckabee also spoke at the same church where I saw Rod Parsley do this faith healing. He spoke at that church last November and he spoke at John Hagee’s church in December. And he has openly embraced these leaders of the prosperity gospel movement, calling them great Christian leaders, not questioning the theology at all.

Sonali Kolhatkar: So you mentioned Huckabee, but what about John McCain? In South Carolina, a very, very religious state, it seems as though a lot of these so-called values voters, the followers of these televangelists and of the very suspects of the religious right, are supporting John McCain rather than Huckabee.

Sarah Posner: Right. I mean, its’ a complicated year for the Republican presidential candidates, because you have evangelicals who like Huckabee’s religious message, but are concerned about electability. They are concerned about his views on taxes and immigration and things like that. So there are a lot of evangelicals who are actually being very pragmatic and are thinking okay “Which of these candidates can beat the Democrats?” so they are not just voting on the biblical values issues. So I think that that’s part of why you see the evangelical vote being split. You know, even with Mitt Romney, who does get some evangelical support as well. But McCain has reached out to members of the prosperity gospel movement and he has also met with Hagee, spoken at his Christians United for Israel event, his Christian Zionist event, and he also went on a Trinity Broadcasting Network news program that is called Behind the Scenes. He appeared on that last March when his campaign looked like it was sinking. And that was probably an effort to pull in some of the evangelical votes through that.

Sonali Kolhatkar: I want to mention this is part one of our interview with Sarah. She will be joining us again at the same time tomorrow, because there is so much to talk about in this book, and we will be continuing our interview then. So in the last few minutes of today’s interview, let’s talk about Kenneth Copeland. You mentioned Rod Parsley, you mentioned John Hagee, and Kenneth Copeland’s name comes up in your book several times as well. What role does he play? You call him the most important religious leader in the nation.

Sarah Posner: Well, that’s what George W. Bush’s religious outreach advisor called him back in 1998, when Bush was getting ready to run for the presidency and was trying to consolidate a group of religious leaders around his candidacy. And his religious outreach coordinator was Doug Wead, who had helped his father reach out to this very same community. And so for that entire period of time, Wead had encouraged both Bushes to reach out to Copeland. Copeland has a huge following. Like I said earlier, he is probably the most prominent proponent of the prosperity gospel. I have been to a conference where he was a speaker and talked to some of the people attending there, people who were followers of his, and you will hear people saying “oh, he preaches the unadulterated word,” and just rapturous comments about him. And he probably makes more money, his ministry probably pulls in more money than any of the other television prosperity ministries.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Well, Sarah Posner, I want to thank you very much for joining us today and we will see you back tomorrow at the same time. We want to talk tomorrow about the IRS and a financial secrecy tithing, the personal luxuries of these televangelists, how black Americans are joining the ranks of the movement in greater numbers, gender politics and so much more. Sarah Posner, thank you so much.

Special Thanks to Claudia Greyeyes for transcribing this interview