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

Yesterday we did the first part of an interview with investigative journalist Sarah Posner about her new book, “God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters.” We learned what the so-called Word of Faith movement was, which televangelists are some of its leading proponents, what it’s political agenda is, and how Republican politicians have pandered to the movement. Today we’ll finish up the interview with a look at race and gender politics in the evangelical Christian right, the tithing racket and how it has enriched top movement leaders, and how finances are kept hidden from the IRS. According to Esther Kaplan, author of With God on their Side, “[Posner’s book] serves as an urgent warning about [the evangelical movement’s] toxic and corrupting influence on American politics.” Sarah Posner has written for The Nation, The American Prospect, AlterNet, The Washington Spectator, and The Gadflyer.

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

Rough Transcript:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Welcome back to Uprising, Sarah.

Sarah Posner: Thanks for having me again.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Thanks very much for joining us. So, I want to talk specifically about the basis of the prosperity gospel, as it is called in a short form, and how the leading televangelist leaders equate for their followers the capitalist drive with love of God. How did they create that connection in the minds of their followers?

Sarah Posner: Well, it starts basically with their very basic premise that God wants you to be rich, that Jesus was a wealthy man, and they point to various parts of the Bible, both the Old and the New Testament, where prospering is talked about. You know, they talk about God’s covenant with Abraham in the Old Testament in the Book of Genesis, where God tells Abraham that he wants his people to prosper. Of course, most people don’t interpret that to mean that God wants you to live in a 10-bedroom mansion and fly around the world in a luxury jet, but that’s how they interpret it. So starting with that basic premise, that God does want you to be rich, and that there is nothing wrong with being rich, they then take the basic principles of the prosperity gospel, which are that if you have enough faith and you positively confess what you want, these material things will come to you, and that, you know, God has imbued you as a believer with the ability, really, to act like a little God and call these things into existence for yourself.

Sonali Kolhatkar: And very conveniently, if people give money to the church, I believe something like one tenth of their income, then they will miraculously get rich. Of course what they are doing is making people like Rod Parsley and John Hagee and others extremely wealthy.

Sarah Posner: That’s right. They insist on their congregants tithing 10% of their income, and that is 10% of their gross income, they are very careful to say, not 10% of their net income. And so, obviously, that is going to amount to more money, you know, for someone who is not making that much. And they believe in the, what’s known as the Seed Faith principle, which, interestingly enough, today is the evangelist Oral Robert’s 90th birthday, and he is the one who is responsible for perpetuating the Seed Faith principle, where he says if you sow a seed, you will reap a harvest, you know, a hundredfold return on your investment, or a thousandfold return on your investment. So that’s what the prosperity preachers use to get their congregants to believe that “ok, you give this to me, and God will bless you with a return, a material return on that investment.”

Sonali Kolhatkar: And what sort of peer pressure is there in the church to do this kind of thing. I mean, can someone get away without tithing?

Sarah Posner: From the people that I have talked to who have been in these churches and have gotten out, no, it’s difficult to. There is a lot of pressure. There is the peer pressure of them asking for the tithe during the service in a very sort of heavy-handed way, and telling people for example to hold their tithing envelope in the air and wave it in the air, so if you are not doing that, you know, everybody turns around and looks at you and knows that you are not tithing that day. So there is a sort of intense peer pressure in the pews to make the tithe, and then also, according to people that I have talked to, afterwards too, you know, if you have fallen behind somehow, you will be approached by somebody from the church to remind you that you have fallen behind.

Sonali Kolhatkar: So Sarah, these leaders, the televangelist leaders that you profile in your book “God’s Profits,” they have personal jets and amazing luxuries that they use in their day-to-day lives, justifying it as part of God’s work but also, of course, interestingly enough, for their own personal gain. Now, I understand that the followers know this and somehow don’t mind?

Sarah Posner: Yeah, it’s very interesting. You know, they believe that, or they are taught to believe that that is evidence that God has favor on their beloved pastor, really. So, if you believe in the tenets of the prosperity gospel, and you look to your pastor who is preaching that gospel to you, and you look at him and he has a fancy car, and the ministry has a private jet, and he lives in a fancy house, well that’s evidence that it works. And that’s evidence that it must be true if this godly person is living in a lap of luxury like this. And a lot of them feel like these preachers are entitled to this. People have told me “Oh, well, they work really hard. They travel all around the globe preaching the gospel, so they are entitled to have luxuries because of course, you know, God wants you to be rich.”

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, let’s talk about how the donations, if you will, quote unquote, from these churchgoers gets into the church infrastructure and into the pockets of the televangelist leaders. One of the main points in your book that really surprised me was that these churches are able to call themselves non-profits and not reveal any aspect, or not have to reveal any of the aspects of their financial books to the IRS or to the public. How is that?

Sarah Posner: Well, that is the law under the Internal Revenue Code. Churches, unlike non-religious non-profits, churches, mosques, synagogues, are not required to file tax returns with the IRS.

Sonali Kolhatkar: And why is that?

Sarah Posner: Well, I think, you know, it’s based in this idea that the government should not meddle in church affairs, and so that’s the way the IRS Code has been written. Now, for most churches and most houses of worship, they do open their books to their congregants and let their congregants see how much money comes in, how much money goes out, what is the money spent on.

Sonali Kolhatkar: And that’s voluntary?

Sarah Posner: And that’s completely voluntary, but most do it and, you know, a lot of evangelical churches do it, too. They belong to the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, which is a voluntary membership organization, but to belong you have to adhere to certain transparency and accountability standards. These particular churches refuse that. They refuse that sort of accountability and transparency. Many of them, their boards of directors are comprised solely of members of the pastor’s family, or very close associates of the pastor, so it’s almost like a closely held corporation, in a way. Now, Senator Chuck Grassley is currently conducting an investigation into six of these ministries, for the purpose of getting them to open their books voluntarily without having to change the IRS law. And many of them have criticized it as the government trying to meddle in church affairs, or trying to dispute church doctrine and getting into a discussion about what is real Christianity and what’s not. Grassley has been very clear: he is not interested in that. He is just interested in the tax aspects of it, but still most of the ministries under his investigation are resisting giving him the information.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Let’s talk about another disturbing aspect of this movement and how it is becoming more and more appealing to African Americans. And a lot of these congregations are quite racially diverse. This is not an entirely white movement, as maybe, you know, some of us might have that image in our minds. This is quite a racially diverse movement. What attracts in particular African Americans to this prosperity gospel?

Sarah Posner: Well, I think that there are a few things. One is that the movement grew out of a sort of relationship with Pentecostal preachers. A lot of Pentecostal preachers started preaching the prosperity gospel. A lot of the main proponents of it used to belong to Pentecostal denominations before they went independent and are now just pastoring these independent churches which do preach the prosperity gospel. So, a lot of African Americans did come from that religious tradition and there are a lot of African American pastors who preach the prosperity gospel. But at the same time there are a lot of white televangelists who preach it who have huge black followings like Rod Parsley, for example, or Paula White, who is one of the targets of the Grassley investigation. And they have a certain preaching style that’s appealing to African Americans who come out of the Pentecostal tradition. But there is an economic component to it, too. It’s not just that they have a religious expression that fits well with African American religious expression. I think that, you know, in the 1980ies especially, you really saw the rise of these churches and their African American followers, and I think that it, in a way, it offers hope for financial prosperity, based on your faith, and that you don’t have to rely on the government or anyone else for that potential prosperity. And I think that during the Reagan years, when you saw such a big divide between the rich and poor growing and even into today, into the Bush years, I think when people are feeling a little hopeless, you know, they turn to things that might not be so rational, because the rational things that they have tried to attain haven’t really worked out for them. So I think that, you know, in the age of welfare reform and the diminishment of the social safety net, I think that, you know, that there is nothing else to turn to but your faith.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Right. And in fact, Chris Hedges points that out in his book “American Fascists” quite well, that those who are critical of this movement should really try to understand the motivations of the followers of this movement.

Sarah Posner: That’s right.

Sonali Kolhatkar: What is the position that this movement and its leaders, in particular, take on the feminist movement and on the, sort of, structure of the family, and even on sex itself as compared to, for example, conservative Americans, or even what we might imagine the religious right to take?

Sarah Posner: Well, they are very much in line with the religious right view, and some of them are even more reactionary than that. For example, John Hagee has some pretty reactionary views. I mean, he has equated feminism with witchcraft because it, to him, goes against what he considers to be the biblical roles of men and women in the family, meaning that the wife is submissive to the husband, and that he is the spiritual leader of the household. It’s a very similar viewpoint that was articulated in 1998 by the Southern Baptist Convention, which Mike Huckabee has been criticized for agreeing with. You know, it’s a fairly standard viewpoint within conservative evangelical Christianity. So it’s not unique to the Word of Faith movement, but they do, a lot of them do [inaudible] to that sort of very traditional, conservative interpretation of gender roles within the household.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Finally, let’s talk, Sarah, in the last few minutes, about the story that you describe in your book that really moved me. If you can tell our listeners about the woman that you met and interviewed for this book, whose mother, she found out, who died of cancer, was secretly giving money to this movement in the hopes of healing herself. Who exactly was this woman, what happened to her?

Sarah Posner: Well, the woman you are referring to, who died, her name was Bonnie Parker, and her daughter, Kristy Beach, I interviewed for the book. Her mother died of breast cancer after a very long battle with the disease, and after her mother died, she discovered these notebooks in which her mother had basically chronicled how she had continually, over a very long period of time, given tens of thousands of dollars to the Kenneth Copeland ministry in the hopes that this would heal her. And she never sought medical care for her breast cancer, because she had basically fallen under the spell of this healing gospel, and believed that if she were sowing a seed with Kenneth Copeland, again that same terminology, you know, that she would be blessed with her cure, she would be healed. And, this was just absolutely devastating for her family. They live in a rural part of Louisiana and basically had been raised in a Baptist church, were Christian, but this was not Christianity to Kristy Beach, when she discovered that this had happened to her mother. This story is very, very sad and heartbreaking. And it shows you how someone who is confined to their home because of an illness like that, and maybe watching this sort of thing on television, and can get very wrapped up in the whole ideology, the theology of it and be giving their money away.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Tens of thousands of dollars.

Sarah Posner: Yeah. In the hopes that this will be something that will miraculously cure her of something that obviously, you know, is not going to be cured without medical help.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Well, Sarah Posner, we have come to the end of our time. I want to thank you very much for joining us today.

Sarah Posner: Thank you very much.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Sarah Posner is an investigative journalist and author of the book “God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters.” You can read an excerpt of her book online at alternet.org that was just published a couple of days ago, and we will link to it from our website uprising.org later as well. For Sonali’s subversive thought for the day I would like to quote from the last lines of Sarah Posner’s book, where she says “Every new generation is being taught to obey its leaders’ commands to pray, to pay and to vote. No one should expect this movement to collapse or even falter any time soon. Disciplined, resilient, impervious to setbacks and determined to succeed, it will continue to make its mark on American politics and the culture at large.”

Special Thanks to Claudia Greyeyes for transcribing this interview