TAMPA - U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley is increasing pressure on five large ministries that have refused to respond to his financial inquiry even as political watchers say the investigation could hurt Republicans in the upcoming election.
Grassley, a Republican and the ranking member of the Senate’s finance committee, is sending a second round of letters asking the preachers whether they use church money to bankroll their lavish lifestyles and private businesses. His inquiry is questioning whether they have violated their tax-exempt status.
The new letters, which could go out any day, renew the possibility of issuing subpoenas for information and testimony from those who don’t comply, including Without Walls International Church and Paula White Ministries in Tampa.
“I don’t intend to give up and go away,” Grassley said Thursday. “I work on oversight projects until I get answers and results.”
At the same time, he and others who support the inquiry face growing pressure to drop the matter, observers said. Politicians who have relied on the votes of evangelical Christians don’t want to see Grassley infuriate a crucial voting bloc.
Doug Wead, former President Bush’s liaison to the evangelical community, said the investigation has caused a division among Baptist and Pentecostal voters, a group of evangelicals largely credited with the election of both presidents Bush.
“Grassley has thrown a grenade in the middle of the coalition that any Republican will need,” Wead said this week. “If you are a Republican, it looks disastrous.”
Reopening Theological Divide
Along with Without Walls and Paula White Ministries, Grassley targeted Creflo Dollar of World Changers Church International; Benny Hinn of World Healing Center Church; Kenneth Copeland of Kenneth Copeland Ministries; Eddie Long of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church; and Joyce Meyer of Joyce Meyer Ministries. Only Meyer has cooperated.
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In December, Randy White, pastor of Without Walls, took a defiant stand, telling his congregation that the senator’s questions were an assault on their faith.
Kenneth Copeland has declared a holy war.
He has said he will never release the information and that he gave Grassley “a lesson in no.”
Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, obtained a tape of a closed-circuit broadcast of Copeland’s Jan. 22 Ministers’ Conference.
“You can go get a subpoena, and I won’t give it to you,” Copeland reportedly says. “It’s not yours, it’s God’s and you’re not going to get it and that’s something I’ll go to prison over. So, just get over it. … And if there’s a death penalty that applies, well, just go for it.”
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February 8th, 2008 at 11:49 am
When someone has information that would be damaging to their image the first thing to do is find anyway possible not to turn over that information. You would think that their refusal would set something off in the mind of those who follow them around. I guess the biggest thing that really gets me is for the sake of “voters” he is told to just leave it alone. When will people learn that everything that glitter’s ain’t gold….it usually ends up being fool’s gold and you end up the fool!
February 8th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Given how long this all is taking and their resistance. By the time anything is obtained via whatever means, one has to wonder if the books might be “cooked” any more than they might already be?
In all the pimps’ resistance, there is one thing you don’t see them citing in their resistance, scripture. They’re having lawyers speak, talking about various legal and constitutional things. But they can’t bring to bear one lick of (rightly divided) scripture in their defiance. Which proves their actions to be ungodly.
Praiser4Life reply on February 8th, 2008 at 2:28 pm :
So true IC! You won’t hear these charlatans quoting Romans 13!
February 8th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
It is idiots like the pimps that give ALL true Christians a bad name. The world lumps these chumps in with us. Sad but true.
February 8th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Copeland may not know this, but he won’t be the first big time preacha to go to prison for lying and covering up about money.
Such “defiance” is manufactured drama in my opinion. Once he gets in jail he’ll be calling on the saints worldwide to pray that he get out.
They’ve chosen to serve mammon so let mammon protect them, if it can.
February 8th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
So, they’re stonewalling. Big surprise! (Not!)
They should just tell the Senate that they are practicing their religion as they see it. They can show them in the Bible where it says they’re supposed to make merchandise of the church because that is what false teachers do. They can also say that they offer an “ear scratching service” to itching ears. After all, if they don’t do it, someone else will step in and get all that easy loot.
Plus, our congregations like to see their ministers rich and sporting bling and driving Rolls Royces because it makes them feel that it can happen to them someday so, what’s the problem? So, if none of them are interested in how much we make off them and if we keep it a secret, why are you so interested?
Yeah, yeah. . . That’s the ticket!
February 8th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Everyone, please send a word of encouragement to Senator Grassley here to continue the investigation against these arrogant stonewallers:
http://grassley.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.Home
February 10th, 2008 at 10:56 am
I even wonder if Meyer gave Grassley the ‘correct and true’ books
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The latest tactic I have seen in Christian forums (and local Word of Faith televangelists on public access tv) for televangelist supporters is the ’speck/log’ scriptures in reference to ’speck’ being the televangelists and the ‘log’ being wasteful government bureaucratic spending.
But the way it is approached is not for both parties to deal with their problems. It is dealt as wasteful government bureaucratic spending is the ‘worse’ deed than extravagant televangelist spending and therefore, government has no right to call out televangelists and that in light of wasteful government spending, extravagant televangelist spending is not on God’s radar to address.
Pragmatics and denial (self-lying) of the issue is what I call it.
IndependentConservative reply on February 10th, 2008 at 11:09 am :
Yea we don’t know if Meyer’s books are honest, but it seems she did fully comply and so if anyone is telling the truth in their records it is likely her. She’s still a pimp, but the most up front so far.
Trying to use the government’s spending as a cited ‘log’ is wrongly divided scripture. Government is NOT acting as a brother in Christ, but rather in Romans 13, which is THE GOD ORDAINED ROLE FOR GOVERNMENT. Anyone hearing a pastor claim government waste in comparison with pulpit pimps should run, don’t walk RUN from that house of pimping, turn the channel, get away ASAP.