from Hacker News

The preachers getting rich from poor Americans

by thisone on 5/29/19, 8:40 AM with 163 comments

• by tmux314 on 5/29/19, 1:21 PM

  Whether you are religious or not, this should sicken you. The difference between a religious scam and a non-religious scam is that religious organizations don't pay taxes and have close to zero accountability financially (at least in the US). They can peddle snake oil with no repercussions.

  On top of that, there is a special kind of betrayal when a spiritual leader abuses his follower's trust. Others may feel differently, but to me these scams are more sinister than QVS promising 'science-proven results' or a 'Nigerian prince' email spam.

• by umvi on 5/29/19, 12:13 PM

  What I don't like is when people point to this as a reason why all religion is bad. These are con artists, plain and simple.

  It would be like if someone on QVC conned tons of people into buying magnets because "science proves this will increase your energy levels" and then I used that as a reason to write off all of science.

  Target vulnerable people, get them to pay you money, profit. So many dishonest people exploit this formula from televangelists to email spammers.

• by torgian on 5/29/19, 1:12 PM

  I remember when I was a teen, the church we went to had an elderly couple that taught “Awana”, a children’s group.

  A few months the after they started teaching, their daughters, upon turning 18, accused their parents of sexual abuse.

  The church tried to keep it quiet and said “we cannot judge. God will judge weather it is truth or falsehood.” And they allowed the elderly couple to continue teaching children.

  I don’t know what happened after that since I decided to stop going to church after that.

  Bullshit like this happens more often than people think.

• by auiya on 5/29/19, 12:31 PM

  If you travel through rural America, it's quite telling to see all the township money spent on churches and government buildings, while the residences and public infrastructure sit in dilapidation. Frequently the people from these areas claim to be fiscally conservative, so one would think there would be more demand for the collective spending they do to be more beneficial to the community, rather than those perpetuating the exploitation.

• by apo on 5/29/19, 12:39 PM

  These stories are hard to process because there appears to be such blatant abuse, exploitation, and stupidity.

  > A couple of years later, the Federal Communications Commission reportedly came close to introducing a "truth-in-advertising" clause for religious solicitations. This would have meant that any claims of boosting finances or curing disease would have to be verifiable, and Ole took various trips to Washington to lobby for it.

  The thing that's easily forgotten is that any sufficiently-advanced con is indistinguishable from religion.

• by mlang23 on 5/29/19, 1:23 PM

  In a way, I feel people that fall for such stuff deserve it. OTOH, whenever reading stuff like that, I cant help but think that religious freedom is one of the bigger errors of our modern society.

• by kazinator on 5/29/19, 1:16 PM

  Using "poor" as synonym for "stupid" seems kind of insulting to poor people who don't happen to be stupid.

• by vivekd on 5/29/19, 4:02 PM

  Problem: mega church pastors are getting rich off the mist vulnerable and government doesnt care

  This seems ripe for a tech based solution like an independent chruch rating group like the charity ratings people to encourage transparency about how these ministries use their funds and how well their doctrines line up with basic christian beliefs like tge nicene creed. These TV minitries usually fail on both counts.

  The trinity group in the article seems to be doing great work but they seem to fail in being overly reliant on legislatures

• by Hasknewbie on 5/29/19, 1:17 PM

  Something that should be pointed out and that is specific to the US: the legal status of religion there invites that type of behaviour. As John Oliver noted in the segment mentioned, the law is extremely vague in its definition of what a religious activity is, and gives pretty clear advantages in terms of tax exemption. That high rewards to low obligation ratio naturally invites parasites. If, say, NGO had a similar status instead, said parasites would move there.

• by dessant on 5/29/19, 12:10 PM

  This is the John Oliver segment the article is referencing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y1xJAVZxXg

• by ninjavis on 5/30/19, 5:13 PM

  This is NOT Christianity. This is not Jesus Christ's will.

  I hate the fact that all these mega-church millionaire preachers claim to be followers of Christ in any way, shape or form.

• by MisterTea on 5/29/19, 2:30 PM

  tl;dr religion is spiritually optional. god is truly within. you are your own church.

  What people really need to acknowledge is that humans are naturally spiritual animals. I like to theorize that we evolved spirituality as a mechanism to cope with being lonely intelligent beings. Imagine being a feral yet intelligent, self aware, social being with few others like yourself wandering the land, surviving as wild animals. We knew nothing of how anything worked. What made the lightning and thunder, what fire is, what volcanoes are, disease, predators, earthquakes, drought, floods, etc, and the most scary of all, death. Then throw in more layers of emotional complexity thanks to that big complex brain. What a lonely and terrifying existence. Who do you talk to in a time of great need? Who do you cry out to? For a near infinite number of reasons, we can't always express our feelings to others so we created internal people to listen to us. Those people are gods.

  So remember, religion fulfills the humans natural need for spirituality. Religious leaders are nothing more than personifications of our inner gods we can both speak and relate to. So think of religion as a form of spiritual food. And I can see the benefits of religion in the social sense where a common inner voice brings people together based on common spiritual grounds. It also introduces another very important concept which helps reinforce diciplice and even learning: ritual. This was incredibly important in the early days of human evolution, it's probably one of the first forms of casual social bonding we developed. Of course there are those who seek power over others. And what better way to socially hack groups of people via exploiting highly vulnerable built in behaviour? This is where religion and spirituality diverge, when it's used for control. Religion has been corrupted.

  I grew up catholic but don't like religion because I don't find its dogma spiritually nourishing. However I do pray, not to a god but to the ether or friends and family who have passed. My church is whatever brings me inner peace, though stereotypically I'm naming nature, the wilderness away from society. I'm not sure on an afterlife, and I've half come to peace with accepting that there may be nothing beyond this life. So I mix in ritual, spirituality, philosophy and disciplines into a sort of mini religion for myself. Life is a complex maze and having something to listen to your woes is incredibly comforting, and that's what god(s) really are, comfort. Admittedly I'm still hungry. But that's part of the spiritual journey: finding good spiritual comfort food.

• by JustSomeNobody on 5/29/19, 1:17 PM

  Well, this thread turned into a dumpster fire real quick.