John Oilver."How churches exploit the poor" 20 minutes. 5 years old, credit to-TomCADem

[Stuart G]

I saw this in another post and had to show it, Worth watching the whole 20 min, from- 8/17/15

[fleabiscuit]

1. +1 John Oilver

[blakstoneranger]

2. I saw this last year

on youtube. It really makes you think. Look up "prosperity preachers" you'd be amazed at the lengths they go to get you to give to their personal wealth, all of them, even the ones you think are the good ones, they too are money hungry zealots and---they all love trump because trump=money!! and all they care about is MONEY!! And we now have one in the white house by the name of paula white, the biggest con of them all.

[BrightKnight]

3. The mainstream denominations consider it heresy.

You don’t need a degree in theology to see that is not Christian. The constant flow of threads trying to link real Christians to this kind of junk is offensive.

[markpkessinger]

6. I agreee -- this is a very offensive video . . .

. . . and a very ignorant one.

Simply saying "churches," without qualifying which specific organizations you are talking about. and then discussing only the worst abuses pf these televangelists, serves to unjustly malign the great majority of churches in this country.

For many years, I worked as an organist/choir director across numerous denominations: Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, Lutheran and Episcopalian. In the overwhelming majority of cases,the local churches of these denominations (and of other mainline protestant, as well as Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches), struggle to keep the lights on and meet weekly payroll for clergy and administrative staff. Their clergy are paid very modestly (especially relative to their level of education). And while many of them may indeed maintain a parsonage for their priest/pastor to reside in for the duration of his or her tenure at a particular church, they tend to be pretty average, even relatively modest, homes.

And you're quite correct about mainline denominations' views about the so-called "prosperity gospel." Mainline Christians do, indeed, regard it as heresy. In fact, I think many mainline Christians would be hard-pressed to call these various televangelist enterprises "churches" at all.

But the hucksters/shysters/con artists Oliver points to in this clip are by no means representative of the great majority of Christian clergy, nor are their bloated "ministries" representative of the great majority of Christian churches.

[TomCADem]

4. Kenneth Copeland - 'COVID-19 Will Be Over Much Sooner Than You Think!'

Here is Kenneth Copeland who is featured in that John Oliver skit predicting that COVID-19 will over soon due to prayer:

And here is Kenneth Copeland blowing COVID-19 away:

Because as John Oliver notes, Kenneth Copeland needs his followers to plant those seeds (donate):

[flying rabbit]

5. K&R nt