Televangelists Should Pay Taxes on Personal Profits.

My favorite story in the Bible is the one where Emperor Jesus goes on tour. The entourage of gilded chariots, body guards, personal masseuses and wagon trains of gold and fine silks as he goes about the Holy Land asking for more dough makes for a compelling read. Oh wait. I got my Biblical stories confused with my modern day televangelist ones didn’t I?

The government is thinking of looking into the affairs of at least six televangelists who by anyone’s standards in any day and age seem to be living opulent lifestyles fed daily by their pleas to send more money to them so that they can do God’s work: tax exempt of course.

Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has asked six of the largest mega-churches to turn over financial records. The senator, believing there is a question if ministers in some of the largest churches in the world living opulent and admittedly by one pastor, excessive, life styles should be required to pay taxes. The senator believes that these religious organizations which have financial spin offs in real estate, health clubs, banquet facilities as well as books and DVD sales have expanded past being just a church. He has asked for them to turn their records over for public scrutiny and to some this is an alarm bell that the government is interfering with religion.

Actually the government is not. In the event churches were told what to preach or not to preach I would be on their side in a heartbeat. What Senator Grassley is asking, quite nicely so far, is records to prove televangelists are not using their church in order to live like the Caesars that Jesus had little use for.

I don’t have a problem with ministers living in lovely homes and having their utilities and taxes paid. I don’t have a problem with them making a solid income that would allow them to not have to worry about anything save the saving of their flock.

But $6 million dollar mansions, Rolls Royce’s and Bentleys and $23,000 dollar toilets tell me something isn’t right in televangelism land.

Now I have always been a skeptic of many of these ministers. I have watched on occasion and noticed that with many of them a greater part of their television time is devoted to pushing viewers to send them more money than to preach the word of God. In the case of many of these religious organizations, reports coming out seem to prove that money isn’t needed for God’s work as much as it is needed to buy another mansion for the preacher.

Still yet, I won’t fault these evangelists for being able to preen more money out of their congregation than others. If people think giving money to a preacher to buy a Leer jet is helping God, I will leave that for them to decide. All I ask is that televangelists pay their fair share in taxes on collections and ancillary money coming into them on their private business ventures. Ventures they would not have without the umbrella of their not-for-profit churches that give them the opportunity every week to advertise their own private businesses.

Another case in point of one ministry spending $5.7 million dollars on office furniture tells me this has gone beyond people asking for money to keep a church’s doors open.

This has come to the point that some in the business of Christianity are acting like anything but the Christian Jesus Christ would have approved of.

I ask how many Bibles could be purchased with what it costs to buy a Rolls Royce. How many children could be fed, both physically and religiously with the $23,000 used to purchase a marble and gold toilet? What great good could come out of living in a million dollar home and giving the other $5 million to the poor?

Senator Grassley is just asking questions that should have been asked years ago. Televangelists need to answer them. You and I are required to make our finances known every tax filing season. Don’t tell me men and women wearing wardrobes that cost as much as building  a small church in a blighted or depressed area shouldn’t be held to the same standards.

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