On June 9th, Reverend Creflo Dollar was released from a Fayatteville, Ga., jail on a $5,000 bond.
This isn’t the first time a prominent televangelist has gone to jail, and God willing it won’t be the last.
The following Sunday, the aptly-named Reverend Dollar addressed a packed house in his $18 million World Dome church in Atlanta.
Reverend Dollar compared his 12-hour stint in the clink to the Apostle Paul’s arrest in Jerusalem – the only minor difference being Paul had been arrested for spreading the gospel and Creflo for punching his daughter in the face.
There is a civil war going on in the American evangelical movement.
Men like Dollar, Bishop Eddie Long and Reverend Joel Olsteen have built mega-churches with congregations that number in the tens of thousands and bank accounts which run into the millions.
Some in the Christian community have asked how private jets and beach resorts in the Bahamas reconcile with a traditional reading of the Gospel. You know – all that stuff about selling your belongings and following Christ. That doesn’t square with the ring leaders and proponents of the increasingly popular “Prosperity Gospel,” which is a slightly different take on the asceticism and modesty preached by a little known and relatively middle-class Judean carpenter who kind of got the whole ball rolling on this Christianity thing about 2,000 years ago.
The “Prosperity Gospel” espoused by Dollar and his cronies equate faith with wealth.
Only good Christians get rich, and only rich Christians are good Christians ­- and apparently Creflo is the best Christian of them all if his Learjet, Rollsroyce, $2.5 million home in Atlanta and $3 million home in New York have anything to say about it.
Well – maybe not the best Christian of them all. The Crouch family, owners of the world reviled Trinity Broadcasting Network – the largest outlet in the “Prosperity Gospel’s” media empire, raked in over $90 million dollars in tax-exempt donations – and another $60 million in advertising fees – during 2010 alone.
R. Albert Mohler Jr, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has described the Crouchs, Creflo and the whole Prosperity movement as a false theology and an embarrassment to evangelical Christianity.
It’s hard to say which is more abhorrent and embarrassing – the outrageous wealth or all of the sins these guys and gals seem to be committing.
Famous anti-homosexual activist and prosperity preacher extraodinaire Eddie Long was caught sleeping with male interns last year, and T.B.N’s own Benny Hinn is being investigated by the U.S. government for fraud. (He owns an island, I couldn’t find anywhere else to say that but I thought you should know.)
Despite how fabulously wealthy and corrupt this pack of snake oil salesmen may be, I personally hope none of them turn over a new leaf anytime soon.
They keep religious commentators like myself ankle-deep in stories and employed between Papal elections and terror attacks.
In this economy, that’s got to be counted as some sort of charity.
In the meantime, I have it on good sources that Joel Olsteen’s multi-million dollar effort to engineer a needle-eye large enough to fit a camel through is nearing completion.
Nicholas Pierce is a 22-year old history senior from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Follow him on twitter @TDR_nabdulpierc.
 
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