{"id":265,"date":"2007-11-06T09:23:53","date_gmt":"2007-11-06T09:23:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/the-plot-thickens.html"},"modified":"2007-11-06T09:23:53","modified_gmt":"2007-11-06T09:23:53","slug":"the-plot-thickens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/the-plot-thickens.html","title":{"rendered":"The plot thickens"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is interesting:<\/a><\/p>\n

The ranking member of the Senate Committee on Finance has launched an investigative review of possible misuse of donations made to Without Walls International Church and Paula White Ministries, along with five other Christian organizations.
\nLetters were faxed Monday by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, requesting ministry leaders respond by Dec. 6 to a wide range of questions regarding their personal and organizational finances. The senator expects full cooperation, he said in a statement released by his staff.
\n“It’s about time some sanity is brought to these religious nonprofits,” said Ole Anthony, founder of Trinity Foundation, a Dallas-based televangelist watchdog organization. “Some are committing outright fraud, and it’s getting worse, not better, as time goes on.”
\nGrassley, former chairman of the finance committee, said his requests for information came in response to complaints from the public and news coverage about practices at the six ministries. The allegations involve governing boards that aren’t independent and allow generous salaries and housing allowances for church leaders, and amenities such as private jets and Rolls-Royces.
\n“I don’t want to conclude that there’s a problem, but I have an obligation to donors and taxpayers to find out more,” he wrote. “People who donated should have their money spent as intended and in adherence with the tax code.”
\nBesides the Whites, letters went to Benny Hinn of World Healing Center Church of Grapevine, Texas; David and Joyce Meyer of Joyce Meyer Ministries of Fenton, Mo.; Kenneth and Gloria Copeland of Kenneth Copeland Ministries of Newark, Texas; Bishop Eddie Long of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church of Lithonia, Ga., and Creflo and Taffi Dollar of World Changers Church International of College Park, Ga.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That 501(c)(3) business is a sticky wicket and is used and abused frequently. Grassley, though, shouldn’t assume that those who donate to these ministries aren’t perfectly aware of where the money is going. There’s a mentality among many that it’s perfectly appropriate and fitting for a pastor to live in luxury, and they’re glad <\/em>to funnel the money to God’s Anointed for his Rolls…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is interesting: The ranking member of the Senate Committee on Finance has launched an investigative review of possible misuse of donations made to Without Walls International Church and Paula White Ministries, along with five other Christian organizations. Letters were faxed Monday by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, requesting ministry leaders respond by Dec. 6 to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe plot thickens - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/the-plot-thickens.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The plot thickens - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is interesting: The ranking member of the Senate Committee on Finance has launched an investigative review of possible misuse of donations made to Without Walls International Church and Paula White Ministries, along with five other Christian organizations. Letters were faxed Monday by Sen. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}