The scandal at Oral Roberts University has caused the escape hatch to open and all the sleazy merchants of commercial “Christianity” are sliding out and running for cover. (AP):
Two televangelists have resigned their posts as regents at Oral Roberts University, as the debt-ridden school tries to regroup following a spending scandal involving its former president. The university on Thursday also settled with one of three professors who filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against the school.I guess the whole matter of the allegations against ORU’s Richard Roberts and his wife, including greed, text-sex with underaged boys, nonprofit electioneering and allowing a convicted sexual offender unrestricted access to the students of the university kinda threw a wet blanket on all the fun…Benny Hinn and I.V. Hilliard resigned as regents, where they were involved in making major school decisions, university spokesman Jeremy Burton said Thursday. Burton declined to say why the two resigned, but said both wrote the board to express their support for the school’s mission.
The resignations come a month after the resignations from the board of regents of two other televangelists, Jesse Duplantis and Creflo Dollar.
Hinn and Dollar are among six televangelists being investigated by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley to determine if the high-profile preachers violated their organizations’ tax-exempt status by living lavishly on the backs of small donors. They have denied wrongdoing.
Ah, scam artist Benny Hinn, I just can’t help myself. I have to post this video again…
Related:
* More sex-sleaze alleged at Oral Roberts University
*Why does God hate Oral Roberts University?
14 Responses to “Abandon ship: Benny Hinn, other televangelists resign posts at Oral Roberts U.”
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Successful God-hustlers have their uses: They often serve as moral lessons. When you answer to no one (except He Who Does Not Exist), that means absolute power, and we all know what absolute power does to those who wield it.
They never really go away though.
The rats just leave one ship and get onto another. Doesn’t seem fair, does it?
OTOH, Elmer Gantry…
Yay! Pam put up the video I was gonna link to!
Schadenfreude be fun.
there’s this moment in the video, it’s moment of looping, where Hinn reaches flamenco transcendence.
I knew a guy in college who bought all this faith healing nonsense. It’s kind of sad to watch the videos of the deluded supporting him at youtube.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the university’s regents, who are nominally at the top of its governance structure, are in a position to bear liability for bad governance in the same way that directors of a fraudulently-managed corporation can be sued for failing in their fiduciary duty. That would be a much more important reason for getting out than any kind of moral outrage. (Indeed, their christian duty would be to try and right what’s gone wrong at ORU — even from its own crazy point of view — and suffer the tribulations after living so well during the good times.)
Of course, if none of them left, then people would be muttering about how they are guilty of something by proxy, or that they still “support”…something…um, bad. I dunno.
Fundies have this corporate purity thing going on. If a fundie preacher screws up, they just toss him to the wolves and get another one. Somethin’ doesn’t sit right with me about that.
That Benny Hinn video is brilliance personified.
There was a great movie about a character like that with Steve Martin (not a comedy — but totally mis-marketed as though it had been, which was probably why it’s totally underrated and under-remembered).
Details, if anyone cares:
http://imdb.com/title/tt0104695/
There’s also Marjoe
“There’s also Marjoe”
I had completely forgotten about that dick…
Creflo Dollar? *blinks* Oh, yeah, verily the good Lord gives mightily to those who believe. Rolls Royces, jets and all.
I guess he gives to those who help themselves to funds they aren’t entitled to as well. Sheesh, that’s cheating, I say. Cheating.
I had completely forgotten about that dick…
Now, I can’t guarantee it, but I think that if you watch the extremely bad movie The Food of the Gods, you may be able to see Marjoe get eaten by giant rats. It was MST3K’d at one point, but I don’t know if that episode is on video.
Barring that, try Earthquake. Almost everyone dies in that movie, so you’ve got a good shot.
Petey:
if they stayed and let the corruption continue, darn right.
But I’m trying to think of any of the televangelists who actually have been thrown to the wolves, rather than spirited off to quietly subsidized retirement or plans for a comeback…
But I’m trying to think of any of the televangelists who actually have been thrown to the wolves, rather than spirited off to quietly subsidized retirement or plans for a comeback…
Though he subsequently made a comeback, Jim Bakker did get thrown to the wolves and went to jail. That’s what happens when Jerry Falwell wants all of your TV stations but doesn’t want to have to pay top dollar for them. Bakker worked his way back up to TV, but he doesn’t have anything resembling the prominence he once had.
Tammy Faye never went back to televangelizing, but she was too gay-friendly to go back to that world.
There are some good videos of Marjoe Gortner on youtube where he explains how the scam works. You might want to post one sometime.