Category: Kenneth Copeland

A three-year investigation into financial improprieties at six Christian ministries whose television preaching bankrolled leaders’ lavish lifestyles has concluded with the formation of an independent commission to look into the lack of accountability by tax-exempt religious groups.

The investigation report issued this week details the ministries’ luxury homes and cars, trips on private jets and expensive gifts, including two Rolls Royces that a third party reported was given to the Dollars as a gift from the church.

Even in an economic downturn, preachers in the “prosperity gospel” movement are drawing sizable, adoring audiences.

Their message — that if you have sufficient faith in God and the Bible and donate generously, God will multiply your offerings a hundredfold — is reassuring to many in hard times.

The so-called ‘Prosperity Gospel‘ — which claims that God wants you to be rich (but only after you give money to televangelists) — appears to work for a select group of people: relatives of the televangelists who came up with the ‘Blab-it-and-grab-it’ ploy.

Popular televangelist Kenneth Copeland is considered by many Christians to be a heretic. A key promoter of the so-called Word-Faith movement, which teaches that you can speak things into existence, and if you are sick it is because you don’t have enough faith.

Such faith is preferably expressed by sending money to teachers like Copeland. But Copeland does not have enough faith to allow a full investigation of his financial dealings.

Mr Copeland certainly practises what he preaches. According to a report into the pentecostal charismatics, commissioned by the Senate, the ministry built Mr Copeland and his wife Gloria a mansion “the size of an hotel” and enabled him to acquire a $20 million ( £10 million) Cessna Citation to help him to spread the word of God across the US.

“There’s a lot of doctrine that teaches that you’re not a good Christian unless you’re poor. But that’s not our doctrine, that’s not what we believe,” the younger Copeland told KTVT-TV.

As the Televangelist Kenneth Copeland continues to defy a Senate Finance investigation, internal ministry documents shed new light on how Copeland runs his $100 million church.