Posted by My Talk2Action colleague Sarah Posner has a post at the American Prospect blog about Mike Huckabee’s relationship with TV evangelist and con man Kenneth Copeland. Copeland is a mentor to Huckabee, who dropped out of divinity school to join Copeland’s ministry. Huckabee has preached at Copeland’s church, even during his campaign for president.
Posner notes that Copeland recently convened a private meeting of several prominent evangelical leaders to raise emergency funding to keep Huckabee’s campaign afloat amid serious money problems. And she links to this article from the Trinity Foundation, a group of evangelicals that formed after the Bakker scandals and acts as a watchdog for TV evangelists and mega-churches that bring in millions of dollars but rarely with any accountability.
Copeland is one of 6 ministers currently under investigation by Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Copeland is refusing to turn over financial documents to his committee. He says he will refuse to do so even if a subpoena is issued. And Huckabee is supporting him. Trinity has a video clip of Copeland talking about how he was stonewalling the committee and Huckabee’s response to the whole thing:
“Are you kidding me? Why should I stand with them and not stand with you? They’ve only got 11 percent approval rating.” And then he said, “Kenneth Copeland, I will stand with you.” He said, “You’re trying to get prosperity to the people and they’re trying to take it away from ‘em.” He said, “I will stand with you any time, anywhere, on any issue.” That settled that right there. I said, “Yeah, that’s my man! That’s my man, right there.”
Kenneth Copeland is trying to get prosperity for only one person: himself. He is bleeding the prosperity from his followers with his ridiculous Word of Faith nonsense.
February 21, 2008