G.O.P. Senator Grassley Making The Televangelists Nervous

Christian televangelists are nervous about the prospect of Republican Senator Charles Grassley from Iowa holding Congressional committee hearings to investigate their financial dealings - and they should be. The Senator's decision to take on widespread financial corruption in the Christian Broadcast community represents a serious threat to money-grubbing televangelists nationwide.

If the product of Senator Grassley's proposed hearings is greater enforcement of existing IRS regulations that prohibit ministers from using their ministries to reap excessive personal financial gain, that would strike a serious blow to the lifestyles of many Christian televangelists who, for years, have thumbed their noses at the IRS, not to mention at Christ, while lining their pockets with millions of dollars of tax-deductible donations from their viewers. If Grassley's investigation results in regulation of ministry record-keeping and the enactment of rules requiring ministries to grant public disclosure of how and where funds are spent to maintain tax-exempt status with the IRS, Christian televangelist donations will almost certainly drop off because many viewers will donate elsewhere rather than lose a tax deduction for their contribution. It's no wonder the Christian TV hucksters are worried.

Even Christian ministries that are not being specifically targeted by the Grassley investigation are worried, because any rules promulgated by Congress on the tax issue will apply to them as well.

In my opinion, that's not a bad thing. If charities wish to make a living off tax-deductible donations, they owe a duty to the citizenry at large, and to the folks making the donations, to spend those funds for the purposes for which they were solicited, and not to enrich the charity's figurehead. At this point, the only way to insure that charitable funds are properly spent is to require public disclosure of charity financial records as a requirement for charitable organizations to maintain tax-exempt status.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the government from interfering in the practice of religion, but that civil right does not include the right to tax-exempt status for charitable donations that are not being used for charitable purposes.