I had something else entirely queued up to publish today, but I think this video, which I saw this morning thanks to a Towleroad post is a better use of your time:

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Televangelists:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Watching this, seeing the clips John plays of televangelists telling people god will erase their debt if the just charge another thousand dollars to their credit card to donate to the “church” made me angry, but also very sad. I remembered a specific family in one of the churches I attended as a child (this was about 1972 or so) who sent a lot of money to one of the television preachers because he told them if they give “with faith” god would send it back “a hundred-fold!”

They did not get any money back of any kind: no windfall, no spontaneous arrival of a big raise or whatever. What they did get was a lot more money problems.