Given that the Bishop of Bling Brian Tamaki has been in the news lately, I thought it was time to have a look at divergent religious responses to the current global recession. One is commendable and compassionate, while the other is typical fundamentalist rort and cant.

Witness Reverend Tim Jones, a York Anglican minister in the United Kingdom, who provided a heartbreaking account of a recently released petty burglar with less than one hundred pounds to live on over Christmas, with no social welfare benefit access, propspects of employment and little assistance available from his probation officer. Loan shark borrowing, begging and vagrancy all carry risks, as well as sex work, which is illegal in the United Kingdom. Recidivist burglary and suicide are the only real ‘options’. So, Reverend Jones argues that those in this situation are morally entitled to shoplift from large corporates, given that governmental incompetence and delay lead some people to exactly that desperate pass for the sake of survival and subsistence.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, how are the Pentecostal purveyors of fundamentalist ‘prosperity gospel’ blingery faring? In a recent Harpers Magazine article, Ben Anastas profiles three African-American figures, one with a New Zealand linkage. Bishop Thomas Weeks (Global Outreach Ministries) is currently on probation after he assaulted his ex-wife, evangelist Juanita Bynum, and was evicted from his former Global Destiny Ministries after constant rent delinquency. Nevertheless, he recently held a “Global Entrepreneurial Anointing” of business cards.

Sounds bizarre? Massachuesetts Baptist Russell Cornwall was the originator of the concept that Christ was a small businessperson, as were the disciples. Kenneth Hagin, Oral Roberts and other televangelists realised that this was a pathway to riches, as indeed has our own beloved Brian Tamaki. There are some other telling correspondences with the Bishop of Bling here. Anastas cites another televangelist, Creflo Dollar (…) whose World Changers sect has few images of Christ or crosses, who urges his parishioners that hard work can surmount racist victimisation.

The third such figure is Eddie Long of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Georgia, a formerly affluent African-American community. Long is Tamaki’s ’shepherd’ although it must be said that his church offers a pastoral services division that provides corporate welfare for church members as well as budgeting advice and assistance when it comes to mortgage foreclosures. Despite that saving grace, Long also faced allegations in 2005 that his charity, Bishop Eddie Long Ministries, provided him with three million dollars in salaries, benefits and property use. although he maintains that he was owed it from royalties, speakers fees and large donations. More orthdox black churches question the absence of any semblance of social justice and community concern within their prosperity gospel counterparts.

No wonder our own Bishop of Bling is so crass. Look at his African-American role models! Meanwhile, our own Charities Commission is currently awaiting Destiny International’s documentation, now overdue since October 2009. Apparently, though, it’s Hannah Tamaki who has the business nous in the whanau and actually runs DestinyCorp, with her steely eye over the titheing revenues and operational aspects.Meanwhile, the Bishop of Bling is facing a new scandal over the antics of Destiny Church Taranaki leaders. One twenty nine year old male church member was allegedly involved in a sexual relationship with a thirteen year old girl.

Recommended:

Ben Anastas: “Mammon from Heaven” Harpers: 320: 1918: March 2010: 55-62.

Tim Jones: “Desperation Theology” Harpers: 320: 1918: March 2010: 16-17.

“A Life with Brian” Sunday Star Times: 21.03.10.