Hypocrisy
Fundamental Christians claim the Founders established America on “Christian Values” — but they never say what those are. So, absent a list, I will assume that these self-congratulatory moralists live the values they crow about. And that brings us to fraud and theft of taxpayer money.
During the early, pre-vaccine days of COVID, the federal and state governments enacted laws to blunt the effects of the deadly pandemic. In short, the plan was to keep people alive and minimize the number of patients on ventilators in the ICU.
Conservative evangelicals were horrified by the idea that liberals, and later the Biden administration, cared about people. Religious sociopaths thought God would protect them. And if people died, so what? To these holy bean counters, the important thing was to keep the cash flow healthy. And congregations that lost the church-going habit could forget to write checks.
However, these hypocritical, small government swine were among the most aggressive in getting their snouts into the federal COVID relief trough (aka the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act). The religion business may be tax-exempt, but by God, the holy rollers would vacuum up every last taxpayer dime they could. And for some, the lure of cash was so irresistible they cooked the books — as Jesus never did.
Fraud
In April 2020, Florida Pastor Evan Edwards and his son, Josh, 30, applied for a $6 million Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan to cover payroll, rent, and utilities for his family’s ministry. In the loan application, he claimed that the organization, ASLAN International Ministry, had 486 employees and a monthly payroll of $2.7 million. The SBA eventually approved ASLAN International for an $8.4 million loan.
ASLAN did not have 486 employees. In fact, according to an NBC News report,
“… when federal investigators showed up at the ministry's office in Orlando, the door was locked and workers at the neighboring businesses told them nobody was ever seen inside, the complaint says. A review of the ministry’s website found that the donation links were inactive and sections of text were apparently lifted from other religious sites, according to the complaint.
There were other red flags. The man who was listed on the loan application as the ministry’s accountant suffered from dementia and hadn’t done any work for the organization since 2017, federal prosecutors said in court papers, citing an interview with the man’s son.”
So where did the money go? An April 2021 press release from the US AG of the Middle District of Florida answered that question.
“Once the PPP loan was obtained, members of the Edwards family misused the funds by attempting to purchase a $3.7 million luxury home in the Four Seasons Private Residence community at Walt Disney World Resort. The remaining funds were transferred among multiple bank accounts held by the conspirators in an attempt to hide and conceal their whereabouts. Law enforcement was able to seize all of the fraudulently obtained funds before they were dissipated”
Luckily for the taxpayer, the Feds were not, at least in this case, asleep at the wheel. In April 2021, a federal judge in Florida ordered the forfeiture of the $8.4 million. The Edwards did not contest the ruling. But for some unknown reason, they remained uncharged in any crime until this week when the authorities finally arrested the father and son.
Sex crimes
Meanwhile, in a Kansas court this Monday, Joseph Heidesch, 46, former choir teacher of St Thomas of Aquinas school in Overland Park, appeared in court Monday and entered a guilty plea to one count of sexual exploitation of a child and 24 counts of breach of privacy — all felonies.
This man of faith had installed hidden cameras in the Christian school to take photos of teen girls changing in the choir room and his office. He also had pictures of children engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
Heidesch’s perversions are just one example of the widespread infamy of the many sinners cloaking their evil with the ill-evidenced morality of the church.
Dictatorship
In Mississippi, a MAGA pastor, Shane Vaughn, frustrated that decent people do not vote Republican, wants to deny Americans the right to elect their Senators. He dreams of an Electoral College in each state sending religious bigots to the Upper House in DC. He explains his rationale by referencing the GOP’s runoff humiliation in Georgia. As reported by Media Matters,
“The only way we ever have a Republican president is the Electoral College,” Vaughn said during a live stream last Thursday. “We cannot defeat the population centers without the Electoral College.”
“The entire state [of Georgia] is conservatives, all rushing to the polls. They came to the polls that day and blew the numbers out of the water. They were winning their state, they were turning their state in the right direction until they hit that blue area called Atlanta, Georgia.”
“Good try, all you great citizens of Georgia. But you have a problem: Your voice doesn’t matter because you don’t have the majority of the population.”
America once tried that undemocratic senatorial selection. It worked as well as could be expected. As the National Archives observed, the arrangement led to a cesspit of corruption and inefficiency,
“Late in the 19th century, some state legislatures deadlocked over the election of a senator when different parties controlled different houses — Senate vacancies could last months or years. In other cases, special interests or political machines gained control over the state legislature. Progressive reformers dismissed individuals elected by such legislatures as puppets and the Senate as a "millionaires' club" serving powerful private interests.”
In 1913, regular Americans, sickened by this political perversion, ratified the 17th amendment. Henceforth the people elected their Senators. Vaughn, like every jack-booted, social media thug, is miffed that he cannot get his way — so he embraces the tyranny of the minority. He dreams of freeing powerful private interests — the fundamentalist churches as represented by the GOP — to shower their Christian values of greed, felony sex, and autocracy on America.
Conclusion
I do not know if churchgoers and religious managers are more sinful than non-church-going Americans. However, even if they are not, the faithful immoralist adds hypocrisy to their list of misdeeds. And I cannot see anything in the acts of fundamentalist Christians that make their values any better than anybody else’s.