They Aren't Preaching For Free

Hello, and welcome to the cavalcade of fun that is organized religion in the world. Today we'll be talking about something near and dear to my heart, television preachers. Specifically, how they are nearly always more wealthy than I will ever be.

I'm not knocking the acquisition of money. Far from it; I happen to be quite fond of money, especially in its function as a purchasing agent for goods and services I happen to need. And I'm not interested in talking about the politics of greed; maybe some other time.

But you have to take a good hard look at television preachers who claim to be giving all their money to the poor or devoting it all to their ministries. Because what is, "devoting all my money to my ministry," really? If you are your own ministry, then you could give all your ministry's money to yourself and be completely free and clear. And since none of said money is taxable under our wonderful system of state-church separation, you would be making a lot of money from your ministry.

Specifically, I'd just like to point out something which came to my attention recently. I don't even think I'm going to try to draw any conclusions from it for you. I'm just going to mention it, because it's something that is plain enough to see but which I never noticed until just a few days ago (relatively speaking).

Televangelists don't have commercials during their shows. No, I don't mean the commercials they show during their shows for products they personally sell, or they endorse, or events at which they will be speaking (for money, most likely). I mean there are no car commercials during their shows. No feminine hygiene products are advertised during breaks in their sermons. No toys, no movies, no new drugs by Pfizer. No commercials.

Why? Because televangelists' programs are technically classified as infomercials, and you may have noticed that the half-hour-long commercials for exercises equipment (et al) are not replete with commercials for other products either. Those advertisers buy up the entire time slot and show one long commercial.

So if televangelists can afford to do that as well, they can't be too poor, now can they? In fact, you could view the whole thing as commercials for religion. And those commercials, even at non-peak viewing times like Sunday morning, still cost a fair amount of money. Money which is not being used to feed the poor.

Now one could argue that it's money well spent. After all, it brings the message of the televangelist to millions of people. And that might be right. But it also brings the message of giving that televangelist money to millions of people. And the message of that televangelist's wonderful products, available at low, low prices. And so on.

I'm not here to bash televangelists. I just never realized before that their shows had no commercial breaks. Which makes them infomercials. And I don't know about you, but I'd like my salvation to come from something other than a medium for selling "AS SEEN ON TV" products. Maybe it's just me.