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January 31, 2008

Non-Profits, Televangelists and Bloated Salaries.

I recently ran across a fascinating Oregon blog called FreeGoodNews.com that restores some measure of my faith in the basic goodness of at least some Evangelical Christians in America. It's actually just the online face of a local non-profit by the same name. The executive director and board chairman is a man named Bernie Dehler who appears to do all of the writing on their blog. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that one of the other board members is D. Wilbanks who is described as an "Activist for Palestinian & Humanitarian rights." Clearly this is not a run-of-the-mill pro-Zionist, war-mongering, money-grubbing group of Evangelicals.

What initially caught my interest was a two-part series that Bernie wrote detailing 2008 Salary Review for the Top 20 Christian Ministers(part 1). He points out that these are all publically available records of registered non-profit ministries behind some of the best known (and richest!) televangelists and that some of the biggest players' financial data is unavailable because they structure their operation as part of an individual church "so they can hide all their salary and revenue data." That would include folk like Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family which cleared a cool $142,279,843 but doesn't disclose how much of that Dobson takes home.

Part two focuses mostly on the highest paid shyster... I mean televangelist - 2008 Christian Executive Pay: The Popoff Scandal. That would be one Peter Popoff whose "ministry's" total revenues barely make the top 10 most profitable at $23,556,469 but which pays him a cool $628,732 salary.

By way of comparison, Beaverton Oregon-based Luis Palau Ministries report gross revenues only slightly behind Popoff's at $22,155,039 and yet Luis Palau's salary is more than $400,000 less than Popoff's but still at a very comfortable $210,399.

All of which begs the question of: What exactly constitutes being a "Christian"? Specifically I'm thinking of the infamous account of the encounter between Jesus and the Rich Young Ruler.

Luke 18:18A certain ruler asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
19"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good—except God alone. 20You know the commandments: 'Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother."

21"All these I have kept since I was a boy," he said.

22When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

23When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth. 24Jesus looked at him and said, "How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! 25Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

This blog is hardly an appropriate forum for defining what is or is not "Christian." I just offer the above quote as food for thought, nothing more.

Perhaps a more appropriate question here would be that of tax-exempt status. There's been talk for the last few years of reigning in executive salaries in the corporate world. Seems to me that at some point one has to question just how "non-profit" a job is that pays in excess of $600,000. But at the same time I don't know where the line ought rightly be drawn. Well... unless maybe it was a straight-forward formula based on median income, the official poverty level or something along those lines that is completely neutral to the ostensible mission of a given "non-profit" organization.

As always we need to be mindful of Thomas Paine's exhortation:

"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself."

Posted by Kevin at January 31, 2008 10:05 AM