The Copeland/Huckabee Love Affair

01/27/2008

Billionaire evangelist oilman cattle rancher Kenneth Copeland, who sits so high atop the “prosperity gospel” pyramid that he has hundreds of “franchise” churches whose pastors send money back up the pipeline, spent much of his annual ministers conference last week talking about how he stonewalled the Senate Finance Committee, then boasted about having Mike Huckabee on his team.

“Kenneth Copeland, I will stand with you!” Huckabee yelled over the phone, according to Copeland. “You’re trying to get prosperity to the people, and they’re [the Senate] trying to take it away from ‘em. I will stand with you anytime, anywhere, on any issue!”

You can watch the whole speech here, but basically Copeland is saying that he offered to hide his close relationship with Huckabee—the ex-governor had recently recorded a full week of televised “Bible studies” with Copeland, who constantly huckstered Huckabee’s ten-year-old book—but Huckabee said he would gladly oppose the Senate’s investigation of Copeland and others because “they only have an 11 percent approval rating.”

Every year Copeland invites about 1,000 fellow prosperity-gospel ministers to his church/broadcasting facility/ranch/natural gas field/airstrip in Newark, Texas, a few miles north of Fort Worth, for a three-day conference. This year he shut down the conference after two of the days and convened some kind of separate session with the same ministers that would protect his 501(3)(c) tax exemption while he raised campaign funds for Huckabee. Reports on Thursday morning were that he’d come up with $111,000 in immediate cash, plus an additional million bucks in pledges, which would work out to around $1,000 per pastor. (These sorts of fundraising efforts with the Copeland “family” are fairly common. About 30 pastors raised $2.1 million for Copeland’s 70th birthday celebration a year ago.)

The Door left messages for Huckabee and his press secretary over the weekend, but they were not returned.

Copeland spent much of the three-day ministers conference reassuring his fellow pastors that all their ministries were safe from the prying eyes of the Congress. He repeatedly made a distinction between the Congress and the Internal Revenue Service, saying that he recognized the executive branch but not the legislative when it came to oversight. He was especially upset by a request that he reveal the donors to a “special offering” made to himself and his wife for the 40th anniversary of their ministry and said that he’d “promised to God” never to give any information to anyone about that, even if it means prison or death. He frequently mentioned receiving direct instructions from “the Lord,” including instructions to put Mike Huckabee on his television show, Believer’s Voice of Victory.

During his six programs with Huckabee, airing in November, the two men reminisced about their friendship and Huckabee’s political career in Arkansas, with occasional excursions into scripture. Neither of them distinguished themselves as Biblical scholars, but Huckabee’s comments were especially lame as he seemed to be sucking up to “Brother Kenneth” in discussing passages like James 1:3: “It is the trying of your faith that works patience.”

Huckabee’s read on that passage was that he used to think “trying” meant a trial of faith. (This is what 99 percent of commentators for the past 2000 years have also believed it meant.) But then, the more he thought about it, the more he thought the key word was “try.” It meant to “keep trying,” and every time you fail, to try again. “I tried tithing and it didn’t work. Well, try it again. I tried it three or four times. Well, try it again.” Huckabee’s view: it doesn’t mean to be patient when God sends trials, it means to assert yourself—in other words, the opposite of its apparent meaning. Since the Greek word for “try” as in “trial” and the Greek word for “try” as in “attempt” are two different words, Huckabee’s exegesis of this particular scripture is not only demonstrably wrong as a matter of fact, but he seems to be insisting on it as a way to support Copeland’s emphasis on tithing, which is the source of his fortune.

There are other examples scattered through the week, including some statements by Huckabee that, no matter what office he holds, “my only client is Jesus.”

Other highlights from the minister’s conference:

Editor's note: Confronted about the Copeland statements on "Meet the Press," Huckabee did not deny that he said what Copeland said he said.

(This story includes reporting by John Bloom, Pete Evans of the Trinity Foundation, and Harry Guetzlaff of the Trinity Foundation. The Trinity Foundation press release can be found here. See our Copeland Collection here.)

Comments(301)