The Grassley Senate Finance Committee Televangelist Investigation

What happened

In November 2007, Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking member of the United States Senate Finance Committee, opened an inquiry into the finances of six high-revenue American televangelism ministries. The six targeted entities were:

• Kenneth Copeland Ministries (Fort Worth, Texas) — Kenneth and Gloria Copeland
• Creflo Dollar Ministries / World Changers Church International (Atlanta) — Creflo Dollar
• Benny Hinn Ministries (Grapevine, Texas) — Benny Hinn
• Without Walls International Church (Tampa, Florida) — Randy and Paula White
• Bishop Eddie Long Ministries / New Birth Missionary Baptist Church (Lithonia, Georgia) — Eddie Long
• Joyce Meyer Ministries (Fenton, Missouri) — Joyce Meyer

The inquiry sent extensive written information requests to each ministry — requesting governance-board composition, executive compensation, related-party transactions, internal financial controls, charitable-contribution disclosures, and the disposition of donor funds. The legal posture was non-coercive: the Finance Committee staff requested cooperation rather than issuing subpoenas, and the targeted ministries' compliance was correspondingly varied.

Cooperation and non-cooperation

Of the six, Joyce Meyer Ministries and Benny Hinn Ministries substantially complied with the inquiry, providing documentation and engaging in subsequent dialogue with Committee staff. The other four — Kenneth Copeland Ministries, Creflo Dollar Ministries, Without Walls International, and Bishop Eddie Long Ministries — did not substantially comply. Kenneth Copeland Ministries most prominently asserted that the constitutional Free Exercise of religion precluded the Committee's inquiry into the internal operations of a religious entity.

In response to the non-cooperation, in 2008 Senator Grassley issued a public report identifying the cooperating and non-cooperating ministries by name and the substantive scope of the documentation each had or had not provided. The institutional pattern of non-compliance produced significant national press coverage.

The Finance Committee staff memorandum

The inquiry concluded with the publication, in January 2011, of a Senate Finance Committee Staff Memorandum on the Inquiry of Media-Based Ministries by the Committee's professional staff. The memorandum's principal findings:

• The federal tax-exempt framework as applied to large religious broadcasters lacked the disclosure and accountability instruments routinely applied to other 501(c)(3) entities — notably, churches were exempt from filing IRS Form 990, the standard annual public-disclosure document for nonprofits, which significantly limited public oversight.
• Several of the targeted ministries had governance structures dominated by family members of the founder, with inadequate independent-board oversight of executive compensation, related-party transactions, and use of ministry-owned residential property and aircraft by the founder family.
• The use of "love offerings" — direct personal donations to the minister, characterised as gifts rather than compensation — operated as a documented mechanism for receipt of substantial personal income outside the standard executive-compensation framework.

The memorandum recommended a process of structured dialogue between the religious broadcasting community and the federal tax authorities to develop voluntary improved-practice standards, rather than legislative change. The Committee referred the cooperation record of the inquiry to the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) for the development of such standards; the ECFA's Commission on Accountability and Policy for Religious Organizations issued reports through 2013 in response.

Aftermath

No federal legislative changes resulted from the inquiry. The IRS-Form-990 exemption for churches remains in force. Several of the inquiry's targeted ministries have remained operationally active in the decade and a half since the inquiry's conclusion; several have been the subject of subsequent independent investigative journalism on continuing accountability questions.

Significance

The Grassley inquiry is the most sustained federal-level public examination of the tax-exempt framework as applied to large American televangelism ministries. The combination of (a) cross-ministry comparative documentation, (b) explicit identification of cooperating and non-cooperating entities, and (c) the formal Senate-staff memorandum makes the inquiry's record the principal contemporary US-jurisdiction reference document on televangelism financial accountability. Its non-legislative resolution is itself the institutional record of where federal-level Free-Exercise protections have left the disclosure framework.

Sources

• US Senate Committee on Finance, Staff Memorandum on the Inquiry of Media-Based Ministries, January 2011. Available via the Committee's archive.
• Charles Grassley, public statements and Committee correspondence with the six ministries, November 2007 – December 2010.
• Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA), Commission on Accountability and Policy for Religious Organizations, reports 2011–2013.
• Contemporary press coverage: Religion News Service, Christianity Today, Wall Street Journal, 2007–2011.