John Oliver mocks televangelists

August 18, 2015 • 3:45 pm

Well, I’ve received this video from about half a dozen readers. Since it had already been posted widely (and garnered nearly three million YouTube views in two days!), I thought everyone had seen it. Well, maybe not. So here, for your delectation, is a funny segment from John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” about televangelists. Enjoy the dissection of these money-grubbing frauds as well as the foundation of a new faith: “Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption.”

John Oliver is the British Jon Stewart; indeed, he was The Daily Show’s British correspondent for several years, and hosted in Stewart’s absence.

95 thoughts on “John Oliver mocks televangelists”

  1. Here’s the response from one of my Christian friends after I posted this: “Wow. You fell for satire. Lol”, and “Progressives and liberals often look to comedians to tell them what to think – Jon Stewart, Al Franken, etc. The problem with comedians is that you can’t always tell when – if – they’re being serious.” They had no idea it was the result of investigative journalism, they just thought it was a bunch of progressives and liberals bashing religion out of spite.

    2. The program is not designed for them. It’s not surprising they don’t even get it.

  2. If you are outside of the US and cannot see the video, you can install a VPN like tunnelbear and set your location to the US which will allow you to view it.
    https://www.tunnelbear.com/

    There is a limited amount of free bandwidth so turn it on to watch the video and then turn it off again.

  3. It should be noted that anybody here wishing to…ah…”plant a seed”…can do so with a more-than-clean conscience. The Church’s donation page makes it plain that, in the near future, the Church is going to have a revelation that their work is done, and wrap up all the seeds they’ve received and give them in one big package to our Web site’s very own official charity: Doctors Without Borders.

    I daresay much more fruit will bear from those seeds than all the seeds wasted on the televangelists….

    b&

        1. Erm…I’ve no clue what possible connection there could even theoretically be between a John Oliver skewering of televangelists and a British survey of sexuality. But my point all along in that discussion has been that there are people at all points on that spectrum, and I’m one of those people at the one end of the spectrum. That others are at other points is fine by me, and the circumstances that put each of us at those points really don’t matter.

          You’re somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Fantastic. Good for you. I’m not. So what? What difference could it possibly make to anybody except us and our individual potential romantic interests?

          b&

          1. No connection. Just thought you might find the study interesting because my point was that circumstances play a role in sexuality. And in a more open society the ‘ick’ factor isn’t as strong.

    2. I planted some ‘seed money’ with Rev. Oliver… oh, what blessings shall now flow! But even if you don’t plant any, I recommend calling Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption anyway.

      1. I planted $10, I have faith in HBO. Ray Comfort gave it to me a few years ago because he thought the negative amazon ratings on one of his books was a conspiracy so he wanted to give the book (you can lead an atheist to water but you can’t make him think) to a few atheists to get honest reviews. When I got it it had the money inside. It has very little use in England so I’ve just been using it as a bookmark. From the Our Lady website it looks like the money will go to Doctors Without Borders. I hope so.

  4. John Oliver is doing a great job on HBO. Most of his stuff is on You tube for all to see.

    I was in Dallas in the early 90s when Robert Tilton was caught with the dumpster full of prayer requests by ABC news. They were just ripping open the letters from the little old ladies and other suckers and throwing the stuff in the trash. I think he had to lay low for a while but those kind always come back.

    1. It is really hard to pick the most loathsome, but I stick with Peter Popoff and his wife who chatted with during the services about who in the audience had what ailment. They were busted by Randi the Magician. Sadly, he returned to TV.

      2. There is a wonderful documentary on the life of ‘The Amazing Randi’ titled “An Honest Liar”. Randi is smart, courageous, and genuine. Time spent watching this film is well worth it, in my opinion.

        1. Absolutely. While others talked, he went after the worst of the worst- those who prey on the desperately ill.

  6. These people disgust me so much. I watched Creflo Dollar one day a few years ago. He was talking about tithing. He told his congregation that if they were tithing and not seeing anything back, to make sure they were sending 10% of ALL their income, for example, were they only sending 10% of their net income? They should calculate the 10% BEFORE tax, not after, because that’s your whole income, and it’s 10% of that the Lord wants you to send.

    He has a half hour show every week in New Zealand, along with several other televangelists, so it must be worth their while. Absolutely revolting.

    It’s a result of religious beliefs being given a special place above other beliefs, and must stop. Do the KKK or the Aryan Brotherhood receive tax exemptions because their sick beliefs are sincerely held?

    1. I suppose the KKK and Aryan Brotherhood could if filled out the appropriate IRS form.

        1. Yeah and they are a lot of fun….until they’re not. I read a book by a psychopath who said this and from my personal experience, I totally agree. When you have a psychopath on your side it’s the best!

          2. No, that’s pyromania, not psychopathy. They can overlap.
            I prefer explosives to accelerants. More bang for your buck.

  7. Absolutely hilarious (actually, would be hilarious if not tragically true).

    I am going to plant a seed for Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption right away!

  9. John Oliver is a treasure. May he perpetually rein on the holy cable channel known as HBO.

    1. I think you mean ‘reign’.
      We need to ‘rein in’ the Televangelists now.

      It’s time to again watch Steve Martin in ‘Leap of Faith’.

  10. Oliver has taken this show and just flat run with it, man, carving out a new niche for himself in politico-social talk comedy.

    Respect, brother.

  11. John could not possibly mock the televangelists. They mock themselves. They are a mockery.

    Sadly, there will be no judgment. There is no relevant intelligence smart enough or caring enough to judge.

  12. My only criticism is that he could have named more names…dozens and dozens and dozens of names.

  13. But if anyone wants to send ME actual seeds- especially of unusual plants that’ll do well in the south of France. My address is 42 rue de Strasbourg, Mazamet, 81200 😀

      1. I thought poppies were the big cash crop in Afghanistan? And you can buy an entire bottle of those seeds for a buck or two in the spice aisle at your grocery store. Same species, or close enough as makes no difference. Bake muffins with them all you want…but don’t plant the seeds — and, whatever you do, if you do plant them, don’t cut the bulb at the base of the flower, and especially don’t collect the sap the comes from a cut bulb.

        But people go ahead and (illegally) grow them all the time. They’re beautiful flowers and they make lots of seeds you can use for baking. It probably helps that those who grow them don’t tend to grow them in any significant quantities and also aren’t the type to try to profit from unauthorized harvesting practices…but it should also give you an idea of just how batshit fucked up insane our drugs policy is.

        b&

        P.S. Don’t eat a poppyseed muffin before getting a drug test. They’re actually banned from the cafeterias of government contractors because you’ll test positive for heroin. Let that fun fact sink in for a moment…. b&

        1. You probably won’t test positive for heroin, but for other opiate residuals like morphine codeine.

          2. You might be right about that…the part I’m sure about is that eating poppy seeds triggers “positive” results on a drug test for drugs made from the same plant.

            b&

        2. Never knew that about eating delicious poppyseeds. Love the flowers, too. We had quite a patch growing wild for years in the ravine behind us. A couple years ago most of them seem to have been uprooted and I’ve always wondered if local kids were doing a science experiment…

          1. The poppies native to the American West that I’m familiar with (California and Mexican) are a different species. I understand they’re very mildly “medicinal,” but not significantly so. The “bread seed poppies” have flowers the size of your hand and seed bulbs the size of golf balls. I’m not sure where they’re native to.

            b&

        3. Oddly, I’d just seen a segment of an Ozz police booze patrol program where a lady tested positive for drugs at the roadside, which she strenuously and credibly denied. The commentary noted the lab test later came back negative.

          I wonder what she’d been eating?

          /@

  14. This is one of my favorite shows, and this bit was one of his best.

    It’s also a hoot to call the number 800-844-7475. You get the address to send him seed, but his spiel is an absolute riot. SEND ME MONEY!!!

    I’m going to send $5 with a “Where’s George” stamp on it and ask if he’ll log it in for shits and giggles.

  15. I live a couple of blocks from the TV transmitter for KNMT, Portland, Oregon’s Trinity Broadcasting Network affiliate. It has a huge vacant lot: I think it mostly just relays TBN rubbish.

    Before seeing this episode I viewed the place with contempt but also indifference. Now I see it as an enabler of fraud on a massive scale, and hope that some day (not in the near future, alas) that everyone involve with this sick exploitation will be held to account.

  16. IMO, tele-evangelism like quantum mysticism has been a steady downhill slide since its inception.
    The first two major religious broadcasters were Catholic Archbishop Fulton Sheen and Billy Graham. Sheen was IMO a thorough going syrupy cornball, though not exactly dumb (he had a PhD in philosophy). Graham was at least very sincere and well-meaning.

    But then came Pat Robertson, who is really just creepy and crazy. If Sheen was the ultimate cornball, Robertson is not only the ultimate nutball; there’s something really sinister and about him- his retro views on women, his reduction of complex political issues to slogans, his absurd characterization of feminism, etc. Robertson is IMO where TV religion really embraced the dark side. Then came Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker and its just gotten uglier and uglier since then.

  18. My only criticism is he let other churches off the hook. Sure, he was narrowing in on televangelists & he is right in pointing out that some churches do good deeds, but they still enjoy the same tax-free deals (and auditless status) that televangelists enjoy and they too prey on the vulnerable.

    1. There’s often a reluctance to tackle the big religions head-on, for whatever reason. George Carlin did it, as did Christopher Hitchens (and too many more to name here). But a sizable number who are quite happy to point out the foibles of the small religions (as Oliver does here) turn notably silent with respect to the exact same foibles of the large religions.

      After all, the Morons explicitly require that their members tithe…what is it 10%? 15%? of their pre-tax income. That’s not only no different from what the televangelists do; it’s worse. Fail to pay the televangelist and he’ll mail you a dollar bill with instructions to return it with interest. Fail to pay your ransom to the Moron church and you’ll be cast out of your own home and treated as evil scum by your family.

      And pretty much every denomination will be quite happy to suggest a “recommended giving level,” and there’s most certainly universal pressure to meet those levels….

      b&

      1. I’m not sure I’d call evengelical/television protestantism “small” religion. These guys are in charge of one of our two major political parties. Or at least hugely influencial there-in.

        1. Well, in aggregate, maybe…but I don’t think the individuals Oliver goes after have any significant influence, and each is something of an one-man show.

          In stark contrast, a quarter or so of Americans are Catholic and recite the same Credo weekly in unison….

          b&

          1. I attended an Episcopalian church this past Sunday, as a one time family obligation, and there were many things that gave me flashbacks to my Catholic upbringing. I hate that shit.

      2. I still receive envelopes from my local church, coincidentally called Our Lady of Perpetual Help. On the front of the envelope, they ask you to mark your income level and below that box is the recommended tithe. I’m always tempted to write them a harshly worded letter, but then I realize that I would no longer be doing my part in having them waste postage mailing this heavy container of envelopes to me. Plus, what would I use as kindling from my fire pit if not the church collection envelopes?

        1. Perpetual help seems to be from the flock to the church not the other way around!

          I worked with someone who was Dutch Reform and he talked about being “tithey” which involved giving some percentage of his income to the church.

          1. It’s the Dutch Reform that are the single largest centre for infectious disease in this corner of the province. They’re anti-vax and the church runs its own grade schools. There are few if any parents there that admit to vaccinating their kids.

            Also, visiting family and friends means they regularly import diseases from the Nederlands, where the congregations there are responsible for one of the worst records of preventable diseases in the EU.

      3. That is correct.
        It is the continuing validation of all these idiot superstitious beliefs that allows these types to prey on those that have said superstitious belief.

        Picking off the most exploitive, while entertaining does not go to the heart of the problem.

        The answer is continuing zero tolerance for such idiot superstitious beliefs, especially the moderate ones and the mainstream.

        I have said it before and I’ll say it again, acceptance of, or reluctance to criticize moderate religious beliefs enables a pyramid of beliefs, with a stable base allowing and informing the various extremes at the pointy end.

        1. I don’t think removing the ‘mainstream’ churches from the scene would make much difference to the televangelists, unfortunately. They would just switch to selling some other brand of snake oil, like – like snake oil salesmen used to.

          Like current peddlers of woo and ‘dietary supplements’ do, in fact.

          As long as there’s a significant proportion of the human race subject to excessive credulity, there will be con men waiting to take advantage of them one way or another.

          cr

          1. It’s good to keep in mind the fact that human traits follow roughly a normal distribution. There will always be some proportion of the population who are sufficiently gullible to fall for most anything shiny that catches their eye. Who was it that said – there’s a sucker born every minute. Sadly true.
            I think the best society can do is minimize the effects by education in basic reasoning and implementing tough laws against fraud.

          2. I don’t think removing the ‘mainstream’ churches from the scene would make much difference to the televangelists, unfortunately.

            My point — and I think the one Michael was trying to make as well — is that there’s no difference between the mainstream churches and the televangelists, save the sales techniques used by the cons. Morons are even more universally exploited by the Moronic Church than those duped by televangelists.

            We could get rid of the televangelists and that’d be but a drop in the bucket. Freeing people from the chains of the big churches would actually make a difference.

            b&

      4. The Mormons not only require ten percent of your pay, but they often require their people to run the church for free.

        At least in the other churches they pay the minister. So that leaves the question, if very few of the people running the Mormon church get paid, exactly where is all that money going?

        The ‘Thank God I’m Atheist’ podcast often talks about how the Mormon church works, members being press ganged into service, tithing and such.
        It’s an amusing podcast.

    1. They remind me of Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye from days gone by. He was convicted of fraud, but as soon as he was released, he went back to televangelism. I guess the money was too good to go straight.

      1. Indeed it was Rachel Dratch… she did a good job, but I couldn’t help thinking about the late, great Jan Hooks when I saw this…

  21. I remember having the 700 Club on in my household from time to time (yes, a strange mix with a Conservative Catholic family, but who’s to question anything once you start down the road to in(s)anity).

    Pat Robertson would do the same routine as these preachers….”healing” people through the TV.

    I asked how he knew people had these ailments…not realizing that things like back pain are pretty run of the mill. A charlatan could probably even get away with saying he senses a loved one of someone watching has cancer in a room with a few dozen people, nevermind an incredulous national television audience.

    1. It’s a standard carnie mentalist routine. James Randi has explained it, but so have many others.

      The more sophisticated ones will, for example have the ticket takers in the box office spy on the contents of people’s wallets as they make the transition and relay that information backstage for an additional personal touch. Once you start thinking along those lines, it’s easy to come up with ways to enhance the effect — especially today with modern technology. Parabolic microphone to eavesdrop on people in the parking lot? Quick social media scan? And so on.

      b&

      1. Often these people fill out attendee cards loaded with personal information. The Amazing Kreskin would walk out in the parking lot before the show. Imagine what he might see in your parked car!

      2. That’s the classic shtick of guys like John Edward. A great line from the linked article: “Gone is the clear-speaking eloquence of yore; the dead now seem to mumble.”

        So, yes televangelists should be called out for the scam artists they are and I do think prosperity Gospel preachers are several orders of magnitude worse than most mainstream churches, at least in the United States. Most churches at least allocate some portion of the money to helping the poor*, though in the case of the Vatican, the authoritarian structure and the shit they cause in the undeveloped world almost certainly surpasses the level of suffering the poor people endure in this country when they’re swindled over the air.

        But, if people continue to move away from religion, televangelists can simply pick up where people like John Edward left off. Until people learn to assess woo for what it is, the content of the message doesn’t matter so much as the delivery.

        *The Mormons, as you point out are a very notable exception, as no one seems to know where the hell all of that money goes.

        1. I still think you’re being much too generous to the other mainstream religions. Their “charities” are almost entirely devoted to helping the immortal souls of the poor, and do fuck-all for their mortal conditions. I forget who offered the quote…but, when the European man came to Africa, he had the Bible and the Africans had the land. Soon, the Africans had the Bible and the Europena man had the land.

          b&

          1. Their “charities” are almost entirely devoted to helping the immortal souls of the poor, and do fuck-all for their mortal conditions.

            Sure, in notorious cases such as that of Mother Theresa, this is true. But I don’t think I’m giving them “too much” credit, I think I’m merely saying that on the continuum of condescending righteousness, the televangelists tend to take the cake in America. After all, doing “fuck-all” for mortal conditions is still a step above swindling people out of their money. Prayer may do nothing, but it doesn’t leave people less well off monetarily. Organizations such as St. Vincent de Paul actually do provide some tangible relief, those they openly proclaim that their first goal is that of spiritual wellness of the people providing the charity. (I recall making childhood trips delivering canned goods to the poor through this charity.) Still, I think finding a televangelist actually doing anything for anyone other than him/herself is a rare occurrence indeed. And as far as the standard collection basket that gets passed around in Catholic churches, well as I stated elsewhere, I prefer they send me envelopes…it makes them slightly poorer and makes my fire pit ignite slightly faster.

          2. Sure, in notorious cases such as that of Mother Theresa, this is true.

            My point is that such cases are the norm. Yes, you can find a few religious charities that aren’t as bad as the typical religious charity, but none I’m aware of comes close to even the Red Cross — which, itself, doesn’t have such a great record.

            You want effective charity, you have to go purely secular, especially to somebody like Doctors Without Borders. The rest are going to spend lots of their “charity” on proselytizing and similar missionary work, including handsome pay for the administrators.

            …and this is different from the televangelists and the Morons and the Sisters of Mercy…how, exactly…?

            b&

          3. You want effective charity, you have to go purely secular, especially to somebody like Doctors Without Borders. The rest are going to spend lots of their “charity” on proselytizing and similar missionary work, including handsome pay for the administrators.

            Agreed…in terms of money that goes toward funding goes and the lack of ulterior motivations, secular charities win hands down and that how good a religious charity is can be exactly correlated to how many features of a good secular charity it incorporates. Measured this way, a religious charity that actually provides food to the poor ranks higher on the continuum than a televangelist who pockets all the money and doesn’t even mention helping others.

            My point is that John Oliver did pick a good target and in the United States, televangelists and prosperity Gospel preachers I think are viable candidates for the some of the most despicable of the religious leaders. I would also lump your run of the mill Catholic Church in with them in terms of requesting charitable donations to the institution. How demanding money from the flock simply to keep your buildings open qualifies as charitable work is truly puzzling, especially when poorer parishioners often forego their own comfort to keep the fucking heat running in the Church but not their own house. None of that money goes to any other cause, though many churches run secondary collections for donations to the poor. As far as proselytizing, that is largely a fundie phenomenon. You aren’t going to find many Catholics or Anglicans knocking on your door or flashing signs about damnation in your face out on the street, nor for the most part will you find them explicitly trying to convert people at soup kitchens for the poor.

            I do think there is a valid distinction to be made between these people who are encouraged to help religiously affiliated charities while at church and what the church itself does. This is how I interpreted John Oliver’s statement about the “good that churches do.” But, in the spirit of Christopher Hitchens, there’s no reason a secular charity can’t do it just as well (or as evidenced in practice, better). John Oliver’s rant could just as well apply to what priests around the country do on a weekly basis; in many parishes they even hand out budgets to show their cash flow and demand more, because God, in his omnipotence, just can’t seem to handle money!

  24. I saw that and in true internet ADD style it led me to various videos of Televangelists being busted and uncovered via various news shows. A common theme, of course, is the video of all the people who say they “know” that these con-men are “men of God, filled with the holy spirit” and the footage of people convinced they are being healed by these guys. Then, followed inevitably by all the revelations of cynical duplicity on part of the televangelists.

    This always leads me to thinking about how people like William L. Craig and Alvin Plantinga like to sort of ignore the implications. Craig believes his subjective assessment of the presence of the Holy Spirit in his life trumps all possible argument and evidence against it. To take this position in face of the overwhelming tendency of people to fall into error via the same method is just balls-of-steel dogmatism.

    Per Plantinga, apparently all these people have malfunctioning Sensus Divinitatis. How and why? Plantinga only ever hand waves meekly toward “sin.” But then, what is the status of all the christian victims of faith healers and televangelist con-men? Are they all so much more seeped in sin than Plantinga or Craig? These are people who clearly believe in God, who are clearly seeking God, who are willing to make substantial sacrifices, whatever they think it takes, to get God into their lives. And often enough they are rewarded not with God doing anything for them or intervening, but with being scammed of their life savings.

    What type of God would give us a “Sensus Divinitatis” or subjective “holy spirit” detector that is so sensitive to utterly predictable “interference” as to be routinely defective? Instead of revealing Himself to everyone in an empirically reliable manner, why would a God remain hidden, and instead send out a subjectively interpreted “signal” so utterly buried in the noise floor of bullshit that it can not reliably be distinguished from the feelings evoked by the worst con men?

    1. You’ve made some excellent points worth absorbing. I love your term “balls-of-steel dogmatism”. It reminds me of my brother-in-law.

  25. Televangelism really is the low-hanging fruit of the con game. It’s so transparently a scam that it’s amazing anyone ever falls for it.

    1. But they do, and do so very deeply. When James Randi exposed the faith healer as a fraud he was vilified by the faith healer’s followers for trying to take this small avenue of relief away from them. Sheesh.

      1. Another one I heard from Randi was having the follower of one of the faith healers he exposed thank him for exposing that fraud, but now they’ve found a faith healer that’s the real thing! What can you do…

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