Televangelists: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it in threads on churches, tax exemption and religious fundraising, as the go-to explainer on seed faith televangelism.
What it is
John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on televangelists and the 'seed faith' prosperity gospel. It looks at how US tax law lets preachers extract money from poor viewers, and how easy it is to start a church.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2015 to 2018.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec downandout · 2016-05 · on “Homeless alone”
Many people believe in the mistaken "no pain, no gain" philosophy. People seem to believe that somehow the universe will recognize their sacrifice and reward them accordingly. John Oliver did an excellent piece on a new crop of so-called "seed faith" televangelists that have popped up to fleece poor people that believe in this philosophy [1]. The reality, of course, is the opposite. The most successful people I have known have all started their businesses while their lives were relatively stable. That doesn't mean they started off rich, but it does mean they weren't spending all of their time trying to figure out where they were going to sleep or where their next meal was coming from. These
Strong rec soheil · 2017-05 · on “John Oliver pleads with viewers to revive net neutrality fight”
Not sure why you're getting so many down votes, but I completely agree with you. Some of his shows were incredible a few years back, two that come to mind: Televangelists[1] and Debt Buyers[2]. [1] [this video] [2] [LINK]
Recommends snake117 · 2015-11 · on “GoFundMe Gone Wild”
This reminded me of something similar: televangelists asking people for "seed faiths". If you haven't heard about this yet, check out this video from Last Week Tonight: [this video]
Recommends linuxkerneldev · 2017-03 · on “Engineer Converts Van into Laundromat, Offers Free Loads to Homeless”
> what's the economic return on proselytizing? Interesting question. I did a quick check. It looks to be incredibly profitable, at least for main stream religious organizations (which tend to also be tax free). The two top links for googling "profit of church" are: Eg: From CNN: " 1. The Vatican Bank has $8 billion in assets The Vatican Bank, which has about $8 billion in assets, has often been at the center of scandal and corruption since it was founded in 1942. Pope Benedict began the process of cleaning the bank up, and Francis has continued that work. " [LINK] " THE Sydney Catholic archdiocese controls funds worth more than $1.2 billion and has regularly made multi-million dollar tax-fre
Cites masklinn · 2015-08 · on “LLVM Foundation Granted 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Status”
Considering [LINK] is legal[0] and the requirements for a church John Oliver listed during his show[1][2] are not exactly stringent, it would probably work. [0] which you know because the phone number is 1-800-THIS-IS-LEGAL, it's a real phone number too: [LINK] [1] [this video] [2] straight outta the IRS: [LINK]
Cites ivanca · 2015-12 · on “Scientology says it's received $5.7M from Google in ad grants”
All religion orgs are considered non-profit; the funny thing is that "religion" is purposefully vaguely defined by the IRS, related: Jhon Oliver televangelist bit [this video] Organized religions including televangelists are one of the best business around, in a more cynical world I think there would be VCs and accelerators for creating new of them.
Cites stevenwoo · 2017-09 · on “Anthony Levandowski, self driving car whiz who fell from grace”
There pretty much is no such thing as an illegitimate church in the USA. The IRS is too scared to touch that anymore. John Oliver famously made fun of this on a segment. [this video]
Critical jdmichal · 2017-10 · on “Why the trial by ordeal was actually an effective test of guilt”
Agree that we're pretty much in line. Your arguments echo those you might hear from a "dissenter" type in the "spiritual but not religious" movement [0]: [LINK] > ... personally I think that 'men of the cloth' are criminals of the worst order, they willingly and knowingly spread mental viruses that cause great harm to society. I think this is probably the place where we differ the most. I think the people you discuss certainly exist. I think there's also people in those positions for the right reasons. As usual with any potential stereotype, it's important to look at individuals as individuals. (That said, the "seed faith" movement [1] needs to be nuked from orbit.) [0] Not that I'm aligning