Trinity Foundation

Paula White-Cain claims she can walk into the president’s office and pray for him any time she wishes, but before the prosperity preacher would answer Heat Street reporter Jillian Melchior’s list of questions, Ms. Melchior, Heat Street and owner Dow Jones were all threatened with a lawsuit by Paula’s lawyer—so much for “turn the other cheek”.  Ms. Melchior’s lengthy article illustrates how Ms. White-Cain asks for money—lots of it—and ends with a brief interview with Ole Anthony and our warning to the Trump administration about Mrs. White-Cain—read it here.

Major Prophet Shepherd Bushiri coming out of his jet

We recently engaged in discussions providing information and assistance to the South African Secular Society, who are attempting to help their fledgling democratic government develop legislation and case law to combat religious fraud and excess in South Africa—and there’s loads of it.  It’s sad to say, but the US has exported the “name-it, claim-it” gospel around the world—to the poorest people of the world.  Ole Anthony calls it spiritual pornography—self-seeking in the name of God which soon becomes spiritual cancer.

Nowhere is this bald-faced lie more glaring and destructive than in Africa where the great majority of workers earn less than a dollar a day.

“Planting your seed” is nowadays generally taught to mean donating your money into a ministry to get some sort of blessing, either financial success or physical healing.  It never works for the poor but quite like a fraudulent pyramid scheme, it only enriches its prosperity preacher proponents at the top of the pyramid who live in luxury and use donor funds as their personal bank account.

Think “spiritual porn” is a bit of an exaggeration?  Watch Malawi born mega-church pastor Shepherd Bushiri’s arrival and reception to the adulation of tens’ of thousands and some of his parlor trick performances here.  Among other pseudo miracles, Bushiri claims he can walk on air, photograph angels with a “random” IPAD, and prophesy the future.

Bushiri’s first name is ironic—a shepherd is supposed to care for his flock and place his charge’s interests over his own.  QZ.com, a Global Online newspaper whose main office is in New York, reports Mr. Bushiri recently acquired a Gulfstream III jet and claimed on Facebook it’s “My third jet in two years”. [1]

Bushiri is pastor of the Enlightened Church Gathering (ECG) with its largest congregation in Pretoria and branches across the African Continent.  It claims to have over 300,000 registered members.

Also president of Shepherd Bushiri Investments (SBI) and the Bushiri Consultancy in Dubai, he claims massive wealth.  According to Malawi’s Nyasa Times, Bushiri is a billionaire entrepreneur whose ventures include gold mines, oil exploration and production, SB Airways which charters private jets in South Africa, a mobile phone service provider called PSB Network in South Africa, hotels in South Africa and Mauritius (a small island west of Madagascar), producing and selling an energy drink called “Favor”, as well as several other companies in Dubai, Ethiopia, Cyprus, and Zambia.

Bushiri is not alone among African pastors who own or whose ministries own corporate jets.  The largest concentration of private preacher jets is located in Nigeria.  We intend to report more on this in future posts.

inside Bushiri’s jet

More from South Africa:  Last month we reported that Pastor Timothy Omotoso of the Jesus Dominion International ministry was arrested and charged with sex trafficking April 20 by a South African law enforcement organization similar to the FBI.   More here… 

[1] Lily Kuo, ANNOINTED—Malawian pastor defends buying a third private jet by saying, “I am what God says.. I was born a winner”, QZ.com, Quartz Media, January 2016

Numerous agents from the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS and Postal Inspectors wearing POLICE jackets raided the nerve center of Hinn’s ministry, the World Healing Center Church in Grapevine Texas to carry out an extensive search warrant. One reporter estimated as many as 50 agents were inside the ministry gathering boxes and boxes of evidence and loading it onto trucks for two days beginning Wednesday April 26th. One IRS agent mentioned that their job was to investigate financial crimes.

Three television crews dropped by our Trinity Foundation offices on Wednesday to interview our president Ole Anthony, ask about our investigations of Hinn for the US Senate Finance Committee from 2005 through 2010, and see what else we knew. On Thursday, we helped WFAA News 8 find a young man who Hinn claimed to be healed of blindness when he was a boy back in 2001. Watch both segments here.

If you have any undisclosed information about Benny Hinn or his ministry, please send it to our contact email trinity@trinityfi.org or call our office at 214-827-2625. Your identity will remain confidential as long as you wish.

2012 photo of Jane Whaley, provided to the AP by a
former member of the Word of Faith Fellowship (WOFF)

A nightmarish story we went undercover to research along with Inside Edition in the spring of 1995 is back in the news, and sadly, things have only gotten worse. (Watch a shortened 10 minute clip from the Inside Edition report here)

The Associated Press has published a well-researched exposé (here) of the Word of Faith Fellowship in Spindale, N.C., and its leader, Jane Whaley, detailing the same patterns of abuse we uncovered 22 years ago:

– a constant series of “exorcisms”
– beatings and other physical abuse
– neglect
– public humiliation
– unreported sexual abuse
– hours of shouted “prayer” directed at the devil
– forced separation of family members

One difference is that Word of Faith Fellowship today has twice as many members.

Forty-three ex-members, in separate exclusive interviews, told the AP that the congregants were “regularly punched, smacked, choked, slammed to the floor or thrown through walls in a violent form of deliverance meant to ‘purify’ sinners by beating out devils.”

As part of Trinity’s previous investigation, Pete Evans infiltrated the group and recorded dozens of hours of hidden-camera footage, which he provided to Inside Edition producers at secret rendezvous points. He emerged from the 5-month-long undercover operation with an incredible story, which the AP report confirms.

During hours-long, nightly church services, Evans recalls, entire families, including young children too old for the nursery, would rock back and forth shouting and shaking their fists at Satan while rebuking “systems of witchcraft,” “generational curses” or other maleficent “spiritual systems.” At some point during the service, Jane Whaley or another church leader would call out individuals that she thought needed “deliverance.”

“Whaley would divide the congregation into multiple smaller circles surrounding the called-out souls in order to cast out demons of rebellion, sickness, various ‘evil networks,’ or just plain laziness,” Evans said. “The unlucky human at the core of these circles was encouraged to shout and scream along with the others at whatever lurked within, and the sessions would continue until that person spit or vomited into a small plastic tub conveniently provided for the moment.”

Evans was in the middle of 11 of these sessions, and that allowed him to secretly obtain some graphic footage.

While parents were occupied with “worship,” Evans said, young children and infants in the nursery were tied to their chairs with bed sheets to keep them from fidgeting. Crying infants were taken aside from time to time and screamed at in the tight quarters of the nursery bathroom, in sessions intended to cast out their “demons of rebelliousness.”

The AP article shows that the abuse Evans’ undercover investigation revealed has not only continued, but worsened over the years.

New Documentary: Mission Congo

Television is an incredible medium for raising money and one that televangelist Pat Robertson has used to the fullest extent for decades. Graphic images of starving, sick and hungry refugees can open hearts and wallets. For instance, Robertson’s Operation Blessing took in more than $338 million in contributions (and endowments) in 2013.

Five years ago, producers Lara Zizic and David Turner came to Dallas to interview Ole Anthony and gather research for a documentary about Robertson and Operation Blessing.  Now, after years of attempts by lawyers for Robertson’s organization to quash the film, it has finally been released.

It’s one of the most complete exposures of the business of televangelism we’ve seen.  Visit the Mission Congo website (here) and rent or purchase Mission Congo to see how millions of dollars were donated to help Rwandan genocide refugees in the mid-’90s, yet were diverted to Pat Robertson’s diamond mining company.  Toward the end of the film, Ole suggests a simple way to curb this kind of fraud.