Greedy Televangelist

"The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil."
— 1 Timothy 6:10

Well, I'm counting my blessings
'Cause I've found true happiness
'Cause I've been getting richer day by day
You can find me in the phonebook
Just call my toll-free number
You can do it any way you want; just do it right away

— Genesis, "Jesus He Knows Me"

Depictions of religious leaders span a broad spectrum in media, from enthusiastically positive, scathingly negative, and everywhere in between. However, while in-person congregation leaders are regularly shown as benevolent, the same cannot be said for televangelists.

In media, televangelists are often portrayed as Only in It for the Money. Using a large, devoted platform, they promise their followers spiritual rewards, often intangible until the afterlife, while using these funds to line their pockets and live luxuriously. Some such evangelists preach "prosperity theology" or "prosperity gospel," claiming that followers can achieve more material success from God in return for donations to their ministries. As many religions denounce such frivolous lifestyles, this not only preys upon followers who often have far less income but also rings quite hypocritical. People with strongly-held religious beliefs may be particularly susceptible to being taken advantage of like this through appeal to their ideals and authorities, which adds a layer of insidiousness. In some cases, the leaders may even be confirmed to not even believe what they preach at all, much less practice.

This trope is not exclusively used by the non-religious. In fact, religious creators will often go after televangelists of their own faith precisely for weaponizing sincerely-held beliefs for their own selfish desires. Additionally, while Western media will often have this character be an Evangelical Christian, on account of its popularity, the religious leader can posit any belief, even a fictional one, and still count for this trope.

In the times before radio and TV, a similar role would often be fulfilled by traveling preachers, though their collective reputation wasn't as low as today's televangelists. While television and especially the internet have changed the way sermons are delivered to widespread audiences, some examples still exist.

Sub-Trope of Villain by Default and Corrupt Church. Sister Trope to Fake Faith Healer, and can easily overlap if he has a TV show. Compare Sinister Minister and Scam Religion, which often overlap as well. Several Religion Rant Songs that don't rail against God or religion in general are about these kinds of televangelists.

Despite being Truth in Television, No Real Life Examples, Please!

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Death Note: Hitoshi Demegawa is a sensationalist media personality whose primary motives are money and influence. After he began publishing Kira's demands to attract ratings, people began to openly worship Kira. He then appoints himself as Kira's spokesperson, hosting Kira's Kingdom as a platform, but his decision to collect raining money over helping Kira beat the SPK proved his beliefs to be self-serving, and Demegawa and his hand-picked inner circle are soon dealt with by Light's new Dragon, Teru Mikami.

Fan Works

• Discussed and subverted in the Danganronpa Continuation Danganronpa: Paradise Lost: despite being the Ultimate Televangelist, Yashiro Fujiwara is depicted as a genuine believer in the teachings of Christ — his introduction has him outright criticize other televangelists that he sees as caring about their fortune rather than their faith. His true sin happens to be wrath.

Film — Live-Action

• The Eyes of Tammy Faye: Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker hit it big with the Christian evangelism show The PTL Club. However, the show's finances come under fire especially because the Bakkers' lifestyle is extremely lavish. Jim is eventually accused of and arrested for fraud.
• Honk For Jesus Save Your Soul is a mockumentary that focuses on fictional Pastor Lee Curtis Childs and his wife Trinitee as they try to rebuild their church congregation following Childs' sex scandal. While they nominally talk about loving the Lord and wanting to save souls, they are clearly very focused on material wealth, wanting to show the camera crew their walk-in closet full of Prada suits in every color, their expensive shoes, cars, and the flashy showpieces built into their church. A recording of a past sermon showed Childs gloating about his private jet, pretty wife, and nice house, saying that it was proof of his favor with God. When it starts to become clear that their congregants don't plan to return, the Childses seem more upset about the loss of power, money, and prestige than about having harmed the local community's view of church and Christianity.
• In God We Trust: Televangelist Armageddon T. Thunderbird is downright unapologetic about his greed. It doesn't end well for him, though, when a Trappist monk meets up with the preacher's sentient central computer, and reads to it from The Bible!
• Leap of Faith: Jonas Nightengale is an evangelist/faith healer who travels from town to town holding revival services band promising miracles. In reality, his "faith healing" is a con, aided by his skill at cold reading and his manager Jane feeding him information through an earpiece to make it seem like he is receiving it directly from God. Things get complicated when an actual miracle happens.
• Licence to Kill has Professor Joe Butcher conduct a televised ministry that's really a communications system for cocaine kingpin Franz Sanchez's distribution network, with donation amounts indicating how many kilos will be purchased at the given price (the target amount Joe mentions). It's remarked in-universe that Joe's televangelism is profitable even without the drug angle.
• Repossessed: Ernest and Fanny Weller, a husband-and-wife team spoofing the Bakers, are happily planning to televise the possessed Nancy Aglet's exorcism (whom Ernest doesn't even believe to be possessed). The couple are eager for the number of converts, and thus donations, the special will bring in for their church and even try to give Satan some tips on how to put on a better show for their audience. This all backfires when it turns out Satan was merely using them to get access to a massive television audience he could then possess via the airwaves.

Literature

• In The Apocalypse Troll, the Troll's chief human subordinate is a former one who lost his financial empire after a journalist exposed just how he was spending his donations (most notably the Paid Harem).
• The Bedlam's Bard series by Mercedes Lackey has Reverend Billy Fairchild, who started out as a fairly sincere traveling preacher until his daughter's literally magical singing voice propelled him to a media empire (including a televangelism program). The fame and fortune went to his head (to the point where he eventually built himself a combined church/casino in Atlantic City), and his daughter eventually ran away from home to live on the streets in order to get away from him, which caused Fairchild's fortunes to start declining, as her singing was the cornerstone of his church's popularity.
• Good Omens: The angel Aziraphale possesses various people at random while attempting to get to Tadfield and avert the apocalypse. One of the people is an evangelist on live TV telling his audience only the faithful will be saved and everyone else will burn and spends approximately forty-five minutes of each hour cajoling, begging, and threatening people to send money. Unfortunately for him, Aziraphale decides to set the record straight, explaining that Heaven honestly doesn't care what happens to anyone and scolds the man for thinking the idea of sneering down at all the people who supposedly won't be saved is justifiable. Slightly subverted in that the book also says that the televangelist is a True Believer (Aziraphale can only possess people who are genuinely open to it) and really does spend a lot of the money on what, in his mind, are good works.
• In the first book of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Percy, Grover, and Annabeth encounter a televangelist in the Underworld while he's being taken to the Fields of Punishment. He was caught using donated money intended to help others to buy luxury items like golden toilet seats and an indoor golf course, and died when he drove his "Lamborghini for the Lord" off a cliff during a police chase.
• Stranger in a Strange Land is a science-fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein from the early Sixties that contrasts two types of religions. One, the Fosterites, are a violent sect that uses lavish churches and beams their fundraising message via television into the homes of their followers. The other, the Church of All Planets, is led by a human male named Michael Smith who was born and raised on Mars by Martians. He bases his faith on the alien philosophy he was taught, and his simple creed "thou art God" doesn't sit at all well with the Fosterites.
• "Vanni Fucci Is Alive and Well and Living in Hell" is a short story by Dan Simmons about a televangelist's TV talk show where the titular character gets put on it after being sent to Hell centuries ago so he can explain what Hell's like to the public. There's a lot of awful punishments there, which make him quite upset, especially since he was a political dissident rather than a sinner but got sent to Hell after he died anyway. And whenever said character gets too upset, he gives God the finger, which causes every thief in his vicinity to be spontaneously turned into a demon and attack him. The evangelist, the other guests on the show, and a chunk of the audience are all turned into demons and dragged down to hell.

Live-Action TV

• American Horror Story: Hotel: One of the Ten Commandments Killer's victims is a televangelist accused of "taking the Lord's name in vain" — more specifically, for using God as a means of both profiteering and spreading hate. The Killer punishes this sin by disemboweling the "false prophet" and stuffing his mouth full of coins.
• Bones: Patricia Ludmuller, the Body of the Week in "The He in the She", is a post-op transgender woman who turns out to have previously been fire-and-brimstone televangelist Patrick Stephenson, whose family grew extremely wealthy from viewer contributions before her disappearance. Her former wife Cecelia and son Ryan continued the televangelist ministry, but then Ryan had a crisis of conscience mid-sermon — "This is a palace, and Our Lord was not born in a palace" — and left the ministry to become a rehab counselor. In the end, he takes over Ludmuller's new church in the inner city.
• Columbo: One episode features a gospel singer who, while frugal, only insists she and her colleagues save money to later build an excessively lavish temple. Of course, she's getting most of the funding by blackmailing her gospel singer over having had sex with an underage girl, which really says a lot more about her character.
• Drop the Dead Donkey: Earl Johnson, an American televangelist visits the station hoping to get them to cover his rally, which they can't as it doesn't count as news. By the end of the episode, he's revealed to be a pervert who attempts to take advantage of the recently Born-Again Christian Sally, which is enough to snap her out of it and return to her usual spiteful self.
• Deconstructed in Filthy Rich, which posits that it is possible for someone to be a selfless televangelist, as Eugene and Margaret Monreaux tried to be when they founded their televangelist empire. The problem is that humble televangelists don't get very far without patronage, which means letting less altruistic people like the 18:20 group in, and it's very hard to be around greedy, opportunistic people for long periods of time without their tendencies rubbing off on you.
• In Living Color! featured skits revolving around televangelism duo Ed Cash and Carl Pathos, who frequently and transparently fleece their followers, be it through blackmail, or straight-up gunpoint robbery. Carl Pathos specifically was based on real-life televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, and his many, many controversies and sexual escapades that occurred during his ministry.
  Ed Cash: No, no; we tried to do it the Lord's way, now we gon' do it the good ol' 125th St & 7th Avenue way! (brandishes gun) Give up the money now! Pay the Lord!
  Carl Pathos: (pulls out gun) You wanted heaven, NOW REACH FOR IT!
• Last Week Tonight ran an episode in 2015 about televangelists and the ways they are exploiting people for monetary gain. At the end of the episode, John Oliver and his wife (played by Rachel Dratch) parodied this by using a lot of the same language used by the televangelists they covered to set up a fake religious entity ("Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption") and an associated televangelism website and donation line, adding that any donations would be redirected to Doctors Without Borders. When the church was eventually shut down a few weeks later, Oliver announced that tens of thousands of dollars had been donated and were indeed forwarded to Doctors Without Borders.
• The Murder, She Wrote episode "Murder in the Electric Cathedral" features a family of televangelists who possibly murdered someone who left everything to the church in their will. It turns out to be more complicated than that.
• The Righteous Gemstones features an uber-rich televangelist family who owns a multimillion-dollar chain of megachurches. Donations from these churches fund their lavish and debauched lifestyles and enable their awful behaviors. While the family members have varying degrees of devotion to the church and God, the trend for the Gemstones is prioritizing profit over true belief.
• RoboCop: The Series featured Reverand Robert Taker in the episode "Prime Suspect", a televangelist fire and brimstone preacher who used his congregation to accrue millions of dollars in donations. Throughout the episode, Taker would accuse Robocop of being a tool of Satan and "A thing of pure evil". He was later killed by an offscreen assailant while carrying out an extra-marital affair, leading to Robocop being accused of his murder.
• Young Sheldon: "A Frankenstein's Monster and a Crazy Church Guy" has Reverend Travis Lemon, who preaches to the TV audience that those who send him money will be rewarded tenfold. No one takes him seriously, but Mary is just desperate enough to fall for it.

Magazines

• MAD: One "Things We'd Like to See" installment includes a televangelist who urges his viewers not to send him their money, telling them there are countless worthy charities more deserving of it, implying most televangelists aren't so selfless.

Music

• Dire Straits: In On Every Street, the track "Ticket to Heaven" is narrated by a televangelist who projects a benevolent and charitable air while secretly embezzling the donations that he claims will fund missionaries in third-world countries.
• Genesis:
  • "Jesus He Knows Me" is a song criticizing televangelists for their extravagant lifestyles and hypocrisy. The music video shows the band dressed like famous televangelists living in luxury, while the lyrics show insistence on being right by Appeal to Authority.
  • Ghost's cover of the same song, in addition to being a bit more metalized than the Genesis version, goes full on into the Hookers and Blow with its televangelist in the music video.
• Insane Clown Posse's "Hellalujah" is about televangelists who use the faith of others to turn a profit, particularly televangelists and those who claim to perform Healing Hands among other miracles, accusing them of being charlatans who exploit the religious belief and desperation of the sick and the needy for their own selfish gains. The song outright says that they believe themselves to be God and that they will end up in Hell for their callous and greedy behavior.
  How much money do you make?
  How much will you let me take?
  I can send you tranquility,
  Just send your welfare checks to me!
• Iron Maiden has "Holy Smoke", from No Prayer for the Dying, a song-length Take That! against televangelists and profit-driven megachurches, which also takes potshots at notorious televangelists Jimmy Swaggart and Tammy Faye Bakker, both of whom were involved in serious scandals. It is also one of the only songs Iron Maiden has done which has swears in it.
  Jimmy Reptile and all his friends
  Say they're gonna be with you at the end
  Burning records, burning books
  Holy soldiers, Nazi looks
  Crocodile smiles, just wait a while
  Till the TV queen gets her makeup clean
  I've lived in filth, I've lived in sin
  And I still smell cleaner than the shit you're in!
• Metallica's Master of Puppets: "Leper Messiah" attacks the televangelist practice of promising heavenly rewards for those donating to their cause.
• Ray Stevens: "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex" takes some very pointed jabs at the hypocrisy of visibly wealthy televangelists asking their congregations/viewers for money by asking if Jesus would do the things they do after He returns to earth. The implication is very much "No, He would not."
  Would He wear a pinky ring, would He drive a fancy car?
  Would His wife wear furs and diamonds, would His dressing room have a star?
  If He came back tomorrow, there's something I'd like to know
  Could ya tell me, would Jesus wear a Rolex on His television show?
• U2: Referenced in a coda for a live version of "Bullet the Blue Sky" from Rattle and Hum:
  Her lover's turning off, turning on the television, and I can't tell the difference between ABC News, Hill Street Blues, and a preacher on The Old Time Gospel Hour stealing money from the sick and the old. Well, the God I believe in isn't short of cash, mister.
• Roger Waters: In Amused to Death, the "What God Wants" trilogy revolves around an "alien prophet" who uses scripture to promote whatever benefits him, even if it ends up being blatantly self-contradictory, so long as he makes money off of it. This is especially clear in "What God Wants, Part II", which opens with a mock commercial where another televangelist (played by Charles Fleischer) gives an increasingly unhinged rant about how his audiences can only be united in God by giving him money, after which the alien prophet preaches about God wanting large quantities of money from all over the world. The track immediately after, "What God Wants, Part III", hammers the point home by using Animal Motifs that compare televangelists to a variety of creatures commonly associated with thievery: vultures, magpies, raccoons, and groundhogs.
• Frank Zappa:
  • You Are What You Is features an early example with "Heavenly Bank Account"; released in 1981, it considerably predates the televangelism scandals of the late '80s that popularized this trope. The song depicts a televangelist who gets himself in the good graces of both the American public and the American government for the sake of embezzling donations without scrutiny, becoming a multimillionaire by invoking "the Fear of God in the Common Man."
  • One of the criticisms of religion that comes up in "Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk" from Broadway the Hard Way is how televangelists tend to manipulate people with religious beliefs into giving them money. The song explicitly mentions Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker as well as Pat Robertson, who have widely been accused of being this, and the former of whom was caught in a scandal.
    But keep that money rollin' in
    'Cause Pat and naughty Jimbo
    Can't get enough of it (Let's dance!)

Music Videos

• The music video for Hollywood Undead’s “Day of the Dead” invokes this where it shows two televangelists on TV promoting both Christianity and a variety of quite expensive items. Off-camera, the two televangelists are shown being tended to by two guys with food and champagne and showering themselves with dollar bills.
• The music videos for Carpenter Brut's songs Inferno Galore and Sunday Lunch (both off the album Leather Teeth) feature an extreme version named "Reverend Godshyne" (a reverend with a glowing face) heavily. The first is an advertisement for a wildly abusive Christian camp that parents can send their kids to if they think that they are practicing Satanism, gay, or even just into heavy metal and synthwave. The camp, and all other phony faith healing services offered by Godshyne are exorbitantly expensive, averaging thousands of dollars each. Sunday Lunch, meanwhile, briefly showcases the gruesome end of the "good" reverend: his headlamp broke, exposing him as a fraud, the police started investigating the copious amounts of child porn in his possession, and when he drunkenly tried to flee in his private jet purchased with the money he had swindled he was sucked into the turbine and left as a large smear of blood and guts on the tail of the plane.

Newspaper Comics

• Dilbert:
  • One Sunday strip had Dogbert giving unusual solutions to everyday problems. To the problem of greedy televangelists, he suggested throwing your television out the window, on the theory that if enough people do it, someone will get lucky and hit a televangelist.
  • Another arc had Dogbert be a crooked televangelist and conning money out of listeners for his own amusement.

Video Games

• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City: Pastor Richards is a televangelist whose radio ads promise salvation through building an indestructible Salvation Statue using his followers' money. His appearance on "Pressing Issues", where he preaches that selfishness is a virtue, reveals that he's really using the money for the Salvation Statue to build a mansion in Hawai'i.
• Warframe has Nef Anyo, a Corpus 'prophet of profit' whose mannerisms are drawn heavily from a mix of megachurch televangelism and infomercial shilling. His favorite confidence trick is promising "blessings from the Void" if viewers give money to his temple. Most notably, you never meet Nef in person — he only ever communicates by remote broadcast, particularly in Fortuna where he exploits the downtrodden Solaris people.

Web Video

• Wizards with Guns: Rev. Ruby Ranch and Pastor Titus Diamondback from the "G" is for Jesus series use their televangelism to sell overpriced garbage, including everything that's "complementary" or "free". In their Christmas episode, they hold a fundraiser to help the starving kids of Lake Titicaca (called "Lake Peepeecaca" by Ruby Ranch), only to reveal at the end that only 10% is actually going to the kids...and that's as bibles. The same episode has them exchanging gifts of extravagant jewelry, and Titus being extremely upset when he briefly thinks he's been given a bible.

Western Animation

• The season one finale of Black Dynamite concerns the return of Reverend Daddy Dynamite, Black Dynamite's long-lost father, and a shamelessly greedy pastor who tells pimps and whores to remove their sins by tithing all their illegal income to him. The Islamic puppet frog That Bastard Kurtis convinces Daddy Dynamite to take his message to the airwaves, promising that if he uses The Puppet Show's old studios, he could become the wealthiest minister in the whole puppet community. Of course, it's all a plot by Kurtis to kill Daddy Dynamite in revenge for Black Dynamite killing his own father.
• Bordertown: The episode "Megachurch" spotlights Reverend Fantastic, the blatantly incompetent and corrupt head of the local megachurch that the Buckwald family attends. All of the money that goes into the collection plates ends up being spent for his personal use on things like a private jet, and later sets his eyes on Ernesto's church for more money when his usual crowd doesn't "donate" as much as what they used to.
• Duckman: The episode "TV or Not to Be" has Mother Mirabelle, a televangelist for the Home Miracle Network, which is openly aimed at a very important demographic: people with disposable income. She and her followers worship a painting of a pair of feet called The Blessed Mother of the Weeping Soles, which she claims causes miracles to happen. When the painting is seemingly stolen, Duckman and Cornfed go to offer their detective services to her in order to find it, but Duckman causes a scene and calls her a fraud on live television. The feed cuts and she threatens them with a group of goons, but upon finding out they're detectives, she takes $20 off them as an apology...and promptly gives them the $20 as the fee for their detective services, effectively hiring them for free. In the end, it turns out that she engineered the theft to boost viewership when the painting was returned, and only got Duckman and Cornfed involved so it looked like she was trying to find it.
• The pilot for God, the Devil and Bob featured Bob going to a televangelist with a pitch for a call-in show about daily miracles - upon being told that there'd be no money in it, Bob is promptly kicked out.
• South Park: In "Probably", Cartman becomes one of these when the boys start their own church.

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