Religious Fraud

FROM JOSEPH SMITH, who founded Mormonism after a revelation that still brings charges of a hoax to L. Ron Hubbard and the lawsuit-prone Scientologists, religion and fraud have been inextricably mixed, either as fact or in the perception of non-believers and skeptics. As religion has become more lucrative and media coverage has expanded, the frauds have as well. The particular type of fraud, the huckstering televangelist, peaked in the 1980s. But other sorts of fraud persist. Fraud against the religious can take the form of affinity fraud. And virtually every religion has those who claim that its origins are fraudulent. Further, there are frauds outside organized religion, in the New Age movement, and elsewhere. Finally, frauds arise from true belief: pious fraud.

The 19th century was a time of religious ferment. The Second Great Awakening emphasized the personal religious experience and potential perfectibility. New religions arose, as did new philosophies and reform movements. Mormonism came into being in New York, and millennial cults and utopian communities were scattered across the country. Reform movements such as temperance and abolitionism had religious underpinnings. At the same time, the United States began to commercialize its entertainments, and religion changed to meet the competition from cheap literature and theater and other amusements.

People who wanted to believe were susceptible to charlatans and frauds, who arose as the purveying of religion became profitable. Late in the century the personal religion mixed with science to create pseudoscientific cults such as spiritualism and brought into being such sects as the Christian Scientists, Seventh Day Adventists, and Jehovah's Witnesses.

Initially, the new commercial religion was free of fraud, and tent and early radio evangelists prospered greatly. From Dwight Moody to Billy Sunday to Father Divine, the charismatic evangelists kept their business dealings legitimate. By the time of Aimee Semple McPherson in the 1920s through the 1930s, the lines were beginning to blur. The evangelists became able to bring in incredible amounts of money through media pitches and the sales of questionable goods.

Effective use of radio and mass solicitation, and the switch from free public access to paid time after the 1960s, meant that evangelists needed more money and had fewer Federal Communications Commission (FCC) restraints on their television programming. The televangelists became looser, more flamboyant, more aggressive in marketing. The crash of the televangelists in the early 1980s would not diminish fraud.