What do you think about how a lot of "Televison Preachers", try to sell products on their shows?

The products a show sells helps me to decide which groups are trying to help others and which one’s are trying to help themselves..It helps me decide on how I recieve the message that Is being conveyed

Let her have her fancies.

This is not a “Christian” problem. Our entire materialistic society suffers from advertisers convincing us that their products and services will “enrich” our lives. It is everywhere.

If they’re using their spiritual position to sell cheap worldly products, at the very least it would seem to be a very basic conflict of interests.

@Captain_Fantasy Yep…it does.

My 91 yr old Mom buys things from crystal cathedral. it’s her church now.

Their generation is used to going to church and putting in the offering plate.

I hate tele-evangelists, but that stuff is their silly tv offering plate. Churches have always brainwashed…...this is no different.

I hope the chuch doesn’t plan on selling indulgences again… or are they doing that with the product’s on sale?

She’s not being brainwashed any more than anybody else who buys advertised products, but she is throwing her money away.
By and large, televangelists are – ironically – bad news.

@jazmina88 Churches educate and provide fellowship. Certainly, this leaves room for abuse, but the same goes for schools and the mass media and really, anybody with an opinion. Read up on opinion leadership.

I’m trying to understand how this is different from tithing to a church.

Televangelists strike me as a pretty slimy bunch on the whole, but then again, so do most evangelicals, so if it makes her happy…

@gorillapaws
Tithes are donations. They are called donations, they do not offer a presumably-holy prayer shawl in return, and a good church will explain from the get-go that the offering baskets are for members/regular attendees who want to use them.
What sorts of evangelicals have you been hanging out with, that you get the impression that they’re slimy?

Jesus Himself cleared out the tables of temple vendors. So it’s really an ancient problem that some people will use this as an opportunity to exploit faith for business.

What do I think? Either these guys are filthy grifting motherf***ers destined for the lowest level of Hell or God just can’t seem to manage money worth a damn so he is having his minions go on TV to collect some from all the little, old, religious ladies out there.

They are all a fraud…If anyone wants to connect to their God, just bow your head and pray.,,it’s cheep and more palpable, than a stupid prayer cloth.

@Nullo “Tithes are donations”

…given in return for a church service, just like buying religious knick-knacks made in China are acquired by making a donation to the televangelist. I’m inclined to agree with @Roby‘s approach to connecting with a higher being, save the donations for charities that will actually help people’s lives, like cancer research.

To Europeans this phenomenon is extremely shocking.

I think this preying on the vulnerable population for money is appalling.

@gorillapaws One tithes because it is a biblically encouraged practice, similar to the sacrifices of thanksgiving. My pastor tithes.
Tithe money pays the bills. It also supports missionaries and evangelical efforts, and charitable operations (it is not uncommon for churches to network to contribute large quantities of money to causes).
Many Christians work from the premise that since we’re all going to die eventually anyway, effort is better spent preparing people for the hereafter. As my pastor puts it, “We don’t want to make this world a better place to go to Hell from.” Which is not to say that we ignore the plight of the less fortunate; it’s just not the overarching goal.

Personally, I don’t really think that cancer the kind of problem that you can fix by throwing even more money at it. The cold, cynical, rational part of me thinks that cancer probably won’t ever be cured, and that perhaps we shouldn’t be trying – keep the Kryptonite around, you know.

As everyone already said, I guess God can’t escape commercialism. There’s really no difference in between that bullshit and SlapChop, which is proven even further by the idea that in proper Christian values and crap, I don’t think material possession was ever needed for ’‘a better praying experience’’.