The Devil’s Bargain between the Trump Administration and the Evangelical-Industrial complex appears to have run deeper than we realized, with Joel Osteen (of course) being one of the prime beneficiaries.

The CARES Act extended eligibility for loans from the Small Business Administration to nonprofits, something new. But the law did not give the SBA the power to extend this eligibility to churches, nor could it—the Constitution prohibits government funding of religion. In fact, the CARES Act only mentions religion once, to prevent universities from using taxpayer funds for “capital outlays associated with facilities related to athletics, sectarian instruction, or religious worship.” However, the SBA ignored that language along with the centuries-old bar on taxpayer-funded religious worship, and instead issued rules and guidance declaring that the forgivable loans distributed under the CARES Act’s Paycheck Protection Program “can be used to pay the salaries of ministers and other staff engaged in the religious mission of institutions.” To do this, SBA had to suspend numerous rules that, correctly, prevented taxpayer funds from flowing to churches. 

Paula White’s church took in between $150,000 and $350,000, Jeffress’s church grabbed between $2 million and $5 million and, now we know that Osteen’s megachurch pocketed $4.4 million. 

Evangelicals have proven the most reliable, enthusiastic, and loyal enablers of Trump’s short-lived political career, and for good reason. As I’ve written about before, the transactional nature of the Evangelical industry and the Trump Administration was mutually beneficial, and as long as it remained so, each side was going to do what it had to do to appease the other, and nothing as trivial as ethics or law or the Constitution was going to stand in their way.

We don’t yet know who Biden’s AG will be, and there is a lot of debate on how aggressively the new Justice Department should investigate and prosecute the crimes and misdeeds of this administration. I’m of the opinion that it should be quite aggressive – everything from the seditious behavior we see taking place right now all the way down to the cavalier violations of the Hatch Act we’ve seen over the last 4 years. Everything.

Sharpie Gate? Yeah, that was a crime. Treat it as such.