According to a new report by The Guardian, Disgraced televangelists Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart are among the leaders of religious organizations that received millions in forgivable loans through the government’s COVID relief program.
Bakker’s Morningside Church Productions in Missouri received between $350,000 and $1 million in Paycheck Protection Program loans from the federal government, The Guardian reports.
The televangelist, who was “defrocked by the Assemblies of God after a highly publicized sexual encounter with a church secretary; was imprisoned in the 90s on dozens of fraud and conspiracy charges surrounding his church fundraising,” now manages a shady company that promotes emergency survival products.
Bakker was sued by Missouri’s attorney general this year for selling a fake “coronavirus cure.”
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Meanwhile, Jimmy Swaggart’s Family Worship Center in Louisiana received between $2 million and $5 million in PPP loans.
Swaggart was booted from the Pentecostal Assemblies of God in the early 1990s after being “implicated in sex scandals.”
In all, more than 10,600 religious organizations received at least $3 billion in loans through the program, according to the Guardian’s analysis, including churches, and private religious schools.
