Inside the United Sates Evangelical Power Market

Freddie Ponton
21st Century Wire

Candace Owens has broken her silence, raising unsettling questions about the world behind Turning Point USA and its religious arm. Her concern centers on the sudden death of Charlie Kirk, a rising conservative figure whose growing doubts about unwavering support for Israel may have made him a target. Owens has publicly criticized Turning Point USA (TPUSA) leadership and Pastor Rob McCoy, asking why neither has done more, and pressed for a full investigation or demanded accountability from the FBI, whose limited findings and exotic stories have left the public unconvinced. With receipts showing Kirk’s ideological shift and McCoy’s deep entanglement in faith-based political mobilization, Owens hints at a shadowed network where political ambition, religious authority, financial gains, and potentially foreign interests intersect, in a world where the line between spiritual guidance and covert influence is dangerously blurred.

In recent months, conservative media have watched with sharpened curiosity as Owens openly distanced herself from Turning Point USA, hinting at deeper concerns about the political recuperation and its machinery forming around the organization’s religious arm. Owens, who once shared stages and audiences with the group, has increasingly alluded to what she sees as unhealthy entanglements between spiritual authority, financial gain, political ambition, and a culture of uncritical hero worship. Though she has never accused McCoy directly, her comments about the “pastor-politician pipeline” and the “danger of merging church platforms with political mobilization” have fueled speculation about figures like him.

McCoy’s visibility within the movement has grown rapidly, particularly during the pandemic, when he defied lockdown orders and reframed the conflict as a battle between religious liberty and government overreach. He became a central spiritual figure at TPUSA Faith events, energetic, unapologetic, steeped in culture-war rhetoric that rallied audiences hungry for certainty in a fracturing world. His church, Godspeak Calvary Chapel, drew legal scrutiny for holding indoor services in defiance of local COVID-19 restrictions, resulting in temporary restraining orders and public condemnation from county officials. However, the biggest picture doesn’t stop here.

McCoy has also faced direct scrutiny for personnel decisions within his church, including his alleged controversial appointment of a registered sex offender, Thomas Michael Cimino (or Camino), to lead one of Godspeak’s home fellowship groups, programs that actively advertised to families with young children. Many former congregants and community members question whether families were adequately informed of Camino’s convictions, raising serious concerns about oversight and pastoral judgment.

For critics like Owens, this blending of pastoral influence and political messaging is precisely what makes the movement vulnerable to manipulation. She has implied that audiences caught in this hybrid environment often cannot distinguish where faith ends and ideological mobilization begins.

The concerns Owens has raised intersect with broader national unease about pastors who accumulate political and financial influence. McCoy himself has been a polarizing figure: praised passionately by supporters, scrutinized intensely by those worried about the direction of politicized evangelicalism. He has appeared at the center of local controversies, legal battles over public-health mandates, community disputes surrounding his church’s activities, and criticism from religious leaders who believe his political involvement compromises pastoral integrity. While these incidents have not resulted in criminal charges, they have fueled ongoing debates about accountability and oversight in pastor-led organizations.

Candace’s unease is not unfounded when placed against the broader backdrop of scandals that have engulfed segments of American evangelicalism. In church networks with structures similar to McCoy’s, independent, pastor-centered, and highly charismatic, the line between influence and power has blurred, often with devastating consequences. Calvary Chapel, for instance, a movement admired by many for its accessibility and warmth, has struggled under repeated misconduct cases. Over the past decade, multiple Calvary-affiliated pastors have faced allegations ranging from sexual exploitation to financial mismanagement, and critics claim that leadership often protected the institution rather than the victims. Former congregants describe environments where pastors exercised near-total authority, with little outside oversight and few internal checks, creating a culture in which abuse could be hidden behind spiritual charisma.

Texas has provided some of the most striking examples of evangelical misconduct. Numerous pastors across denominations have faced criminal charges, child abuse, coercive sexual relationships, embezzlement, exploitation of congregants, and misuse of church funds for personal gain. Whistleblowers frequently reported suspicious behavior long before authorities intervened, only to be ignored, creating a pattern of systemic failure. A report by the Trinity Foundation, covered in the Houston Chronicle (CHRON), which we are featuring today, exposed how dozens of Texas pastors maintain private jets, luxury homes, and lavish lifestyles, often financed through church or ministry funds. Behind the polished facade of piety lies a network where donations intended for spiritual work can instead support conspicuous wealth, illustrating the dangers of unmonitored authority in independent evangelical institutions.

When viewed together, these incidents reveal a web of systemic vulnerabilities rather than isolated moral failures. Many evangelical churches are independent, proudly unaffiliated with larger denominational bodies that could impose oversight or enforce accountability. Pastors often control budgets, shape theology, hire staff, and steer political engagement with little transparency. Congregants, taught to trust their leaders as divinely called, struggle to question decisions or demand clarity. Abuses of power manifest not only in headline-grabbing crimes but also in subtle forms: emotional coercion, manipulation cloaked in spiritual language, and political indoctrination framed as moral instruction. The perfect example of this is the recurrent demand for unconditional support for Israel.

Recently, cracks have begun to appear in what once seemed like unshakable evangelical support for Israel, particularly among younger conservatives and followers of Charlie Kirk. Polling shows that among evangelicals aged 18–34, only about a third now sympathize with Israel over the Palestinians, more than 30 points below the older generation. Many younger believers see the humanitarian toll in Gaza as incompatible with their moral and Christian-centered ideals, or feel frustrated by U.S. military aid and foreign entanglements that contradict “America First” rhetoric. Critics also suggest that evangelical support for Israel was historically cultivated by powerful financial and political actors, including pro-Israel donors, who treated youth as a demographic to ensure durable, generational backing for U.S.–Israel policies. The recent shift among younger evangelicals suggests that when the moral costs of war became impossible to reconcile with faith, much of that cultivated loyalty began to unravel. Owens has reinforced these concerns by highlighting that Kirk had grown reluctant to champion Israel, adding to suspicions surrounding the circumstances of his death and raising questions about possible foreign influence.

This entwining of evangelical faith and unwavering support for Israel, often framed explicitly through a lens of Zionism, has become a defining, yet fraught, feature of certain American church networks. What once was framed as spiritual solidarity has, over time, merged with political strategy, creating a potent mix where moral conviction and geopolitical ambition intersect. Congregants, especially younger believers, are often presented with pro-Israel loyalty as a litmus test of faith, leaving little room for nuanced debate or moral hesitation. Critics argue that this dynamic transforms spiritual commitment into a mechanism for influence: financial backers, political operatives, and even foreign interests can leverage religious networks to cultivate long-term political allegiance, raising profound ethical questions about the role of faith in shaping policy and shaping the conscience of the next generation.

The rise of TPUSA Faith exemplifies what scholars describe as a profound transformation in American evangelicalism. Worship gatherings double as ideological rallies; sermons become calls to political action; altar calls blend seamlessly with fundraising pitches. For some believers, these new hybrids feel electrifying and purposeful. For others, they feel manipulative, turning spiritual longing into political currency. Academic studies on Christian nationalism describe how such environments can harden identities, foster an “us versus them” worldview, and create fertile ground for leaders who conflate divine authority with political mandate. Owens’s insistence that TPUSA and McCoy should have sought full transparency regarding Kirk’s death further underscores the risk when pastoral influence is left unchecked: religious authority can shield political and financial networks from accountability, even in matters of life and death.

These cultural shifts have also opened a larger debate about corruption, nepotism, and financial secrecy. Investigations reveal ministries where family members occupy key leadership roles, cash circulates with minimal documentation, and “love offerings” flow without oversight. Some churches operate as closed system, part spiritual community, part business enterprise, part political machine, shielded from the scrutiny that secular institutions would face.

Former congregants tell a consistent story: spiritual authority silences complaints, church finances are opaque or manipulated, and politics overshadows faith. In a recent post on X, Candace Owens wrote, “Younger generations are demonstrating spiritual discernment, and they see these fake pastors for exactly what they are.”

Operation Mocking-Pastor has failed, categorically.
Younger generations are demonstrating spiritual discernment and they see these fake pastors for exactly what they are.
And she is correct; Charlie would have never let this sort of naked propaganda fly. https://t.co/OHJX7mrSwZ

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) November 28, 2025

The real story is not about one pastor, one church, or one political movement; it is about a structural shift in parts of American evangelicalism, where charismatic leaders, political ambition, and weak oversight create environments ripe for abuse. Candace Owens’s remarks, though indirect, strike at a deeper truth: something in the relationship between faith and power has become dangerously unbalanced.

Whether this moment becomes a reckoning or merely another cycle of scandal depends on the willingness of churches and their leaders to embrace transparency and accountability. The alternative is continued secrecy, congregants betrayed by the very people they trusted, and faith warped by ambition.

For many, evangelical Christianity promised refuge, community, and spiritual grounding. The darker stories reveal how that promise can be betrayed when power goes unchecked. The question now is not whether scandals will continue, they undoubtedly will, but whether the institutions at the heart of these communities are willing to confront the forces corrupting them from within.

Eric Killelea reports for CHRON…

This Christian watchdog group investigates jets owned by Texas televangelists

The Trinity Foundation says wealthy pastors, churches and ministries are living “more lavish lifestyles with impunity.”

Pete Evans, president of the Trinity Foundation, has been tracking the flights of private jets owned by prominent televangelists and faith healers since 2002. The Dallas-based watchdog group has earned a controversial reputation for exposing religious abuse of public trust as it investigates some of the most popular Christian leaders in Texas and across the U.S. The foundation often chronicles its findings on its website and social media platforms like Instagram and X.

At present, Trinity tracks 66 aircraft for its “Pastor Planes” project, according to a report shared with Chron. Out of the 12 aircraft registered in Texas, eight are jets.

This week, the foundation alleged that several of the jets belong to Houston’s New Light Church founder I.V. Hilliard, Joni Lamb of Daystar Television Network in Dallas, Pastor Keith Craft of Elevate Life Church in Frisco and North Texas televangelist Kenneth Copeland, per reports shared with Chron. Copeland’s Eagle Mountain International Church apparently owns the Kenneth Copeland Airport in Newark, Texas. (Those accused were not available for comment.)

Trinity investigators have written many reports and news articles over the decades about famous preachers, churches, ministries and other religious nonprofits spending extravagant amounts of money, finding protection through IRS tax loopholes and holier-than-thou standing in their religious circles. As many conservative Christian preachers and politicians have claimed to be under attack from an expanding “woke” agenda, the apolitical religious investigators are reporting a rise in the alleged misuse of donations from congregations by religious leaders.

“Churches, televangelists and church pastors are getting by with more lavish lifestyles with impunity,” Evans told Chron in recent interviews. “What bothers us is the lack of integrity.”

In an era of religious-infused politics in Texas, many Christians have come to accept the level of wealth and influence of televangelists. Religious and non-religious citizens alike were reportedly unsurprised that the IRS recently said that tax-exempt churches could endorse political candidates even if they didn’t agree with the federal position. After all, Trump apostles like Pastor Robert Jeffress in Dallas and Pastor Jack Graham in Plano had long denounced the rarely enforced Johnson Amendment and also the long-held church and state separation principle—views increasingly shared by Christian members of the majority-Republican Texas House and Senate.

As Texans bounce along the spectrum of apathy, encouragement and rage concerning the current power of the rising number of millionaire (and even billionaire) preachers, Trinity and its small yet experienced roster of licensed private detectives, including Evans and his colleague Barry Bowen, have kept faith. They hold that their Christian beliefs and values will guide them through the exhaustive work of shining light on the darkest houses of God.

IMAGE: As the men behind the Trinity Foundation, Pete Evans and Barry Bowen are looking to hold wealthy Christian leaders accountable to their congregations and to the public. (Source: Courtesy of the Trinity Foundation)

How wealthy pastors impact Texas

It’s an old story: Televangelists and their megachurches and ministries collect large sums of money from their congregations only for many of them to spend millions of those dollars on aircraft, mansions, parsonages and vacations. These preachers and their churches are exempt from filing IRS 990 forms, making it difficult to keep tabs on how they use their money.

While many believers have expressed concerns over such expenses, some Texas pastors have argued that they need to use the money to build-out and restore their churches, community programs and ministries in the U.S. and overseas—even as a number of them also continue to support state and federal measures aimed to cut housing, education and healthcare assistance for local low-income families.

The sanctimony has been showcased in academic reports, newspapers and media. HBO series The Righteous Gemstones has gained fandom in recent years for its comedic portrayal of a fictional family of televangelists who preach the prosperity gospel as they sport outlandish camel-hair suits and Ferraris.

It’s difficult to estimate exactly how many people donate money to tax-exempt churches. But the realities of how rich preachers continue to have an impact, specifically in Texas, which remains one of the most Christian states in the country. It’s the home of more than 210 megachurches and tens of thousands of smaller churches. At least 67 percent of the state’s roughly 31 million residents still identify as Christian, per a recent study from the Pew Research Center, and more than half of the population attends a church at least several times per year despite a drop in regular attendance.

Among these Texas churches are Joel Osteen’s globally recognized Lakewood Church in Houston and Ed Young Jr.’s Fellowship Church (based in Grapevine with locations in Dallas-Forth Worth and previous campuses in Miami and London), both of which promote tithing options on phone apps, social media platforms, on church websites and during Sunday services.

Trinity’s roots 

In recent interviews, Evans, 69, recalled being raised in a Presbyterian home in the Dallas area and that his grandmother gave “a lot of money” to the late televangelist Robert H. Schuller, who led the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California.

While studying at Austin College, Evans met the late Ole Anthony, a former Air Force intelligence specialist and Republican campaign operative in Texas who also launched the Trinity Foundation in 1972. (Trinity is apparently named after the world’s first nuclear test.) Evans became a member that year and then began working for the organization in 1989, joining a team of Christians rooting through dumpsters and investigating alleged evidence of fraud by hundreds of preachers, including Robert Tilton, Benny Hinn and W.V. Grant, based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Evans even worked undercover in various ministries, including under the late televangelist Jimmy Swaggart in Louisiana.

In 1991, ABC’s Primetime host Diane Sawyer touted Trinity’s work on national television as part of an investigation of Tilton’s cash-rich prosperity gospel. Trinity’s work eventually helped implode Tilton’s $80 million-a-year kingdom and put Grant into prison in 1996 for tax evasion, per The New York Times. In the 2000s, Evans began investigating televangelist-owned jets and tracking down flight records from a pilot friend of his. Later, he would seek out information through FOIA requests, short for using the federal law Freedom of Information Act. The foundation shifted its work in 2007 to provide information to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, which was conducting its own investigation into televangelists. The high-profile investigation ended with televangelists escaping penalties.

Along the way, Anthony and Evans made appearances on numerous news magazine broadcasts, including ABC’s Primetime Live, CBS News 60 Minutes, Dateline NBC, CNN Special Report, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and TV news-magazine Inside Edition.

In an infamous, finger-waving interview in 2019, Inside Edition journalist Lisa Guerrero used Trinity’s findings to confront Pastor Copeland of North Texas about his use of private jets, pressing him on his reported refusal to use commercial airlines. (He said it felt like he was flying in “a tube full of demons.”) Guerrero also asked the preacher how much he paid filmmaker and entertainment mogul Tyler Perry to purchase a Gulfstream V jet. “He made that airplane so cheap for me, I couldn’t help but buy it,” Copeland told the journalist.

“We were never out to harm the church at all, because we’re believers ourselves,” said Evans, who became Trinity’s president after Anthony died in 2021. “We were out to expose the fraud in God’s name. That’s always been our underlying motive.”

How to find religious corruption

Bowen, an analyst investigator at the Trinity Foundation, told Chron that he’s the son of a Baptist pastor from Louisiana. He has a college degree in broadcast journalism and more than a decade of experience running a Christian religious news website, which he described as “the Drudge Report for Christianity.” During that time, he began emailing news stories and tips to Trinity and then started volunteering for and eventually working with the foundation after getting his private investigator license in 2019.

Since then, Bowen, 56, has worked with Evans to track jets used by preachers, churches and ministries. It’s a grueling task. Generally, the most secretive church organizations buy aircraft and use a private company to register them in Delaware, where corporate laws offer a high level of privacy for those seeking to limit public disclosure of ownership. It often feels “virtually impossible” for investigators to run down the information needed to identify the aircraft owners. Meanwhile, congregations and members of the public have little to no idea how their leadership is spending money and how they’re using their jets.

When pursuing an investigation, Trinity’s first step is to conduct a “smell test,” rifling through anonymous tips, speaking with sources, reading news reports nationwide and conducting their own investigations. “Generally, we receive calls or emails. People are concerned about a pastor in a church they’re at. He’s living lavishly, and he’s taking collections of money,” Evans said. “We’re equal opportunity offenders.”

They consider themselves apolitical, having investigated conservatives like Copeland and Democrat-leaning pastors like Bishop T.D. Jakes, the founder of The Potter’s House Church in Dallas.

After identifying red flags, Bowen said he punches identifying information of preachers (tail gate numbers from their aircraft) into the Federal Aviation Administration registry and the crowd-sourced ADSB Exchange website to track their use of jets. He routinely compiles lists of aircraft used by church and ministry leaders, religious broadcasters and Christian universities and shares his findings on social media and on the Christian investigative news outlet, The Roys Report.

Bowen has recently investigated the flying patterns of jets allegedly owned by Daystar and pastors Craft and Copeland. Copeland, the former pilot of televangelist Oral Roberts (the namesake of the private university in Oklahoma), allegedly owns five aircraft including two jets, a Cessna Citation X and a Gulfstream G-V, according to Trinity’s reports. Records from the FAA and FOIA requests have shown that Copeland’s Gulfstream jet had frequently travelled to Colorado, where the preacher had a vacation home, and it recently flew down to Panama City last month.

IMAGE: Daystar Television Network’s private jet at Fort Meacham International Airport in Fort Worth, TX. (Source: Courtesy of the Trinity Foundation)

In another investigation, Trinity alleges that Daystar’s parent organization Word of God Fellowship, purchased a Gulfstream G-V jet in 2020, shortly after receiving a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan for $3.9 million to retain hundreds of employees during the pandemic. After the late Daystar’s president, Marcus Lamb died in 2021, his wife, Joni, became president of the network and married Colorado Springs psychologist Dr. Doug Weiss two years later. In recent years, the new couple have allegedly used the Daystar jet to fly from Texas to their homes in Colorado and Florida. In September 2024, Trinity Foundation estimated that the cost of personal flights taken on the ministry jet exceeded $1 million more than what they would have paid flying commercial.

“It’s less expensive to fly commercial,” Evans said. “That’s the comparison that we’re looking at and that’s why we have the ‘Pastor Planes’ project. It’s a straightforward example of luxurious lifestyles compared to the rest of the common citizens in this country.”

The faith of watchdogs

Interest from politicians and the IRS in investigating wealthy televangelists has been nearly non-existent after the botched Senate hearings nearly two decades ago. Still, some politicians, media and public citizens have expressed concerns over Osteen’s alleged closing of Lakewood Church during Hurricane Harvey (he has repeatedly denied such claims), preachers receiving billions in PPP loans during the pandemic and West Texas billionaire preachers Farris Wilks and Travis Dunn extending their reach into Texas politics. Texans have also looked on with increased worry as more than a dozen preachers have stepped down or resigned last year due to “moral failures,” “immoral” behavior and sexual abuse.

Meanwhile, Trinity has continued to investigate wealthy preachers and routinely files reports through the IRS complaint process online. The group wanted to “make a big stink” about the fact that preachers aren’t filing IRS 990 forms, and they’re often protected under the 1974 Privacy Act and other laws. They also want to encourage Congress to change the laws so people can learn about inappropriate abuses of tax-exempt status. After years of investigation, Bowen believes that some preachers should be charged under RICO (the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act)—the 1970 federal law created to combat organized crime that has more recently been used to prosecute Wall Street executives, gang members, President Donald Trump and Sean “Diddy” Combs.

When asked whether their investigations have impacted their Christian faith, Evans recently told Chron that he and Bowen both “feel like we’re providing a service to the body of Christ. They see what they understand to be “an underlying moment in this country of God cleaning house.”

Bowen, who still prays for the people he investigates, leans on biblical verses that warn against false teachers and instruct Christians not to participate in sin as reasons for pursuing his investigations. In conversation with Chron, he quoted Ephesians 5:11—”Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.”

See more reports from CHRON

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Source: https://21stcenturywire.com/2025/11/28/inside-the-us-evangelical-power-market/