https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2018/sep/14/state-to-sue-for-funds-return-20180914

It is, more generally, also the fruit of unchallenged authority? I’m afraid that I know of other kinds of churches where there are such problems in various forms and to various degrees, and, from what I can see, the common theme is the lack of checks, balances and proper scrutiny, regardless of the prevailing ideology of the church in question.

The “God has called me to do this” line can be a way to short-circuit the processes that an honest (and Christian) appraisal of human nature deems to be necessary. It is, of course, to be expected that Christian Nationalism, and any other totalitarian religious political system, will fail to take account of the truth of the human condition; they are slaves to ideology, whereas truth and morality are essentially relational (Matt 7 : 12).

Ecclesia is a danger to the democracy. David Barton is training up a whole generation of right-wing political agents who intend to rise to power and take over the “seven mountains”. When they claim God has ordained their mission, the corruption/false piety combo won’t be far behind.

Definitely not in jest. It was the first thought I had when I read the original story. If Ecclesia College is tainted with crime, then their Board members will get splashed with that same sewage. Metaxas is a regular Trump courtier. With Trump handing out pardons to criminals who aren’t even in prison anymore, like Ted Cruz’s close friend, Dinesh D’Souza, it won’t be that difficult for Trump to give Paris a pass. Unmerited pardons, however, do come with a cost.

While at YWAM, kids are encouraged to take classes at their YWAM University of the Nations (UofN), which is completely unaccredited, and rightfully so. YWAM serves mainly as a gap year here in the US for kids who want to see the world, but their families and friends will only fund their world travels if it has “Jesus” tied in somehow. YWAM kids serve as free labor for YWAM, but remarkably, YWAM still manages to charge the kids’ families a load of money to work for free. Thus enters the need for college credit, in order to justify the expense.

Since the UofN courses are unaccredited, Ecclesia has stepped in and in the past, for an additional fee, they recognized the UofN course work and allowed it to count for a degree at Ecclesia. It’s win-win since they take in cash while providing no services for the UofN coursework, then get a kid roped into paying for more Ecclesia courses when they return stateside, if they want any of their credits to count for anything. Ecclesia College lacks regional accreditation so basically their credits won’t transfer outside of Ecclesia.

This FRAUD has impacted the degrees of potentially tens of thousands of kids. This is not the first major financial fraud scam involving a YWAM school either. Earlier this year, the CFO of UofN in Hawaii was sentenced to 9.5 years for stealing over $3M by using a similar construction contract scheme. It seems the CFO Pablo Rivera was trying to emulate Pat Robertson. He preferred to buy his loads of diamonds directly, but used much of the $3M to buy gold mines, plus some plastic surgery and other lavish lifestyle items. Who knows how much additional theft is tied to that organization?

Christian Nationalism is fraught with con artists and outright fraudsters. They see the pickings as easy and they jump right in to exploit well meaning Christians. They also believe that other Christian law enforcement officials and politicians will protect them from prosecution.

The United States needs more FBI and IRS agents and judges like they have in AR. How silly and stupid of the Parises to not simply cross the border into Texas where Christian financial fraudsters are ignored by those who betray their oaths of office in the interest of not upsetting the Christian Right. I hope Judge Brooks gives Paris the maximum sentence possible to send a message to others who use the name of Christ to scam people out of money. I also hope the prosecutors bring up the Ecclesia connection to YWAM, so the Judge will consider the scale of influence that the Parises had over the youth of this nation. Poor GFA. They wisely based themselves in TX yet are still facing justice in Judge Brooks’ court in AR, courtesy of the Dixons and the Murphys.