About this episode

Nathan Apffel discusses the financial aspects of religion and the legal loopholes that allow churches to operate as businesses.

This week on Hate To Break It To Ya I sat down with Nathan Apffel — Emmy-nominated filmmaker, Christ follower, and the creator of the docuseries The Religion Business — and what started as a conversation about his documentary turned into one of the most wide-open, genuinely surprising talks I've had on this show. Nathan drove down from San Diego to be here, and I'm glad he did, because this one went places I didn't expect. Nathan's whole thing is the money. Not whether churches should exist — he's a believer, he's clear about that — but the legal architecture that lets a pastor collect $500,000 a week from a congregation, pay himself a tax-free housing allowance on an $18 million real estate portfolio, fold an investment fund and a TV network under the church's umbrella, and never show a dollar of it to anyone. Not the government, not the congregation, not the IRS. We got into how you can literally start a church today with nothing more than a state filing and an EIN number, how the LDS Church has $300 billion in investments and is the second-largest private landowner in the United States, and how Kenneth Copeland built a $750 million empire by mailing letters to elderly women…

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