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Senator Asks Pastors To Tear Down Walls

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 7, 2007

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa and ranking member of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, has for years been suspicious of televangelists who rake in fortunes, own fancy cars and jet across the country ostensibly in the service of God. Like many of us, he questions whether the accumulation of great wealth or power in the service of the Almighty is more about greed than spiritual awareness.

To ask whether people of faith who have given millions to a ministry have been duped, is a particularly delicate question.

Yet that's what Grassley is getting at in letters sent Monday to six ministries, including Without Walls International Church in Tampa. The senator wants detailed responses to financial questions about how church leaders handle donations and spend the money.

Pastor Randy White and his former wife, Paula, founded Without Walls in 1991 as "the perfect church for people who are not." Today, it is one of the largest and fastest-growing churches in the country, and the preaching Whites are rich and famous.

Some of their tactics have come under scrutiny in articles in the Tribune. For one, they borrowed $170,000 from a widow and failed to keep promises to her or pay her back until reporters revealed the problem in the pages of this newspaper.

The Whites should take this chance to answer Grassley's questions and prove their ministry is what they say it is: a ministry calling people to the service of God.

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