The Wages of Sin: Financial Fraud and the Creation of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability

The paper uses the creation of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) to examine how religious communities deal with the problem of financial fraud. The late 1970s witnessed widespread calls to regulate religious fund raising, motivated by fears about “fringe” religions like the Hare Krishnas and the Unification Church and by the increasing use of direct mail by religious organizations. One particularly notorious case was that of the Pallottine Fathers, a Catholic order which used direct mail to raise millions of dollars—but which used only a sliver of that money for actual charitable work. Revelations about the Pallottine Fathers led several congresspeople to propose bills to tighten the regulations on charities that solicited funds through mail. Evangelical leaders responded to this debate by creating a new organization, ECFA, which would give a seal of approval to evangelical organizations which followed certain principles of financial transparency.

ECFA attempted to solve an age-old problem: how to prevent the strong ties nurtured by religion from being turned to fraudulent ends. That problem proved especially vexing within the world of evangelical Christianity, with its long tradition of religious entrepreneurs acting without oversight. In a fractious, individualistic community like American evangelicalism, could any one organization speak for—and police—the whole? This paper will examine how some evangelical leaders tried to resolve this dilemma through the application of financial best practices to the realm of religion.