The Quietest Racket in America

I had been out of seminary only two months and was serving a small church in eastern Montana when this article was born. My Sunday dinner was digesting as I stretched out on a creaky go-with-the-parsonage iron bedstead in an upstairs bedroom. While I was trying to unwind from the strain of the morning service, my mind fell on the sermon I had delivered. The text was the familiar words from the twenty-fifth chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew: “I was a stranger, and ye took me in.”

Midway through my reminiscing on the third point of the sermon, my wife gently announced from the foot of the stairs that I had a visitor. I slipped downstairs to confront a middle-aged, shabbily-dressed stranger.

We both forced a smile, and then he began to recite one of the saddest tales of woe I had yet heard. He said that he had been called unexpectedly to his mother’s funeral in North Dakota, and in returning home to Sheridan, Wyoming, he had exhausted his meager funds and now needed some cash for gas and groceries.

I listened sympathetically, pushing to the back of my mind the inkling that his delivery seemed rather polished—as if it had been recited many times before.

The church had a small fund for such emergencies, and with the words of my morning’s sermon ringing in my ears, I made straight for the little cashbox which contained the emergency fund in the church office next door. While opening the box, I glanced out of a window and noticed the sleek tail fins of an expensive, late-model convertible protruding beyond one corner of the sanctuary.

“Is that your car?” I asked in a mildly astonished voice.

A hardened look crossed the stranger’s til-then-innocent-looking countenance. He wheeled around and walked brusquely out of the church without saying a word. As he flashed away in his convertible, my mind flashed back to the text of my sermon and I thought of the ironical twist the words had suddenly taken. The stranger almost took me in.

It was a rude jolt to an idealistic young theologue who had just spent three years learning a basic trust in mankind. But it was not to be the last.

In the five years that followed, I was “touched” for cash on the average of more than once a week. I soon learned that I was in a profession that is a special target for small-time con men, hucksters, beggars, and swindlers in general who try devious ways to relieve ministers of what little cash they have.

Few laymen know that their minister is subjected to this continual harassment that threatens not only his money, but his valuable time as well.

Of course, there are many legitimate askings and needs that confront a minister, and these can be deftly sensed as he gains experience. But the sad fact is that far too many people are making substantial livings off the softest touch they know—the Christian minister.

Every minister can relate many tragic and embarrassing episodes with unscrupulous people. This was revealed by a Chicago Theological Seminary survey which was begun in 1937 and is renewed periodically with spot checks. It was instigated at the request of the seminary alumni to determine the extent of the work of professional crooks, and to ascertain whether or not such thefts could be prevented in the future by warnings to those now in service, and by proper instruction to young ministers in training in theological seminaries.

While ministers are reticent to press charges against those who have buncoed them, they did pour out a general response to the survey. Letters came from every state, and one of the main conclusions of a leading clergyman who participated in the survey was that there exists a clearinghouse or bureau for the purpose of furnishing details at so much a case. Conventions of ministers where names and details are given are studied, he believed, and the swindlers are furnished the information desired from these resources.

I have had many experiences that would substantiate this—total strangers coming to my door, calling me by name, and stating that Rev. So-and-So in the next town back said that I would be able to “do something” for them. I soon learned that if the story sounded plausible and the needs seemed legitimate, the minor expense of a phone call to the neighboring pastor was a better investment than the risk of unwisely sinking ten or twenty dollars into a crook’s coffer.

A somewhat amusing incident once happened to me along this line. I was sitting alone in a parsonage living room in Spokane, Washington, where I was the guest of a fellow minister while attending a convention in that city. A man came to the door and with salesman-like quickness announced that he was a member of a particular church in Montana. I listened with interest and “baited” him on, because the church he claimed to have membership in was the one I pastored. After supplying accurate details about the church, he made some flattering remarks about his “good friend” the pastor and then launched into an emotional harangue about his desperate plight, ending with a plea for a $25 “loan.”

To prove what I was going to shock him with, I pulled out one of my business cards, handed it to him, and said, “The pastor of this parish is not in, but if you ever get over my way maybe I can be of some assistance.”

“A profession that is a special target for small-time con men, hucksters, beggars, and swindlers in general who try devious ways to relieve ministers of what little cash they have”—so this writer depicts the ministry in an informative and illuminating study of America’s least-publicized racket.

He stared comprehendingly at the small, white card, smiled, and said, “You preachers sure get around nowadays.”

Four Types Of Swindling

After studying the case histories in the Chicago Seminary survey and the countless ones collected on my own, I would say that there are four general methods of swindling the men of the cloth.

The first, and most common, is the “short loan” or the cashing of checks. This appeal is based generally on stereotyped stories, such as money lost or stolen; mother dying in nearby town; and out of work, but now have job in another place and need transportation money to get there.

The second method can be classified as the local business swindle. In this method, payments are made in advance on supposedly bona fide contracts, such as fake church directories, magazine and book subscriptions, and worthless correspondence courses.

The third and financially most dangerous method is the selling of worthless securities. The minister is invited to invest in oil wells, mining properties, fruit groves in Florida or California, fur farms, or real estate subdivisions in unknown places.

The fourth method is the offering of worthless, bargain-rate insurance. All types are offered, but health and hospitalization are most common.

Only a typically low-salaried minister, who many times must seek ways to augment and stretch his income, can know how appealing the last three of these appeals can be.

Cash is not always the target of the professional crooks. A ministerial friend of mine lost his brand-new typewriter to one of the clever boys. He was pounding out his Sunday sermon notes on the machine when a stranger appeared at his study door. The man asked if he would go to the hospital and baptize his dying uncle who the stranger said attended a church of the same denomination in another city. My gullible colleague made a posthaste exit, amid the stranger’s excuses that he could not go along as he was “late for work.” My friend returned from his fruitless mission to find his typewriter gone. The con man was kind enough to leave the sermon notes.

But cash is the prime goal. I have had countless people decline my offers to fill their gas tank, or buy them a meal or some groceries. Many go away in a huff at the mention of any assistance other than cash.

Encouraging Racketeers

To learn why ministers are special prey of the swindlers one has but to look at the encouragement the crooks are given. Never have I made application to the law, and I have yet to hear of a minister who has. What crook could resist such ideal “working” conditions?

E. G. Homrighausen, dean of Princeton Theological Seminary, believes the reason is that ministers “prefer to have an opportunity to talk with him [the swindler] and even reform him.”

Lack of business experience is another reason why the men of the cloth are approached and easily taken in. They do not work under the hard competitive laws of the business world, but rather are too often guided by sentimentality.

Ministers are not protected by business associates, either. They are usually found alone in their offices, whereas the businessman is somewhat protected by his private secretary and his associates.

What are seminaries doing to warn future ministers of this occupational hazard? To find out, I queried 20 leading and representative seminaries. While all of the schools contacted agreed that it is a real problem, they also concurred that it is unwise, academically, to devote an entire course to the subject. As it was put by Joseph D. Quillan, Jr., dean of Perkins School of Theology of Southern Methodist University, “For a seminary to teach a whole course dealing wholly with the problem of the swindling of ministers would be in itself an academic swindle of the first water.”

But almost every seminary makes an emphatic reference to the problem in courses dealing with practical theology or church administration. A West Coast seminary professor says: “I have two pages of notes on the subject and very carefully spell out the pitfalls that await the unwary.”

Robert G. Torbet, dean of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, maintains that proper guidance to the ministerial student, along with information concerning the swindler’s approaches, should be given in church administration courses, but then adds, “The ability to recognize swindlers cannot always be taught in courses. Experience and common sense must be drawn upon to fortify the young minister.”

It is heartening to know that the future men who shepherd the flocks will not be so easily fleeced. They are receiving some hard facts of the world and its ways that I did not get in my pre-ministerial training less than ten years ago.

Denominational Awareness

Denominations have awakened to the problem, too, and are doing something about it. Besides informing ministers in local, district, and state areas where swindlers are known to be operating, some denominational magazines carry warnings in a special section set aside for that purpose. Most of them read like routine FBI circulars on “wanted men.” Here is one of several listed in a recent issue of The Lutheran Witness, the official publication of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod:

“A man using the name Leo Dupre, Leo Cox, etc., has been obtaining money under false pretenses from Lutheran churches and organizations around the country. He claims membership in Redeemer Congregation, Alexandria, La. (among others), and carries a forged ‘letter of introduction’ from the pastor of this congregation. His usual story is that he is an active member of the Lutheran Church, is in need of financial help to get to a VA hospital, and will return the money as soon as he can wire his home church. This man is not a member of the churches in which he has claimed membership and should not be given financial assistance.”

Perhaps the greatest assistance laymen can give to their minister in alleviating this problem is to see that the church has a special fund budgeted for legitimate and worthy askings which the minister may draw upon, rather than having to reach into his own pocket. Several seminaries suggested this.

Better yet, the church could appoint a “hardheaded businessman” member to oversee such a fund, to whom the minister could refer all askers. The only caution here would be to find a man who would not have antipathy to every need.

Concordia Seminary in St. Louis favors a minister’s being the administrator of such a fund, with laymen being brought into the matter when the disbursement exceeds a certain amount.

By and large, the problem must be objectively accepted by the minister himself. Ministers must live with it and try to make the best of a potentially heartening or disheartening situation by developing a sixth sense of scrutiny.

Some ministers attempt to circumvent the problem by indiscriminately doling out to everyone who asks of them. The attitude was voiced by a clergy-friend who said, when I told him I was working on this article, “I would rather be swindled a dozen times than turn away one deserving case”—a noble attitude, but one that too often serves to encourage the swindler to keep the minister number one on his “sucker list.”

Many ministers also do not turn anyone away because of their interpretation of such Bible verses as: “Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee, turn not away.”

If a Bible verse is needed in regard to these tricksters, perhaps it is the one all-inclusive warning Christ gave to his very first ministers: “Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”

END

On the Apostles’ Creed

We live our fragmentary lives and sink in

fragmentary thoughts. We seldom see

reality as whole, a unity.

We smile on birth as part of life, yet shrink

from contemplating death; we see no link

between the two. That there may somehow be

a meaning which runs through nativity

and growth and pain and death we can’t forethink.

It therefore lends us comprehensiveness

to see that our belief in God’s design

swells from creation to the present day;

and that conception, birth and living, yes,

and death and resurrection, mark a line

of march for all who follow him, the Way.

TERENCE Y. MULLINS

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.