My father is the pastor at one of the biggest black churches in one of the biggest black cities in America. Years ago he was one of the speakers at a conference North of San Francisco at which Eddie Long was the keynote. The conference was designed to bring white and black evangelicals together. The audience was primarily white and primarily working class.

So Eddie is giving his keynote address on the final night of the conference and during his speech his wife interrupts him because she got 'a message from God'. He tells her 'Baby, I'm going to finish this speech, then you can tell the people what God told you.' Which is fucking hilarious because who tells someone who got a message from God 'Hold on, let me finish'. But that's besides the point. He finishes his message and it's his wife's turn to address the crowd and reveal to them (a couple hundred people if I recall many of which were young people there for the youth ministry) what God had told her just a few minutes ago. She tells us that God told her to have all the members of the youth ministry (about 30 young adults) to line up in front of the stage with a bag. She continued on that God told her that we were going to fill each of the 30 or so bags with $1,000 and we'd do so by being split into groups, one bag per group and have 30 minutes to fill every single bag with a thousand dollars. I can't recall what God told her the money was to be used for if it was going to the host church or to line Long's oversized suitcoat pockets or a little from column A column B. I do know she said "Go" and it was a frenzy to fill those bags.

30 minutes later, those bags were filled with cash and checks equalling 1,000 each from the pockets of hardworking, largely working class to poor people. It was one of the craziest and saddest things I've ever seen in my life. It was a straight up stick up minus the guns and ski masks. But who needs guns and ski masks when you've got a silver tongue, a shiny suit and Jesus?