Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption
 |
|
| Formation | August 16, 2015 |
|---|---|
| Dissolved | September 13, 2015 |
| Type | Church or institutionalized sect |
| Headquarters |
CBS Broadcast Center New York City, New York |
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Megareverend and CEO
|
John Oliver |
| Website | ourladyofperpetualexemption.com |
Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption was a legally recognized church in the United States, established by comedian and satirist John Oliver. Its purpose was to expose and ridicule televangelists like Robert Tilton and Creflo Dollar who preach the "prosperity gospel" as a way to defraud victims of their money, and to draw attention to the tax-exempt status given churches and charities with little government oversight. Oliver announced formation of his church on August 16, 2015, in a twenty-minute segment on his show Last Week Tonight.
Oliver announced that the Church would be shutting down during his show on September 13, 2015. All donations were forwarded to Doctors Without Borders.
Oliver established his church as a legal entity, partly to demonstrate that it is "disturbingly easy", in terms of paperwork, to set up a tax-exempt religious organization as viewed by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). As Oliver explained, the definition of "church" is quite broad. Oliver chose his New York City studio for the church's official location, but he registered the nonprofit organization in the state of Texas. Oliver's "megachurch" used a toll-free phone number to permit callers to donate to the church, and said that donations would be redistributed to the charitable relief organization Doctors Without Borders upon the church's dissolution. During the satirical infomercial part of the episode, comedian Rachel Dratch appeared as John Oliver's "wife" Wanda Jo Oliver; she would later reprise the role in additional segments about the church.
Oliver criticized the practices of televangelists such as Kenneth Copeland and Robert Tilton as predatory, seeking donations from distressed people with promises of curing sickness through prayer, or of helping people of marginal means get out of credit card debt, by sending cash through the mail. In his broadcast on August 16, Oliver revealed letters of his months-long correspondence with Tilton, in which Oliver sent cash through the mail, only to receive more solicitations from Tilton, with nothing substantial in return. Oliver criticized pastors such as Tilton, Copeland and his wife Gloria, Creflo Dollar, and others for "taking advantage of the open-ended IRS definition of the word ‘church’ and procuring a litany of tax breaks", according to a report in the Washington Post.
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