About a year ago I happened to be working in urban neighborhoods on a Sunday morning. As I moved around town, I heard parts of sermons from three different churches through overdriven PA systems. The message from each? You shouldn’t be spending money “in the world” on clothes and hairstyles, you should be giving your money to God by paying your tithe (10% of your gross income) each Sunday. These were the poorest neighborhoods in my city, and it wasn’t God who was going to get the money, it was the pastor who was driving the slick new car the church bought for him. If that isn’t a poverty pimp, then I don’t know what is. When the church is trying to wring money out of those without enough to eat, it shifts from being church to being evil. There is no excuse for it.