Mac Hammond is a prosperity gospel preacher who preaches that God wants you to be rich, and that your duty to give extends only to giving to the church (in fact, giving to the poor might be a sin); and if you are poor, it’s because you just don’t believe hard enough: “What happens when you’ve tithed and contributed to the capital campaign and you haven’t been prospered with anything other than a stack of unpaid bills? The doctrine holds that you haven’t believed sincerely enough. And if you already possess all the tools for prosperity, then you can believe the failure’s all yours, too.” That is, if you give to the church and get rich, that is proof that God wanted things that way and Hammond’s theological lunacy is correct. If you give to the church and remain poor, that is proof that you can only blame yourself. He is also an ardent supporter of Michele Bachmann – so much so that his church has had some run-ins with the IRS. He’s also so obviously a huckster and a con man that it may be hard to justify including him in an Encyclopedia of loons, but we really couldn’t not include him either (honorable mention to his glossolaliating wife Lynn as well).
Diagnosis: Ok, so perhaps not really a loon, but like any clever pyramid-scheme initiator he is at least a serious threat to human progress and prosperity. The devil would have been pleased with the efforts and works of Mac Hammond.