https://wng.org/sift/family-policy-director-jailed-for-campaign-finance-errors-1753457727
Jason McGuire is a regular fixture on the Family Life Network (FLN). Based in Bath, New York, the Evangelical radio station covers an area from the eastern border of Ohio to the Catskill Mountains - from Lake Ontario all down through Northern and Central Pennsylvania. The station is ubiquitous - at times it seems to dominate the airwaves with multiple frequencies overlapping and drowning out other signals. It's odd though because whether one is wandering through Buffalo, Johnstown, State College, Scranton, or Binghamton - one does not feel a strong Christian presence. Sometimes I wonder, who is listening to this? Of course FLN's watered down pop culture Christianity with its cheap grace gospel doesn't lend itself to a strong witness. The tattooed vaping girl with the green hair standing outside a Sheetz gas station/convenience store may in fact be an FLN-type Evangelical who attends church a half-dozen times a year, has been assured of salvation, and yet doesn't know the Scriptures, and cannot even begin to explain or elaborate the faith apart from some emotional expressions.
This kind of Christianity is also dominant on college campuses. My son attends a Bible study wherein many of the Christians present will admit they haven't even made it through the New Testament. Obviously, they know next to nothing about Christian doctrine and the understanding of Church history doesn't extend beyond the last decade.
Is this even Christianity at all?
And yet FLN has certainly turned up the political volume in recent years and its news reporting has become far more slanted and often manipulative.
Every Friday, they have a show - Capitol Connection, with two lobbyists, one from Pennsylvania and one from New York who as 'experts' consistently misrepresent and distort the news. They are not interested in helping Christians cultivate discernment or increase knowledge. Their purpose is to manipulate and motivate - to stoke anger and fear in order to stir the audience to become politically active and donate money. They're lobbyists and so in terms of the news - they're hacks.
One of these lobbyists is Jason McGuire who heads New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms - an organisation that recently changed its name to New York Families Foundation, a move that is common enough in the wake of scandal. If you search the previous 'Constitutional Freedoms' organisation, the Internet turns up ugly results connected to McGuire's legal troubles and a jail sentence.
From my standpoint he has a long established track record of lying. I've listened to him for years. It's a kind of morbid fascination-exercise for me - to listen to FLN's 'Noon Report' every day which includes the lobbyist segment on Fridays.
So when the network briefly and awkwardly addressed McGuire's troubles, it was presented as if he was being targeted - a kind of living martyrdom as he has to serve his jail sentence over successive weekends.
McGuire insisted he was attacked by New York Attorney General Letitia James for nothing other than minor filing irregularities and some minor campaign finance reporting omissions.
Other 'ministry' and Evangelical-oriented press releases suggest he pled guilty to other unrelated charges. In addition, in other statements McGuire has changed the numbers involved - suggesting the amount of money he embezzled is under $3,000.
A simple visit to the Attorney General's website (as well as other Rochester-area news reports) tell a different story. McGuire is lying about the nature of the charges as well as the numbers involved. It's public record. He took almost $17,000 for personal use and filed false disclosures attempting to hide it. It's a Class A Misdemeanor - one notch below a felony and such convictions usually involve some kind of light jail sentence. Actually, I think an argument could be made that the Attorney General went easy on him and showed some leniency.
There are a lot of ways for lobbyists and 'ministries' to manipulate money and funnel it into paying for personal expenses such as housing, utilities, travel, and luxuries - as did McGuire. This is why politicians want campaign donations. It funds not just their political machine and re-election attempts, it also pays for a lifestyle - but you have to play the game and make sure you dot all your i's and cross all your t's. Corruption is both systemic and endemic in the American context but it's largely legal. It's like a complex game of musical chairs and you have to make sure you have a seat when the music stops. McGuire (who clearly possesses little in the way of ethics or conscience) got arrogant or foolish and he got caught.
Further if you want to 'play ball' (as they say) and shake up politics, then you had better watch your back and make sure your own house is in order. His organisation is involved in filing lawsuits and making trouble. And like a good Trumpite, they bash Letitia James at every opportunity. If the Attorney General looks into your finances as a result - that's not being targeted or persecuted. It's called the game of politics. McGuire wanted to play (and be tax-exempt) and he got bested and now he's bitter - but since he's lying about it, he's clearly not repentant. He has not been motivated to re-think what this is all about.
He also continues to present himself as a pastor - when he is not pastoring a church. He's hardly alone in this as many Evangelicals seem to hold to a kind of de facto notion of intrinsic ordination (a la Catholicism) as if once you're a pastor, you're always one. If you're not serving a congregation then you're no longer an elder. This doesn't mean that you couldn't be one again, but you have no honest claim to the title of office. It's dishonest, but convenient for someone trying to garner credibility and standing - especially if you're lobbying for the Christian Right. The end justifies the means - that's the ethic of the Christian Right and modern Evangelicalism. Unfortunately it's anti-Scriptural and while they occasionally quote Scripture, it's pretty clear they don't know it. A tree is known by its fruit.
But now it's a mark of shame - an occasion for Christ's enemies to blaspheme and wag their fingers at the Church.
I would like to see some Christian leaders call him out for his lying. He needs to come clean and admit to what he did - and the nature of his plea and sentence. He should be disciplined.
But don't look for that happen.
See also:
https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2019/10/orourke-and-tax-exempt-evangelicals.html
https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-family-life-network-and-further.html
https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2025/05/family-lifes-latest-news-farce.html
https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-danger-of-pronoun-confusion.html
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