Why is Bank of America canceling the accounts of religious organizations?
November 12, 2023
By Steve Curtis
Reprinted from The Washington Examiner
Have you ever received a call or email that changed the course of your life?
I did in 2010 when a Burmese pastor of an impoverished community in Myanmar emailed me from the only internet cafe in his village. We had never met and had no common connections. But he had come across a few articles I’d written, and he wanted me to come and train him — to pass along the knowledge I’d gained from years of Western seminary scholarship and church ministry.
At first, I politely declined, thanking my new friend for the kind offer but assuming there must be someone better positioned to help. He was insistent, and soon I was on my way across the world to a place I’d never planned on visiting.
That was the starting point of Timothy Two Project International. Today, I and dozens more partner together to train pastors and church leaders in 65 countries in some of the poorest regions all around the globe. It’s incredibly rewarding to come alongside those without the financial and educational resources most of us in the West take for granted, and equip these men and women to better serve those in their villages and surrounding areas.
Of course, we’ve had to overcome our share of hurdles along the way. One of the most pressing came in 2020 — a year marked by the additional material needs required in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But it wasn’t only the pandemic response that hit us unexpectedly and hard in 2020. It was getting de-banked.
In November 2020, we received notice from Bank of America that it was canceling our account because we were “operating a business type we have chosen not to service.” This notice came out of the blue. We opened our Bank of America account in 2011, and used it to make small grants and pay our largely U.S.-based staff members. Our ministry focus has stayed consistent in whatever may qualify as a “business type” since we started our bank account, and we are accredited with the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. So we were surprised and confused by the bank’s decision.
But given the demands of our ministry — demands which were, again, heightened during the pandemic — we quickly pivoted to another bank that, unlike Bank of America, was willing to serve us.
That was the end of the story, I figured. But almost three years later, I read a Daily Mail article about Bank of America doing the exact same thing to a ministry called Indigenous Advance.
A Christian charity serving impoverished widows and orphans in Uganda, Indigenous Advance aims to break the seemingly hopeless cycle of material and spiritual poverty by mentoring young men and women whose home life was marked by not only the unquenchable pangs of physical hunger, but fatherlessness, abandonment, and abuse.
Like us, Indigenous Advance had held an account at Bank of America for years, and neither its mission nor activities had shifted over that time.
Why was the bank canceling these accounts? The letters wouldn’t say specifically. Instead, Bank of America claimed through the letters that Indigenous Advance — along with a supporting church and separate LLC employing Ugandans — was “operating in a business type we have chosen not to service.” Later letters claimed that each organization “no longer aligns with the bank’s risk tolerance.”
Asked for further explanation — or really, any explanation at all — Indigenous Advance leaders were stonewalled over the course of several months. Months passed. It wasn’t until a reporter from the Daily Mail reached out for comment on a forthcoming story on the matter that Bank of America offered any rationale. And even then, a bank spokesperson was unable to point to any relevant policy that the Christian organizations were supposed to have violated.
Since reading about Bank of America shuttering Indigenous Advance’s accounts, I’ve also read about the bank’s similar punishment of Christian preacher, author, and podcaster Lance Wallnau. In early 2023, he reported that Bank of America froze his account, only reinstating it after bank employees forced him to answer a series of invasive questions.
How many Christian ministries has Bank of America canceled in the same way? Is Bank of America testing the waters to see if Western Christians will stand by idly while their accounts are closed for no reason?
Those are questions that I can’t answer. And until Bank of America answers questions of its own, I won’t be alone in asking them.
Steve Curtis is the founder and international director for Timothy Two Project International.
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