Those of you who have seen Religulous know that one of the most mocked characters is Rev. Jeremiah Cummings, who is depicted as a greedy huckster who ignores Christ’s teaching about poverty, and enriches himself at the expense of his congregation. I got a few emails from Cummings recently, and he claims that Bill Maher and the Religuous producers took things grotesquely out of context and even edited the interview to make it seem like he said things he never actually said.
First, he said that, as with others we’ve contacted, Maher concealed the real purpose of the film, implying it was a documentary for public TV:

“It was the co-producer a woman( at least she said she was) who called from California who had told me that someone from their staff had seen me on TBN and they wanted me to be in a documentary about my faith and it was to be seen on PBS. There was no mentioning of Bill Maher at all nor a movie. I did not know who he was but had seen him while flipping the TV remote. But I never watched his program.”

Cummings said he scheduled the interview in Raleigh, N.C. “Once I was miked I looked to my right and there sat Bill Maher.”
Bill Maher, on Larry King live, denied that they claimed it was a PBS documentary (“that’s a flat out lie”) but conceded that he didn’t inform interviewees of his role. “What we didn’t tell people is that it was me doing the Interview. They didn’t ask. We didn’t feel an obligation to tell them. 60 minutes does the same kind of thing. Nobody ever makes anything about that. And they could have gotten up and left. What they hate is that it’s doing well.”)
The Religulous segment begins with Cummings telling Maher to call him doctor, and then flashing on the screen “He’s not a doctor.” Cummings states to me:

“I would have never told Bill Maher to call me Doctor, I would have said you can call me Jeremiah or Pastor Cummings.”

Cummings believes the film was edited to make it sound like he said “doctor.”
Larry Charles, the film’s director responds to this charge in an email to Beliefnet:

“Jeremiah Cummings is a blatant charlatan. He calls himself a doctor repeatedly including clearly on his website but as we point out in the movie not only isn’t he a doctor but he possesses no degree of any kind! He preaches a gospel of prosperity but the only one seeming to prosper is him.”

In the film, Maher speaks about Cummings’ expensive suit and lizard shoes. Cummings says the suit cost him $200 and the shoes $175, three years ago.
Cummings says that the filmmakers inserted some of Maher’s comments and jokes after the fact to make it look like they were part of the original discussion:

“Many of the responses to what I said were not done on the set but place din the conversation later. Like when I said, ‘the people like for their leaders to live well.’ And Bill responds ‘that’s what pimps say about their women.’ He never said that in front of me. I am made to appear to be some money hungry preacher which is the typical stereotype of black preachers.”

Larry Charles did not offer a response on that point.
The film depicts Cummings as unfamiliar with or embarrassed by the passage in which Jesus says “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”(Matthew 19) Cummings says,

“The scripture and the stuttering of the scripture was totally edited and manipulated because in reality I never quoted that scripture. It would have not gone with the conversation that Jesus was against being rich. Somehow my voice was cloned and edited to make me look stupid.”

The film’s director denied editing Cummings words to impugn him. Charles wrote:

“He stumbled and stammered when he voluntarily tried to quote the famous biblical verse, ‘it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven’. We didn’t make him screw that up. He did it all himself. And he was offering the quote to prove that god blesses the rich which is precisely the opposite of what the quote means! Why are we even countenancing his feeble complaints.”

On Larry King, Maher responded to the general charge that the movie was deceptive:
“Religion accusing me of deception? Religion–the greatest scam in the history of world, selling the invisible product for thousands of years accusing us of deception? That takes the cake. I’ve always been upfront about how we did this movie.”
For my previous posts on Religulous, click here.