Church is burning mad about predatory lending practices | MyCentralJersey.com | MyCentralJersey.com

Church is burning mad about predatory lending practices | MyCentralJersey.com | MyCentralJersey.com:

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Written by

Cheryl Makin

Staff Writer

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SOMERSET — Predatory lending practices came under fire — literally — as the pastor and congregants of the First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens braved the rain after Sunday services to burn mailed credit card offers.

“We need to do something against consumer debt,” said the Rev. DeForest B. Soaries Jr. “We are burning up these offers as a show of enthusiasm against these practices — to minimize the use of credit cards, to moderate the debt. In the ’60s it was segregation, and in 2012 it is this fight where the rich get richer and the poor stay poor. We are saying we will no longer contribute to this.”

Having already dedicated his church to living a debt-free life, Soaries, the author of “dfree: Breaking Free from Financial Slavery,” said people must be on the battlefields against lending institutions preying on vulnerable borrowers.

“In recent months there has been a dramatic increase in the marketing efforts from major banks for credit cards,” Soaries said. “This seemed to subside at the peak of the economic crisis and recession when the mortgages’ default rates and credit cards’ default rates went up. Now that banks are on more solid footing thanks to the taxpayers bailing them out, they have once again increased efforts to lure people into credit card debt.”

“We are here to demonstrate our concern and protest the fact that the banks have to have some responsibility in light of what we have just gone through and that many have not recovered yet,” he added.

Calling them predators and stalkers, the pastor described a typical credit card letter offer to his congregants as “looking so good on the outside, that it tempts you to open it up and on the inside it looks even better.”

“They hire external marketing companies who are not at all discriminatory to whom they send applications. They have people who study us to see how we feel and think,” Soaries said. “To make us feel important. There is nothing that says you will sign up for this and you will be a slave. They just make it look so good.”

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