Crime Pays: Pastor Jailed For Smuggling Drugs Is To Profit From A Biopic

A MOVIE is to be made about former evangelical pastor John Lee Bishop, of the Living Hope Church in Oregon, who was jailed for five years in 2018 for acting as a drug-runner for a Mexican cartel.

According to this report, Bishop, inset above, will be portrayed by Hollywood star Christian Bale and will receive lifetime rights for the film called The Church of Living Dangerously.

It’s a feature adaptation of a Vanity Fair article by David Kushner.

BBC America said this week that Bishop’s work at the church brought him great wealth:

But his star began to fall when the married preacher was caught having an affair with a church employee. Bishop also wound up turning to drugs after his son’s struggles with meth and heroin addiction in an attempt to better understand their power over him.

One thing led to another and Bishop eventually started smuggling drugs for a Mexican cartel. He was caught after 20 runs and sentenced to serve five years behind bars.

In 2018 well-known blogger Bruce Gerencer, in his black collar crime series, provided his readers with the details of Bishop’s crime.

Bishop was arrested and charged with smuggling 282 pounds of marijuana into the United States from Mexico.

The arrest marked a spectacular fall for one of Clark County’s most dynamic and successful preachers.

Bishop and his ex-wife, who divorced him after his arrest, started Living Hope Church in 1996. It grew to be one of Clark County’s largest, attracting thousands of worshippers each week. They targeted “people who don’t do church” and Christians “who might be in need of grace and second chance.”

Under Bishop, the church staged elaborate sermons, including a nativity with a live camel. Bishop once appeared onstage with a 350-pound live tiger.

After 19 years, Bishop stepped down as senior pastor in November 2015 after allegations of moral indiscretions. The church did not go into detail about the indiscretions, but Bishop had said he went “off the grid” while on a mission trip over the summer of 2015 in Los Cabos, Mexico. Court records show that he and his wife owned a vacation home there.

At the time, Living Hope Church Executive Pastor Doug Frazier said in a written statement:

As a church, we continue to pray and hope the best for John Bishop. Ties have been cut for over two years, and we continue to pray for him regularly and do not harbor any ill will.

We are so thankful to now be in a financially healthy and stable place and to have the opportunity to serve our community. Living Hope continues to have a daily impact on our local community – from feeding the homeless and shut-ins, and serving those in recovery from drug and alcohol abuse to offering a variety of ministries and worship services seven days a week.

At present there is no release date set for The Church of Living Dangerously. It’s also unclear when filming will begin.