The clergyman reportedly told the woman’s daughter, “Membership has its privileges.”
Houston, we have a problem. Houston pastor Walter F. Houston, faces criticism after refusing to bury a 93 year old woman who had been a member of his church for more than 50 years, reports KRIV.

Barbara Day says that she feels insulted by the way the pastor responded to her request to bury her mother, Olivia Blair.

Day says that Houston claimed that her mother “had not paid her dues, and she had not attended the church in recent years.”

Day says the reason her mother did not pay dues or attend church during the past two years was because she was sick, explaining that, “For the last two years, my mother has been in either a nursing home or she’s been in a hospital. And the last few months, she was in a coma!”

She also lamented that the church only cared about “money,” saying that even retail stores were more respectful of customers and that she didn’t “understand why we’ve become so commercialized with religion! What does this have to do with God? Why can’t I give my mother her last wish to be funeralized in a church that she loved so much?”

Pimp Preacher’s Tyrone Jacques followed up with Pastor Houston, asking if it was okay to have the funeral on a day when the church was closed, with Jacques footing the bill for the service. Houston refused.

In response to the incident, Pimp Preacher has launched the Olivia Blair Project, which seeks to draft Congressional legislation aimed at curbing what the site calls “predatory tithing laws.”

-Tamara El (@_SheWise_)