The Timothy Two Project International’s mission is to do as the Apostle Paul instructed his protege Timothy: Teach others to teach the Gospel. TTPI has for more than 15 years reached indigenous pastors in some 70 countries — in some of the more impoverished places on Earth where there is little or no formal biblical and theological training available.
In 2020, Bank of America canceled the nonprofit’s account, an account the Timothy Two Project had held since 2011. Suddenly, inexplicably, TTPI was “operating a business type we have chosen not to service,” according to the financial services titan.
Steve Curtis, TTPI’s international director, explained in the Washington Examiner in 2023 that the 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,” Curtis wrote. “So we were surprised and confused by the bank’s decision.”
Major financial institutes were “debanking” all manner of right-of-center individuals and organizations during the Biden years, a scary era of prosecution and persecution of the left’s political enemies.
Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, U.S. Bank, Citibank, Wells Fargo, and several other mammoth U.S. financial institutions cited “reputation risk” in denying service to American consumers between 2020 and 2025, according to a damning new report issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The 45-page report titled, “Debanked: Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans,” is an indictment on the left’s cancel culture fury and the Goliath banks that were “willing or unwitting accomplices” in the sweeping silencing treatment, said Jeremy Tedesco, special counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom.
‘Now We Have the Goods’
ADF and other First Amendment defenders had for years warned of a growing debanking effort targeting “disfavored” organizations and industries — aka the left’s ideological enemies. Tedesco said critics scoffed. They said the red flag raisers “didn’t have the goods.”
“Well now we have the goods,” the civil rights attorney says in an upcoming episode of The Federalist Radio Hour. “We have the biggest banking regulator in the U.S. government saying, ‘This is happening, and it’s happening at a wide scale at the biggest banks in the country.’”
