How can a pastor who doesn’t pay his bills or file tax returns become one of Brooklyn’s most influential power brokers?
If he’s Bishop Orlando Findlayter — the man Mayor de Blasio phoned police brass to inquire about after his arrest on outstanding warrants two weeks ago — he charms a citywide network of 12,000 worshippers into making him its leader, then leverages their potential votes into political muscle.
Findlayter’s power doesn’t come from his own Brooklyn congregation, the New Hope Christian Church, which boasts only 250 or so members; it springs from the umbrella organization his church belongs to and which he leads — Churches United to Save and Heal (CUSH), a multidenominational network of 40 mostly Caribbean churches in Brooklyn, Queens and The Bronx.
CUSH was founded in the aftermath of 9/11 by black pastors wanting a broader, multidenominational outreach in response to the tragedy.
For politicians, Findlayter, 50, is a gatekeeper to thousands of voters and activists.
“If you’re looking for black voters, you have to start at the church,” state Sen. Kevin Parker, an ally of Findlayter for the past 15 years, told The Post. “Mayor de Blasio understood that, and that was key to his victory . . . Pastors are really the institution of black communities that do the most service.”
Findlayter was born in Panama to parents of Jamaican descent. When he was still a child, they moved the family to New York, where he undertook religious study at Nyack College.
During the early and mid-’80s, he belonged to a Salvation Army church in Brooklyn but didn’t rise to pastor there, an old acquaintance says.
Findlayter refused an interview request.
He eventually made the transition to a Pentecostal style of worship and founded his own congregation in Brownsville, which he presided over through the 1990s.
As Findlayter became more outspoken on issues like immigration, his profile and influence grew.
He was known for his charisma and passionate sermons. He preaches in a resonant West Indian patois punctuated with pointed hand gestures that grow more animated as he builds to a crescendo.
With a stocky build and his head shaved clean, Findlayter has the bearing of a boxer hammering home the Gospel to applause and amens.
He believes “church should be in the streets,” Parker said, and hasn’t hesitated to take to them for protests on immigration and stop-and-frisk reform.
Findlayter wasn’t CUSH’s first chairman but ascended to its top spot sometime between 2003 and 2005, said the Rev. Dennis A. Dillon, who heads the Brooklyn Christian Center and helped found CUSH.
But while Findlayter’s influence increased, so did his money problems.
As he became head of CUSH, he was also in the process of evicting at least 10 tenants from two apartment buildings he owned in Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy. One was kicked to the curb for failing to cough up a paltry $950.
Another, Jason Brewster, 42, refused to pay Findlayter because he wouldn’t fix a loose handrail that the dad worried might send his two kids falling down the stairs. He and his family were forced from 726A Quincy St. over a $3,800 court judgment in 2002.
“He was a slumlord,” Brewster said last week. “Bottom line was he didn’t want to fix anything. We owed money because we refused to pay any more.”
Findlayter’s legal woes extended to his church, as well. In 2011, his congregation was kicked out of its building for failing to hand over more than $45,000 in back payments.
The pastor also wasn’t filing tax returns for CUSH. The nonprofit lost its tax-exempt status last May after failing to file three years of returns.
The money woes threaten the sway that sprung Findlayter from jail on Feb. 10. He had been arrested for open warrants stemming from his arrest at an October protest when de Blasio called the precinct house and the pastor was released.
De Blasio says he did nothing wrong. Findlayter refuses to comment.