The Bible Speaks) is a case involving the legal concept of undue influence as it pertained to a religious charity.
Between the years 1984 and 1985, Elizabeth (Betsy) Dovydenas (an American heiress of the Dayton Hudson fortune) donated $6.5 million to The Bible Speaks, a ministry founded by Carl H. Stevens Jr. based in Lenox, Massachusetts.
As a result, the state lawsuit was automatically stayed and the dispute was adjudicated in federal court.
[3] The presiding bankruptcy judge said in his 60-page decision that the testimony revealed "an astonishing saga of clerical deceit, avarice, and subjugation" by Stevens, who "has abused the trust of the claimant as well as the trust of many good and devout members of the church."
"[4] Jeffrey G. Sherman, a writer for the Brooklyn Law Review, analyzed the meaning of the case in 2008.