Why do so many preachers and Imam's do what I like to call "selective rendering" of their religious text?

Believe me, dude, I know exactly what you mean. It took me four years to find a new church after my last one fell apart. Most preachers are up there spouting their words because even a pastor at a SMALL church makes $40,000 a year, working one day a week… Its rough finding a pastor that actually cares about his words actually being true. Honestly, the one I have know has been great, until I show up one Sunday evening and he’s got a conspiracy theory DVD playing about how the illuminaty are slowing taking over the world and are going to enslave the nation and crush us. People in those positions just don’t have a real-world point of view. I guess it comes from talking to all the cookes that need him to visit them on a daily basis. Got him paranoid. Doesn’t make any sense at all, but I’m with you on that.

there is a church (or a cult depending on who you ask…) in New Zealand called Destiny Church and they are notorious for this. They will quote bible verses to justify things that they do but then if you go and find the verse, you will discover most of the time they have actually taken half a sentence that contains the message they are wanting to deliver and ignored another part of the same sentence which completely changes the meaning of the sentence as a whole. In “Bishop” (he made himself a bishop one day) Tamakis case (or maybe its King Tamaki now, its hard to keep up with the nutbar) I would say it is for money.The members of his church have to give him large amounts of money (tithing, buying merchandise, donating money about ten times a service, more if you get to go and swear oathes of fealty to him) so he has crazy amounts of money which he keeps all for himself and he justifies the fact that he has all this money which he does nothing with except live a life of luxury, with his (as you call it )”selective rendering” of religious texts. He is an interesting person, Brian Tamaki. New Zealanders love to hate him.