TBN's Promise: Send Money
and See Riches
By William Lobdell
Times Staff Writer
September 20, 2004
Pastor Paul Crouch calls it
"God's economy of giving," and here is how it works:
People who donate to Crouch's
Trinity Broadcasting Network will reap financial blessings
from a grateful God. The more they give TBN, the more he will
give them.
Being broke or in debt is no
excuse not to write a check. In fact, it's an ideal
opportunity. For God is especially generous to those who give
when they can least afford it.
"He'll give you thousands,
hundreds of thousands," Crouch told his viewers during a
telethon last November. "He'll give millions and billions
of dollars."
Preachers who pass the hat
while praising the Lord have long been the stuff of ridicule
in film and fiction. But for Crouch and his Orange
County-based television ministry, God's economy of giving is
no laughing matter. It brings a rich bounty, year after year.
Crouch has used a doctrine
called the "prosperity gospel" to underwrite a
worldwide broadcasting network and a life of luxury for
himself and his family.
For at least a century,
preachers have plied the notion that dropping money in the
collection plate will bring blessings from God material as
well as spiritual. But Crouch, through inspired salesmanship
and advanced telecommunications technology, has converted this
timeworn creed into a potent financial engine.
TBN collects more than $120
million a year from viewers of its Christian programming
more than any other TV ministry. Those donations have fueled
its rise from a rented studio in Santa Ana to a global
broadcasting system whose programs appear on thousands of
channels via satellite, cable and over-the-air broadcasts
in a dozen languages.
The network's donors also help
fund generous salaries for Crouch ($403,700 a year) and his
wife, Jan ($361,000), and an array of perks, including a TBN-owned
jet and 30 homes across the country, among them a pair of
Newport Beach mansions and a ranch in Texas.
The prosperity gospel is rooted
in the idea that God wants Christians to prosper and that
believers have the right to ask him for financial gifts. TBN
has woven this notion into its round-the-clock programming as
well as the thousands of fund-raising letters it mails every
day.
During one telethon, Crouch,
70, told viewers that if they did their part to advance the
Kingdom of God such as by donating money to TBN they
should not be shy about asking God for a reward.
"If my heart really,
honestly desires a nice Cadillac
would there be something
terribly wrong with me saying, 'Lord, it is the desire of my
heart to have a nice car
and I'll use it for your glory?'
" Crouch asked. "I think I could do that and in
time, as I walked in obedience with God, I believe I'd have
it."
Other preachers who appear on
the network offer variations on the theme that God appreciates
wealth and likes to share it. One of them, John Avanzini, once
told viewers that Jesus, despite his humble image, was a man
of means.
"John 19 tells us that
Jesus wore designer clothes," Avanzini said, referring to
the purple robe that Christ's tormentors wrapped around him
before the Crucifixion. "I mean, you didn't get the stuff
he wore off the rack
. No, this was custom stuff. It was the
kind of garment that kings and rich merchants wore."
TBN viewers are told that if
they don't reap a windfall despite their donations, they must
be doing something to "block God's blessing"
most likely, not giving enough.
Crouch has particularly stern
words for those who are not giving at all.
"If you have been healed
or saved or blessed through TBN and have not contributed
you are robbing God and will lose your reward in heaven,"
he said during a 1997 telecast.
A central element of the
prosperity gospel is that no one is too poor or too indebted
to donate. Bishop Clarence McClendon, a preacher whose show
"Take It By Force" appears on TBN, told viewers in
March that God had asked him to deliver a message to those in
financial difficulty:
They should "sow a
seed" by using their credit cards to make donations. In
return, the Lord would see to it that the balances would be
paid off within 30 days.
"Get Jesus on that credit
card!" McClendon said.
Ask and Receive
Proponents of the prosperity
gospel also known as the "name it and claim it"
gospel and the "health and wealth" gospel point
to a verse in the Hebrew Scriptures in which the Lord warns
the faithful not to "rob" him by withholding their
tithes:
" 'Test me in this,' says
the Lord Almighty, 'and see if I will not throw open the
floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you
will not have room enough for it.' "
E.W. Kenyon, an evangelical
pastor in the first half of the 20th century, was an early and
influential advocate of the idea that God would grant material
wishes.
Kenyon wrote about the
"power of faith" to bring health and wealth. He
depicted an Almighty who not only protected his followers and
forgave their sins, but handed out gifts if asked. The
important thing was to ask.
Kenyon's ideas inspired what
came to be known as the Word of Faith movement. Many of the
phrases Kenyon coined such as "What I confess, I
possess" are still used by evangelists.
After Kenyon's death in 1948,
other pastors used aspects of his teachings to draw an even
more emphatic connection between piety and prosperity.
Pentecostalists such as Oral Roberts were particularly ardent
in espousing this doctrine.
In the 1960s, Pastor Kenneth
Hagin, often described as the father of the Word of Faith
movement, raised the profile of the prosperity gospel still
further, promoting it on television and in books with titles
such as "Godliness Is Profitable" and "How to
Write Your Own Ticket with God."
Hagin preached a four-part
formula that he said he received in a vision from Jesus: Say
it. Do it. Receive it. Tell it.
First, believers must ask God
for what they want. Next, they must demonstrate their faith
through donations. Then they will tap into the
"powerhouse of heaven" and receive their gifts.
Finally, they must spread the news.
Most of today's leading
televangelists preach some version of this creed.
Paul and Jan Crouch were
brought up in the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal
denomination where the prosperity gospel flourishes. After
working in ministries in South Dakota and Michigan, the couple
moved to Southern California in 1961 to run an Assemblies of
God TV production facility in Burbank.
They launched their own network
in 1973. After two nights on the air on KBSA-TV Channel 46 in
Santa Ana, they were broke. So the next night, they staged a
telethon.
The phones hardly rang. Then
Paul Crouch hit on an idea, he recalled in his autobiography,
"Hello World!" He told Jan to announce on the air
that an anonymous donor had promised to give $20,000 on
condition that viewers pledge the same amount that night.
The anonymous donor was Crouch,
and the $20,000 was money the couple had already lent the
network. If viewers came through with $20,000, they would
forgo repayment of the loan.
By evening's end, viewers had
phoned in $30,000 in pledges, enough to keep TBN on the air.
"Without really realizing
it at the time, I had put into motion one of God's most
powerful laws the law of giving and receiving, sowing and
reaping," Crouch wrote. "Thirty-, 60- and 100-fold
blessing is, indeed, a glorious truth and blessing for those
who will simply obey the word of the Lord!"
The prosperity gospel became
the foundation of TBN fundraising. The Crouches and TBN
personalities such as faith healer Benny Hinn present the
doctrine with passion and a flair for the dramatic.
During fundraising
"Praise-a-thons," the Crouches read testimonials
from donors whose debts supposedly were miraculously forgiven
or who inexplicably received checks in the mail. They pray
over donors' pledge cards.
In 2000, TBN televangelists
told viewers that those who promised $2,000 would get the
money back before the end of the year and would find that
their debts had been canceled. Later, donors were invited to
send in loan statements and other debt paperwork. The
documents were burned on a stone altar.
During another pitch, Crouch
read on camera a letter he said was from a financially
strapped viewer who had pledged $4,000.
According to Crouch, the donor
wrote: "Within 15 minutes of that time, I received a
check in the U.S. mail in the amount of $5,496.70. No
explanation
. I know it's not an income tax return. I don't
make enough money to file returns."
That year, in a fundraising
letter to the network's "prayer partners," Crouch
wrote: "Praise the Lord, the reports of awesome miracles
of debts canceled and God's people coming out of debt continue
to come in. God's economy of giving really works!"
What Windfall?
Most mainstream theologians and
pastors say the prosperity gospel is at best a doctrinal error
and at worst a con game. They point out that Jesus and his
disciples abandoned their possessions in order to live a
spiritually rich life.
"It is difficult to fathom
how anyone familiar with the abundance of biblical teaching
about the 'deceitfulness of riches' could have devised the
prosperity gospel," said William Martin, a sociology
professor at Rice University and author of a biography of
Billy Graham.
"While the Bible does not
condemn all wealth, it surely points to its dangers in
numerous passages."
Critics of TBN say that the
promise of financial miracles besides being a distraction
from the core principles of Christianity can cause real
harm.
Ole E. Anthony, founder of the
Trinity Foundation in Dallas, a televangelist watchdog, said
he knew people who had given the last of their savings to TV
preachers, hoping for a windfall that never came.
"The people on TBN are
living the lifestyle of fabulous wealth on the backs of the
poorest and most desperate people in our society,"
Anthony said. "People have lost their faith in God
because they believe they weren't worthy after not receiving
their financial blessing."
Thomas D. Horne, of Williford,
Ark., a disabled Vietnam-era veteran, said that in 1994 he was
swept away by the rhetoric of TBN pastors and donated about
$6,000 in disability benefits.
Time went by and he did not
receive the promised surfeit of money. Last year, he found out
that TBN had purchased a Newport Beach mansion overlooking the
Pacific. He wrote to the network, asking for his money back.
"I want to recoup my
hard-earned disability money I sent to these despicable
people," said Horne. He said he has received no reply.
Philip McPeake is another donor
for whom God's economy of giving did not deliver. Out of work
and out of luck in November 1998, McPeake heard the Rev. R.W.
Schambach make an impassioned plea for donations on TBN's
Kansas City television station, KTAJ.
Schambach promised that if
viewers sent $200 as a down payment on a $2,000 pledge, God
would give them the rest within 90 days with a bonus to
follow.
McPeake sent in his money and
waited for his luck to change. When it didn't, he complained
to the Missouri state attorney general's office and the
Federal Communications Commission. TBN refunded his donation.
Carl Geisendorfer, who runs a
low-power Christian television station in Quincy, Ill.,
offered TBN programming for 19 years until, he said, he
grew disgusted by the televangelists' financial appeals.
He said he pulled TBN off the
air in 2002 after watching a preacher tell viewers that they
should pledge $2,000 even if they didn't have it in
order to receive a financial miracle from God.
"I should have canceled
TBN several years earlier, but I thought Paul Crouch would
finally see the light on how foolish and prideful that false
gospel is," said Geisendorfer, president of Believer's
Broadcasting Corp., a small media group. "I'm sorry I
waited as long as I did."
Geisendorfer said donations to
his station dropped 25% after he dropped TBN's programs. He
said Paul Crouch called him and, during a 90-minute
conversation, admitted to struggling over how far to go in
promising financial rewards to donors.
"He said, 'What's the
difference if some believe it or not. It works for many
people. Why not?' " Geisendorfer wrote in a newsletter
sent to station supporters last year. He quoted Crouch as
saying: "The money comes in and the world is being
reached by the Gospel."
Crouch declined to be
interviewed for this article. His son, Paul Crouch Jr., a TBN
executive, said critics of the prosperity gospel overlook the
fact that the network has used viewers' contributions to bring
God's word to millions of people.
He said it was unfortunate that
"the prosperity gospel is a lightning rod for the Body of
Christ. It's not what drives TBN."
If TBN was interested only in
money, the younger Crouch said, it would sell advertisements
instead of funding its operations primarily with viewers'
contributions.
"We could double our money
tomorrow," he said.
He added that appeals for money
make up a small part of TBN programming and are prominent
mainly during TBN's twice-yearly, weeklong
"Praise-a-thons."
Those are the times when Rick
Johnston, a retired pastor who lives near Flagstaff, Ariz.,
swings into action.
Johnston, 56, organizes groups
of like-minded Christians to try to jam TBN's phone lines
during "Praise-a-thons." The strategy is to stay on
the line as long as possible offering phony pledges.
"I feel like a little fly
trying to knock down Goliath," Johnston said. "But
if I can stop somebody from being robbed of $100, I'm going to
do it. There are worse things in life I could be guilty of
doing."
Not all TBN donors are looking
for a financial payback. Many say they are more interested in
the promise of salvation and in helping spread the message of
Jesus.
Jeanne Fish, 87, a widow who
lives in a Tustin apartment, said she took solace from TBN
when her husband died nearly 20 years ago and has been a loyal
viewer ever since.
"I get so much out of
it," she said. "It's almost like getting a theology
degree. It's kind of hard to turn off, in fact."
Loyal viewers are dumbfounded
that TBN generates controversy within the evangelical
community.
"I'm just so amazed and
shocked that so many people don't like [TBN] in the Christian
world," said Arthur Robbins, an artist who lives near
Santa Cruz. "It's a huge undertaking to promote the
Gospel worldwide, and they're doing it."
On the air, Paul Crouch
responds to criticism of the prosperity gospel by invoking
Satan.
"If the devil can keep all
of us Christians poor, we won't have any disposable income to
build Christian television stations," Crouch said once.
Michael Giuliano, an expert in
televangelism at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, said this
is an effective strategy.
"It's very, very
powerful," he said. "In a world of uncertainty, you
know who the good guys in the white hats are and who the guys
in the black hats are. And giving money to TBN is a tangible
way to join the fight for the good guys."
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