TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/030590/0305610.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.0 KB | 137 lines

                                                                                RELIGION, Page 62

Heresy on the Airwaves


A new book slams televangelists for doctrinal errors

By RICHARD N. OSTLING -- With reporting by Michael P. Harris/New
York


    Avarice, arrogance, sleaze, fraud, carnal sin. Various
American televangelists have already been accused of almost
every imaginable transgression. What more could media-star
ministers possibly be charged with? Answer: sloppy theology.
That is precisely the theme of a new anthology, The Agony of
Deceit, published by Chicago's fundamentalistic Moody Bible
Institute (284 pages; $12.95). The book's twelve contributors

criticizes faith healing) have scoured books and sermon tapes
and found the TV preachers guilty of egregious doctrinal
heresy.

    Among the more prominent evangelists coming under attack are
Robert Schuller (Hour of Power) and Pat Robertson (700 Club).
Both are portrayed as distorting the traditional Christian
doctrine of original sin, which holds that each person is born
sinful and thus requires redemption by Jesus Christ. Schuller,
for instance, states that "the core of sin is a lack of
self-esteem" -- not quite what St. Augustine had in mind.

    In response to the critics, an aide to Schuller insists that
the minister also believes in the doctrine but wants to adapt
biblical principles to today's audience: "The Gospel message
has what every human being is looking for. The problem is that
we're not marketing it." As for Robertson, a spokeswoman
contends that his words have been "distorted" and "taken out
of context."

    Especially ironic is the book's indictment of another
celebrity, Jimmy Swaggart, the Louisiana preacher who has
specialized in charging rival preachers with heresy. The book
faults Swaggart -- who continues to broadcast despite his
public disgrace after frequenting a New Orleans prostitute --
for confusing Christianity's classical definition of the
Trinity. Swaggart is slammed for asserting that the unity of
the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is limited "strictly to their
being one in purpose, design and desire" and neglecting the
traditional Christian teaching that the Trinity is also of one
"substance." Sounding more like a Mormon than a Bible Belter,
Swaggart also holds that God inhabits a "spirit body" with a
specific location; orthodox Christianity insists that the deity
is both omnipresent and nonmaterial.

    Replying to those criticisms, Swaggart says that when God
made man "in our image," he was referring to body as well as
spirit. However, he explains, God's body is "immaterial." As
for the Trinity, he insists that his thinking is "identical
with the church fathers'," but adds with a touch of humility,
"I'm not a Bible scholar. I'm just a Bible student."

    Oral Roberts is chastised as the TV pioneer whose promises
of blessings, blended with fund raising, laid the groundwork
for the authors' major target, the so-called word of faith
movement (a.k.a. the "prosperity gospel"). This is a
get-rich-quick brand of Christianity that holds that God is
bound to give believers whatever they "claim" through faith.

    Thus does Texas-based Robert Tilton write, "That's right!
You can actually tell God what you would like his part in the
covenant to be!" Tilton's miracle plan begins, "Step One: Let
God Know What You Need from Him. New Car. New Job. Fitness.
House. Finances. Salvation." Then the Tilton viewer contributes
his "best gift" to God (with donations to the Tilton ministry
always welcome), after which he and Tilton "decree my miracle
into existence in the name of Jesus."

    The Agony of Deceit, whose contributors lean heavily toward
orthodox Calvinism or Lutheranism, saves its hottest brimstone
for those "faith" preachers who appear to undermine the
uniqueness of God's incarnation in Jesus Christ. Such thinking
has been popularized by Paul Crouch ("I am a little god"), of
the Trinity Broadcasting Network, Tilton and fellow Texan
Kenneth Copeland. Tilton contends that "man was designed or
created by God to be the god of this world." Copeland says,
"You don't have a god in you. You are one!" The dean of the
little-god teachers is a Tulsa-based radio speaker, Kenneth
Hagin, who proclaims to followers that "you are as much an
incarnation [of God] as is Jesus of Nazareth," and maintains
that even Jesus needed to get himself born again.

    A Crouch staffer justifies such talk by noting Jesus'
quotation of Psalm 82: 6, in which God says to human beings,
"you are gods." What that means, the staffer explains, is that
"you were created just less than the angels" and that "the
Christian has more power than he realizes." (Roberts, Copeland,
Tilton and Hagin declined to comment on the book's accusations
about their teaching.)

    The editor of Agony is Michael Horton, 25, a clergyman in
the Reformed Episcopal Church and head of Christians United for
Reformation, a small theological think tank in La Mirada,
Calif. Horton asserts that far too many Evangelical clergy and
lay people are ignorant of basic Christian doctrine, and thus
are easily misled by slick preachers who "sling the right
lingo" and emphasize emotional appeals over rational thought.
In short, he argues, U.S. Evangelicalism needs the sort of
intellectual and theological cleanup that Martin Luther sought
for medieval Christendom. The preachers that Horton and company
cite most frequently for theological errors are ministers from
Pentecostal and Charismatic groups, which emphasize speaking
in tongues, faith healing and other miraculous or ecstatic
"gifts of the Holy Spirit."

    On the other end of the scale, Agony makes no mention of
such old-line non-Charismatics as Billy Graham and Jerry
Falwell, both Baptists, who pass muster without doctrinal
blemish. Jim Bakker also escapes any critical examination --
presumably because the defrocked Pentecostal is no longer on
the air, having booked his act into federal prison for the next
45 years.