Losing My Religion (14 page)

I thought I had heard God’s voice loud and clear. But as with most everything else about working the religion beat, it didn’t turn out as I had planned.

The idols speak deceit,

diviners see visions that lie;

they tell dreams that are false,

they give comfort in vain.

Therefore the people wander like sheep

oppressed for lack of a shepherd.

—
ZECHARIAH
10:2

 

A
S
I
GAZED
down at the frail man in his bed, I thought: there’s no way this can be Ole E. Anthony, the scourge of some of the world’s richest and most powerful televangelists, a man so despised that preachers have labeled him “Ole Antichrist.” The then 64-year-old didn’t look like much of a threat to anyone. The lingering effects of a near-fatal electrocution 23 years earlier had left him severely disabled and in crippling pain generated from thousands of burned nerve endings.

It was November 2003. I was looking at a modern St. Francis, someone who was trying to rebuild the Body of Christ from within. He had plenty of work to do; he specialized in taking down televangelists.

As I watched, Ole gave himself a shot of the painkiller Nubain in his left thigh. Six electrodes were attached to his legs, pumping small electrical currents through his nervous system. Tan-tinted prescription bottles of Nalbuphine, Zanaflex, Acetamin and Skelaxin sat on his bed stand. A cabinet across the room was filled with bottles containing vitamins, amino acids and other concoctions. He wore a cervical collar. A walker and canes were scattered throughout his bedroom, which was thick with the smell of pipe tobacco and so small there was barely room for my chair.

A radical believer, Ole founded the Trinity Foundation to serve the poor. His group comprises some 400 Christians, 100 of whom live communally in a poor section of Dallas, attempting to emulate the practices of the first-century church—right down to its poverty. Each Trinity employee, including Ole, earns about $50 per week, after room and board. Trinity’s annual budget is about $500,000, a sum that some of the nation’s most popular televangelists routinely raise in a single day. Foundation members hold Bible studies and church services in their houses and apartments, and run a small school and a restaurant serving hearty dinners for under $5. The organization’s primary mission is to house the homeless, not in dedicated shelters, but in the bedrooms and living rooms of Trinity members.

It was by serving the poor that Ole came to oversee a national spy operation dedicated to rooting out fraud and excess among some of America’s biggest TV pastors. Many of the destitute who took refuge at Trinity told him that they had given their last dollars to televangelists who had promised the gullible and often desperate believers a huge return on their faith-inspired giving. Televangelism in America is a massive operation based on a fraud that can’t be challenged in court. It’s called the Prosperity Gospel, and it’s preached over the airwaves to generate money for the televangelists’ ministries. A twisted piece of theology, the Prosperity Gospel claims that if you perform an act of faith for God (for instance, contribute money to a televangelist), He will shower you with untold riches and good health.

Despite being mostly confined to bed, Ole directs some half-dozen investigators who expose the worst of the televangelists. The tax-free, unregulated industry of televangelism generates at least $1 billion each year through its roughly 2,000 electronic preachers, including about 100 nationally syndicated television pastors. Trinity’s forces dig through trash bins, search computer databases and go undercover with hidden cameras. They run a hotline for victims and informants. They enlist double agents, usually Christians of conscience who can’t stand what they are seeing.

Ole became something of a legend in 1991 when he went undercover with a hidden camera to expose the operations of Robert Tilton, a televangelist now based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. At the height of his success, Tilton appeared in every television market in the United States, sometimes as often as six times a day. Ole simply posed as himself, president of the Trinity Foundation, a religious organization, saying he was interested in using Tilton’s direct-mail provider for his own ministry. Ole’s video footage documented the ugly details behind Tilton’s well-oiled direct-mail operation, which was raking in an estimated $380,000
a day
.

Part of the investigation focused on how the mail was processed: Trinity alleged that Tilton’s organization put checks and cash in one pile and dumped the accompanying prayer requests into the trash—an accusation still hotly disputed by Tilton supporters. The video and documents obtained by Trinity became the basis of an ABC
Prime Time Live
exposé by Diane Sawyer that crippled Tilton’s huge ministry. The hour-long broadcast also exposed two other televangelists, one of whom, W. V. Grant, spent 16 months in jail for tax fraud after Trinity’s investigation.

“I do enjoy the hunt,” Ole told me. “But I’d much rather be out of a job…It’s a perverted theology that tells people they’ll get a return on their investment. They’re told they’ll get a hundredfold blessing for their money. They are told to write hot checks, take out loans. These televangelists have got to know what they’re doing.”

When Ole talks about televangelists, his face often reddens with anger. He sees them as putting an ugly stain on the Body of Christ.

“The people on [Christian television] are living the lifestyle of fabulous wealth on the backs of the poorest and most desperate people in our society,” Ole told me. “People have lost their faith in God because they believe they weren’t worthy after not receiving their financial blessing.”

The Trinity Foundation’s community of believers isn’t utopia. To begin with, Ole can be a cantankerous and dominating figure, despite his frailties. Some former members describe the organization as a cult, pointing to Ole’s heavy-handedness and Trinity’s former practice of putting members on “the hot seat,” where they publicly revealed their deepest faults and secrets to the members.

“It could get pretty intense,” Pete Evans, a longtime member, told me. “We want to see ourselves as God sees us: stripped down and naked with whatever sins we’ve got laid on the table. That honesty is what knitted us close together.” The sessions stopped mostly because of Ole’s failing health.

In my two weeks at the Trinity Foundation, I didn’t witness any cultlike behavior, though I imagine everyone could have been putting up a front for a visiting journalist. I did see people who had given up comfortable lives to follow Jesus, a decision they told me had provided them with a sense of serenity and purpose.

My trip to Dallas was part of an investigation into televangelism that would become a two-year project. Ole’s undercover work and the earlier scandals from the 1980s had brought down some of the country’s top televangelists, including Jim and Tammy Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert. Yet the Prosperity Gospel as a whole was flourishing, and two of the world’s most successful operators in the world of televangelism were headquartered in Southern California, within a short drive of my office at
The Times
’s Orange County bureau: the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), the world’s largest religious broadcaster, and Benny Hinn, the world’s most financially successful “faith healer.”

Ole’s community offered a stark contrast to the lifestyles and spiritual focus of the televangelists. Ole and his motley band of Christians tried to live, in their own flawed way, godly lives in a run-down section of Dallas. Meanwhile some of the world’s most successful and revered pastors on television acted like spiritual carnies, amassing huge piles of earthly treasure by conning worshipful and desperate viewers out of what little money they had. Ole’s world was a monastery. Theirs was Sodom and Gomorrah.

Trying to penetrate TBN, I starting looking into its biggest star, Pastor Benny Hinn. Meeting Hinn was like being in the presence of a rock star. He pulled up to the Four Seasons hotel in Newport Beach in a new Mercedes SUV. Two beefy bodyguards jumped out of the car to flank him, scanning the entrance for any threats. In the marbled lobby, two associates and two public relations men joined the entourage, their dress shoes clicking on the polished stone floor. All this for an interview with me.

Hinn, the flamboyant, self-proclaimed “faith healer,” is a familiar figure to casual channel surfers: he speaks with a thick Middle Eastern accent, wears white Nehru jackets and sports a swirl of salt-and-pepper hair that has been described as a soufflé. He is perhaps most famous for the seeming ability to send believers fainting backward with a flick of his hand as they are “slain” by the Holy Spirit. His physical appearance and showmanship, displayed an hour each day on his television program,
This Is Your Day!
, were mimicked by Steve Martin in the 1994 movie
Leap of Faith
.

Hinn claims to be a healing tool of the Lord. His viewers and “Miracle Crusade” attendees are told that if they have enough faith—measured by the size of their donation—God will heal them. It’s clear his ministry has made him a wealthy man. It’s less certain whether anyone has been healed. And it’s known that a number of people have died after mistakenly thinking they had been cured, stopping their medicines and avoiding the doctor.

I was excited to talk with Hinn, who normally didn’t grant audiences with the media. For months he had refused to speak with me, even by phone. But apparently I had gathered enough unflattering information about him and his ministry that he decided cooperation might blunt my coming story. For spin assistance, he hired A. Larry Ross, a six-foot-eight giant with the thickness of a retired NFL lineman. Ross is one of the country’s leading Christian PR consultants, with a client list that includes superstar pastors Billy Graham, Rick Warren and T. D. Jakes. Ross brought his top lieutenant with him from Dallas for the interview.

I had known Ross from other stories I had worked on and always found him to be highly professional and competent. He portrayed himself as a man with deep Christian convictions who represented only the best clients within the Body of Christ. Ross’s two premiere clients, Billy Graham and Rick Warren, are inspiring preachers whose ministries do awe-inspiring work for the sick, poor and lonely. The worst a cynic could say about them is that they encourage belief in things that might not be true. Even a critic would have to concede that they inspire a lot of good works. But Hinn?

Investigating Hinn wasn’t easy. He calls his tax-exempt television ministry a “church,” freeing him from filing public tax documents. He forbids anyone in his ministry to talk to the media. He lives behind gates in an oceanfront mansion in Dana Point worth in the vicinity of $20 million. Even the names of his board of directors are a closely guarded secret. Hinn’s ministry is nearly impenetrable.

Aside from the occasional investigation by the secular media, few people care to expose Hinn and his ministry. While legions of vulnerable viewers are being told that generous donations to Hinn’s ministry will lead to a miraculous healing, most Christian leaders are content to pass by on the other side of the street, their eyes averted—like the rabbi in the story of the good Samaritan.

Ole Anthony is among the notable exceptions. For years, he has been the premiere Hinn watchdog, which explains why I went to Dallas to comb through the dusty archives of Trinity Foundation.

For Ole’s operatives, the most productive investigative work is frequently the dirtiest: making “trash runs” behind the televangelists’ headquarters, their banks, accountants’ and attorneys’ offices, direct-mail houses and homes. (Trash is public property, though going through Dumpsters on private property is trespassing.) Under the cover of night, Ole’s troops jump into trash bins wearing old clothes and latex gloves. They sort through spoiled food, leaky soda cans and soggy coffee grounds in search of pay dirt: a memo, minutes of a meeting, a bank statement, an airline ticket, a staff roster. Those scraps of information, collected over years, can piece together a bigger story.

In looking into Hinn’s ministry, they had struck pay dirt in a south Florida Dumpster behind a travel agency used by the pastor. They found a travel itinerary for Hinn that included first-class tickets on the Concorde from New York to London ($8,850 each) and reservations for presidential suites at pricey European hotels ($2,200 a night). A news story, including footage of Hinn and his associates boarding the jet, ran on CNN. In addition, property records and videos supplied by Trinity investigators led to CNN and
Dallas Morning News
coverage of another Hinn controversy: fund-raising for an alleged $30 million healing center in Dallas that was never built.

I came away from Dallas with a treasure trove of information on Hinn, including video of the faith healer making bizarre theological statements:

• “Adam was a super-being when God created him. I don’t know whether people know this, but he was the first superman that really ever lived…. Adam not only flew, he flew to space. With one thought he would be on the moon.”
  
• “You’re going to have people raised from the dead watching [the Trinity Broadcasting Network, on which his show appears]. I see rows of caskets lining up in front of this TV set…and I see actual loved ones picking up the hands of the dead and letting them touch the screen and people are getting raised.”
  

From Trinity, I received copies of documents smuggled out by employees sickened by what they saw within the ministry: invoices and other papers unearthed in the ministry’s Dumpsters and contact numbers of current and former employees, as well as people whose faith in the ministry had not been rewarded.

I also met Justin Peters, a freshly minted Southern Baptist minister from Mississippi. He appeared during my stay to do some research of his own about Hinn. Justin’s arms and legs, in the clutches of cerebral palsy, were twisted and spastic. He told me why he became a pastor and had dedicated his life to exposing charlatan faith healers.

As a teenager, his parents drove him hundreds of miles to see a faith healer, hoping God would cure their son and allow him to finally be able to run and play like other kids. Despite his initial skepticism, Justin’s hopes for a cure rose as he entered the venue for the faith healer’s performance. At the service, Justin watched as a poor elderly man in a wheelchair next to him emptied his wallet into the offering bucket, a move that caught the eye of the preacher. Justin recalled the pastor pointing to the man, telling the audience about the generous donation and saying, “Brother, before this night is over, you’re going to walk out of here!”