Losing My Religion (15 page)

At the end of the service, Justin looked over at the man, still in the wheelchair. There was anguish in his eyes.

“It was something you see and never forget,” Justin said.

Why did Christianity produce so few people like Justin and so many others like Christian public relations guru Larry Ross, who, though wildly talented and professing a deep Christian belief, have no problem promoting a charlatan like Hinn?

Shortly after my trip to Dallas, I saw similar scenes played out at a Benny Hinn Miracle Crusade in Anaheim. Hinn’s public relations handlers kept me in a confined area on the arena floor and never left my side. Yet they couldn’t shield me from the simple logic of Hinn’s operations: raise false hope, and extract money.

A Benny Hinn Miracle Crusade is one of the greatest shows on Earth. The free event usually draws capacity crowds at sports arenas and stadiums in the United States and abroad. It’s easy to see why millions of people—especially those with crippling or terminal illnesses—get swept away by the promises of the charismatic pastor.

Hinn’s healing service is a sophisticated, choreographed production that lasts nearly four hours. It includes a long warm-up featuring robed choirs from local churches, hip videos on giant screens and audience members shaking violently and speaking in tongues, overcome by the Holy Spirit. Everything is captured on television equipment that Hinn brings to each crusade along with his own production crew, using seven cameras and a staff of as many as 100.

In Anaheim, Hinn made his entrance during a rendition of “How Great Thou Art,” stepping triumphantly onstage in a dramatic spotlight, dressed in a dazzling white suit. He could have been an angel sent down from heaven.

He started by asking anyone to come forward who wanted to believe in Christ. Hundreds of people, many already in tears, walked down the arena’s aisles to the stage, heard a prayer from Hinn and were handed literature that included a list of nearby churches.

Next, volunteer ushers handed buckets to worshipers, who passed them throughout the arena, filling them with cash and checks—signs of faith, Hinn told them, that they believe in God’s healing power. Hinn’s ministry collects enough money at crusades and on television to generate about $100 million annually, roughly the same as Billy Graham’s organization. (Hinn reportedly earns more than $1 million a year, lives in an oceanfront mansion, drives the latest luxury cars and travels by private jet, the Concorde no longer being an option. As part of my investigation, a former associate of Hinn’s slipped me two notebooks full of copies of ministry expenses, including massive American Express bills and pages of unexplained cash withdrawals for the faith healer and his family.)

After more music, Hinn started ticking off the healings that were taking place throughout the arena at that very moment. Within a ten-minute span, the pastor proclaimed that people in the arena had just been cured of asthma, cancerous tumors, arthritis, leukemia, emphysema and 22 other ailments. And believers lined up on both sides of the stage to tell the pastor that they had been healed of heart conditions, knee problems, osteoporosis, breast cancer, deafness and more. Hinn applied his touch to their foreheads, scattering them like bowling pins across the stage.

The real drama happened after the pastor left the stage and the music stopped. Terminally ill people remained, just as sick as before. There were folks with Parkinson’s disease whose limbs were still twisted and shaking. There were quadriplegics who couldn’t move any muscle below their neck. These people—and there were hundreds, maybe thousands of them at each crusade—sat in their chairs, bewildered and crushed that God hadn’t healed them; their caretakers tried to offer some comforting words.

Brian Darby has worked for more than two decades with severely handicapped people in Northern California and often has experienced the disappointment left in the wake of a Miracle Crusade. Over the years, he told me many of his clients have attended the events, where they were swept up in a wave of excitement, thinking they were about to walk for the first time or have their limbs straightened.

“You can’t minimize the impact of
not
being healed on the person, the family, the extended family,” Darby told me. “They have a sense of euphoria at the crusade and then crash down. [Hinn is not] around to pick up the pieces.”

Many people believe, as Hinn preaches, that God fails to heal them because their faith isn’t strong enough. Maybe they didn’t give enough money to Hinn’s ministry. Or maybe they just didn’t
believe
enough.

In Anaheim, Jordie Gibson, then 21, wanted God to know how much he believed. Before the crusade, he stopped kidney dialysis as an act of faith before he flew to Southern California from Calgary, Canada.

“When I told my doctors, they said they could make arrangements for me to do dialysis” in Orange County, Jordie told me. “But I was going to be healed, so it didn’t matter. I needed to step out in faith.”

A volunteer usher at the event, Jordie pushed up the sleeve of his shirt to show the shunt in his arm used for dialysis. He survived “stepping out in faith,” but had to go back on dialysis once he returned to Canada. He told me that blood work showed his kidneys were functioning better after the event. “Whatever the Bible says is true,” he added. “And it says God can heal you. It’s true. All you need to do is ask.”

There is a great deal of medical research on the placebo effect, the idea that the body responds to the mind if the mind is duped. The extent of the placebo effect varies greatly depending on how and when it’s used, but studies show up to 75 percent of patients who take sugar pills have a measurable response to them. You could argue that Hinn is a placebo provider, and this does some good. But what of all those who go off their meds? CNN and the Australian version of
60 Minutes
have aired interviews with relatives whose family members died after they allegedly stopped medical treatment because Hinn had told them they were cured of their terminal cancer.

Sitting with me for the interview at the Four Seasons, the pastor seemed like an entirely different man from the faith healer I’d seen onstage the night before. He dressed casually in black, with designer sunglasses, leather jacket and black shoes. His trademark hair had been brushed forward, bangs hanging over his forehead like Caesar. Hinn fiddled with his cell phone, which sported a Mercedes logo. The fingers that allegedly heal people were delicate, with manicured and polished nails. A gold wedding band, so wide it covered the bottom of his left ring finger from knuckle to knuckle like a piece of copper pipe, bore the insignia of his church: a dove, symbolizing the Holy Spirit, sparkling with a cluster of diamonds.

“I know me, and those close to me know me,” he said. “But sadly, the outside world thinks I’m some kind of a crook. I think it’s time for me to change that.”

He was quiet, charming, humble and introspective. We talked for three hours. I asked him a series of questions delving into his ministry’s finances, his lavish salary and perks and the inability to prove that his “healings” lasted after the euphoria of the event was over.

He admitted that even one of his daughters, then 11, had a difficult time figuring him out: “One day she asked me a question that absolutely blew me away—from my own child! ‘Daddy, who are you? That man up there [onstage], I don’t know.’ If my own child is asking that, surely the whole world is asking that.”

He told me he had a heart condition that God hadn’t cured, and his parents had suffered serious medical problems.

“That is a very difficult thing for me because I told my daddy to believe,” Hinn said. “But he died. Now I don’t know why…My mom has diabetes, my daddy died with cancer. That’s life.”

The way Hinn portrayed it, being a faith healer was a terrible burden placed on him by God. If not for the divine calling, Hinn said he would walk away from the job in an instant. I couldn’t look into Hinn’s soul, but from where I sat, I saw a gifted actor who parlayed his theatrical skills and feel for the human condition into the material life of a movie star. I didn’t think for a moment he believed a word of what he preached—or that he was bothered that people who didn’t get their miracle cure had died. I imagined him behind the doors of his cliff-top Dana Point mansion, giggling to himself at his good fortune as he looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the 180-degree view of the Pacific with surfers bobbing in the waves, dolphins swimming just outside the surf line and sailboats dotting the horizon. He had hit the lottery, his actions protected from the law by the First Amendment.

Most people would discern this simply by watching his show. I had the added advantage of meeting people such as William Vandenkolk. He was a nine-year-old boy living in Las Vegas with his aunt and uncle, who were raising him. Unbeknownst to his guardians, a babysitter took the legally blind boy to a Miracle Crusade in hopes of regaining his eyesight. She managed to get William onstage, and Hinn bent down and placed his hands on the child’s face. “Look at these tears,” said Hinn, peering into the child’s eyes. “William, baby, can you see me?”

Before more than 15,000 people in a Las Vegas arena, William nodded. In a small voice, the boy said: “As soon as God healed me, I could see better.” Hinn, an arm wrapped around William, told the audience that God had just instructed him to pay the child’s medical expenses and education. People wept. The video clip was shown repeatedly on Hinn’s television show, a tear-producing, faith-inspiring fund-raising tool.

Two years later, William was still legally blind. He told me his sight never improved and that his onstage comments were the wishful thinking of a little boy not wanting to disappoint God and the thousands of people who were watching him.

“It’s pretty sad when you mess with a little boy’s mind,” said Randy Melthratter, William’s uncle and guardian. It took two years, a series of phone calls and my inquiry before his family was told that a $10,000 fund had been set up in William’s name. Randy still couldn’t get any details on how to access the account until a second story appeared about William.

When my piece on Benny Hinn was published, I thought his donations would dip at least a little. I even hoped it would prompt him to clean up his act. I was wrong on both counts. His supporters had been indoctrinated in the belief that the mainstream media was a tool of the devil designed to bring down great ministries and men of God. If I had caught Benny in bed with a dead woman or live boy, it wouldn’t have made a difference. CNN, HBO and NBC’s
Dateline
have done devastating reports on Benny Hinn and his ministry, and Pastor Benny’s career has kept sailing along. My article didn’t stand a chance. Today, he continues to be, by far, the most financially successful “faith healer” in the world.

Besides a handful of secular media outlets and a few fringe Christian organizations, no one is bothered enough by Hinn’s antics and the harm he does to people and the Body of Christ to call him out. Many fear the tight relationship between Hinn and the leaders of the Trinity Broadcasting Network—coming out against the faith healer would mean incurring the wrath of the world’s largest religious broadcaster. The Christian media, whose voice could make a difference with believers, have shied away from most criticism as well. In general, the Christian media is extremely hesitant to undertake investigative reporting on Christian organizations, no matter how corrupt. Controversy—and the resulting loss of advertisers and readers—scares them. Several freelancers have come to me with their unpublished stories after Christian magazines rejected the material as too controversial. I started to wonder why my faith had so few people of principle.

My story about Benny Hinn was part of a larger investigation into the Trinity Broadcasting Network. From time to time I had received e-mails making allegations about the leadership of TBN. Often the anonymous messages came with details about sexual impropriety, lavish spending and questionable use of donor money. But no proof was offered, and the senders rarely responded to my questions. Then I wrote a small, straightforward news story that involved TBN. Twenty-four hours later, a flurry of e-mails arrived in my inbox accusing TBN and its founders, televangelists Paul and Jan Crouch, of various misdeeds. I decided that where there was smoke, there might be fire.

TBN was the Fort Knox of Christian organizations. No reporter had completely penetrated it; the network operated with a level of secrecy that the CIA would envy. The ministry is valued at more than $2 billion, generates about $200 million annually and beams its programming from dozens of satellites into every country on Earth. If a pastor can get a show on TBN (the waiting list is long), money pours in. What went on behind the scenes was a closely guarded secret. The network’s founders didn’t give media interviews, and their employees were told not to talk to the press.

Channel surfers probably know TBN by the image of Jan Crouch, who wears heavy makeup, long false lashes and champagne-colored wigs piled high on her head. She speaks in a singsong voice and lets her tears flow freely, whether reading a viewer’s letter or recalling how God resurrected her pet chicken when she was a child.

Her husband, Paul, with his silver hair, mustache and bifocals, comes across as a grandfatherly sort. What he calls his “German temper” can rise quickly, however. He often punctuates a point by shaking a finger at the camera.

“Get out of God’s way,” he said once, referring to TBN’s detractors. “Quit blocking God’s bridges or God is going to shoot you, if I don’t.”

The Crouches’ eldest son, Paul Crouch Jr., a thick man with bushy graying hair and a 1970s-style mustache, has taken the reins of the television empire from his aging parents and is trying to modernize it. Already under the leadership of PJ, as he is known, the studio sets have gone from gold and gaudy to chic. The programming is tilting rapidly away from big-haired Southern preachers to Christianized versions of secular fare, including an
American Idol
–style reality show featuring gospel singers.