Righteous Journalism

-- Frontrunner for the coveted (?) "Charlatan Of The Year" Award!

On Sunday night, I was fortunate enough to catch a Dateline: NBC expose of televangelist Benny Hinn. The report was itself a follow-up from a similar report in 2002.

The gist of the NBC report?

• Despite Hinn's claims to be "an instrument of God's healing," there is not one single documented instance of someone being healed at one of his "crusades." In fact, the show contacted some people who allegedly had been healed who ended up dying of the very conditions they had been "healed" of.
• There is no public accounting of all the millions Hinn raises (NBC didn't say this on the air, but I would point out here how telling it is that Hinn organization is not a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, a voluntary watchdog group that makes sure church-related nonprofits handle their resources wisely and in a transparent manner. ECFA now has an article posted to deal with the traffic the Hinn piece has spurred.)
• Hinn doesn't keep his promises. "Pastor Benny" promised, on stage, to pay for the education of a child who thought he'd been healed of his eye disease. But the family got nothing, and still has gotten nothing despite repeated promises. (And the child wasn't actually healed, it turns out.)
• Hinn lies and exaggerates. "Pastor Benny" has told his followers that their funds help "thousands" around the world. But Dateline's research turned up only 247 children supported by the ministry. I was impressed that it was that many!
• Hinn lives a lavish lifestyle, funded completely by his "ministry." This includes a pricey private jet, a multi-million dollar California coastal mansion, $80,000 cars, Beverly Hills shopping sprees, "layovers" in such places as Milan, Cancun and Hawaii, and an insistence on staying only in the most expensive hotel suites on the road. (Many costing nearly $10,000 a night.)

As soon as the piece began, I suspected that the Trinity Foundation of Dallas was involved. The TF (a Christian organization, by the way) has long investigated money-grubbing televangelist charlatans like Hinn, to the point that nearly every TV expose you see on one of these guys uses Trinity's well-oiled research machine. This was the first time I'd seen Trinity's leader, Ole Anthony, do an on-camera interview though.

Trinity rightly puts these guys in the crosshairs because they prey on the weakest and most vulnerable, and have the gall to do it in the name of Jesus. There are thousands of really sick people who go to Hinn crusades, wait fruitlessly for a call to the stage, and leave bitterly disappointed. And there are people who give him money they can ill afford, only to have it fund private jet trips to the Mediterranean.

And after all this, solid guys like Michael Horton (who had the audacity to publicly check Hinn's theology against the Bible) have to get hate mail because they dared to publicly question one of "God's Anointed." (Check out the selection here, and note the awful grammar, spelling and reasoning from the Hinn defenders.)

But here is the point I love in all this: by virtue of having Christians involved in repudiating charlatans like Hinn, the issue of having greedy televangelists represent Christianity in the media is negated. Negated, because anyone who watched the entire piece saw thoughtful, balanced Christians like Horton and Anthony join in condemning Hinn, his theology and his methods.

In this respect, it is far different from the televangelist exposes of the 1980s, when many did equate televangelists with evangelical Christianity.

The difference between Benny Hinn, Inc. and the Trinity Foundation is night and day. Ole Anthony and Trinity challenge me to the core. In inner-city Dallas, they take in the homeless and work with them until they're able to be self-supporting... a process which involves everything from dealing honestly with addictions to getting restraining orders to halt violent ex-spouses. According to Anthony, who's passionate about this, if every church in the U.S. took in just one homeless person we'd lick the whole problem.

Anthony, a rich man at one point, now lives a pauper's life, and his ministry is gut-level. (Trinity also publishes a religious satire magazine: "The Door," which I love.) It feels like what Jesus would be doing, which is much more than I could say for "Pastor Benny."

I love Trinity's explanation of why their investigative work is necessary:

The church should be shocked by the televangelists' blatant parade of pagan ideas and their "gimme gospel of greed." The church should be ashamed for allowing a $2.5 billion business to prey on the elderly, the poor and the desperate and do it in the name of God.

I'm calling this paganism, because if you take the cross out of Christianity, nothing is left but paganism--even if it looks like a church. And the cross is nowhere to be found in these broadcasts. Sadly, the only picture many people have of God is through these televangelists' TV circuses.

Amen!