TBN's Praise-a-thon

[Good_Egg]

Actually, what we know as “Jan Crouch” doesn’t exist. They took this wig, see, and put a ton of make up under it. Oh, it seems to “talk” and “sing”, but its not real. You didn’t think it was, did you? :o

[START]

Siege, I’ll check out the websites but I am already aware that there are many Christians who can’t stand TBN and even I get suspicious at some of the preachers but I do think that Paul and Jan sincerely believe in what they are doing for God and a Praise-a-thon is how they keep their vision alive.

@Tentacle Monster

Is TBN the channel that still runs Robert Tilton? I caught him on some Christian channel late one night, and he was still doing the squinting-for-Jesus routine. Being a big fan of the Farting Preacher videos, I took the opportunity to add some of my own sound effects in real time to his sermon.

Yeah, I made farty noises in front of the TV for a good 20 minutes.

I feel so guilty for laughing at that farting preacher thing but it’s too funny not to laugh .

[Siege]

Forget my link. Read the one gobear gave you which talks specifically about TBN. Here are a couple of quotes from the website and it is a Christian one which appears at strengthening Christians in their faith.

The Bible tells Christians to teach sound doctrine, to confront and counter errorenous teachings, and to be on the alert for false teachers.
. . .
Paul Crouch, however, has a message for those who dare to rebuke and correct him:

To hell with you! Get out of my life! Get out of the way!…I say get out of God’s way! Quit blocking God’s bridges or God’s going to shoot you if I don’t…I don’t even want to even talk to you or hear you! I don’t want to see your ugly face!

Source: Paul Crouch, Praise-a-thon, April 2, 1991

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.”

I’ve never subjected myself to the Crouches (I’m not into camp), but I did hear Robert Tilton say one Monday morning that there was someone who was thinking about giving him money and wondering if it was God speaking to them. He assured them that it was God and that, if that person sent him $1,000, “God will get you out of debt!” Yes, I still remember it. I was shocked and appalled. That’s the day I called up the station which broadcast his service and got him off the air. This was after the televangelist scandals in the 1990s and after Tilton had been busted for fraud. You see, he and his staff had a peculiar habit – they only opened up envelopes which contained money, discarding those which contained prayer requests but no money.

Here’s a bit more on the Crouches and TBN from ReligiousNewsBlog.com

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.

…

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.

Their whole television ministry is based on a lie.

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.

Excuse me. I’m reading the second website as I work on this post and I’m close to quoting the whole thing. START, these people are worse than that thief you used to hang out with. At least that thief didn’t claim to be spreading the Gospel while ripping people off. One reason the Trinity Foundation is so much against televangelists is they had people come into their homeless shelter who’d bought into this prosperity gospel blasphemy and sent the last of what they had to a televangelist. When the promised reward didn’t materialize, they were told they were on their own. I don’t recall anything about Jesus wanting us to be rich; if anything, I remember him upsetting a very rich man who thought he was righteous. Ah yes. Here it is: Matthew 19:16-24 There’s also 1 Timothy Chapter 6 which reads in part:

9 People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

. . .

17 Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. 18 Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.

17Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. 18Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.
[/quote]

I understand keeping one’s vision and oneself alive requires money, as does running a church, as the Stewardship committee likes to remind me. On the other hand, if I took a $403,700 per year salary for myself and a $361,000 for my spouse, not to mention owning 30 homes and a jet, well, frankly, I can’t picture myself doing so. $764,700 gross income?! It would be fun to walk into a charity and say, “What do you need? . . . You’ve got it!” I can’t fathom what one would do with 30 homes, and mind you, I’ve lived in England, Japan, and Hawaii, as well as where I live now. Admittedly I’d assume 30 homes does cut down on hotel bills, but there’s still cleaning and utilities (that may account for the $764,700 income though). I was reading about a charity down in Washington, D.C. recently which buys apartments in nice areas and sets homeless people up in them. Maybe they could use a house or two? Most cities in this country don’t have enough beds in shelters for homeless people. How could I own 30 homes while that’s true? As it is, I don’t think I do enough for the poor or give enough for charity and I’m far from prosperous. Yes, it would be nice to be able to travel, to see my relatives in England or to revisit Hawaii. Not on money I’ve raised to do good and spread the Gospel, though.

Oh yes, that’s the worst of it. These people damage and destroy people’s faith. You see, I know people who’ve been through a crisis of faith or two. Some have survived it faith intact; others haven’t. Even I was fighting a couple of years ago when I’d been laid off for 5 months with no prospects in sight, one of my closest friends had just moved 600 miles away, and I’d left my old church. I actually asked a priest if I was less of a Christian because I wasn’t born again. Fortunately, this priest assured me in a familiar Surrey accent (Mum’s from Surrey) that wasn’t so. If I had been told that the reason I hadn’t gotten a job was because I hadn’t donated enough or I lacked faith, it would have had a devastating effect.

Sorry, I can’t see any redeeming value in them, at least not for Christians.

Respectfully,
CJ

[Myron_Van_Horowitzski]

@Sampiro

I wonder how much of the cash that is sent in envelopes to the addresses never sees the bank but either flies to the Caymans or goes home with the letter openers. (I do remember that Jim Bakker was smart enough to scam millions but not smart enough to hide any, and when he fled PTL he was broke in a matter of weeks; I’m sure some have learned from his lesson.)

According to James Randi, most of it. The icing on the cake is that, because they’re churches, it’s all tax free and not accountable.

It’s the perfect scam. I gotta start up a ministry myself one of these days.

[Miller]

@gobear

Ooh, ooh, I GOTS to watch them when I get home. I LOVE those movies! They inspire me to ask so many deep questions about life, such as, what the HELL happened to Michael York’s career? Playing second banana in the Austin Powers movies was something of a comedown for an actor who used to be on the hottest leading men in the 1970s, but starring in fundie wankfests? Maybe he needed to make a house payment or was in arrears in alimony?

He wrote a book about it, actually. My mom found it somewhere in LA and bought me a copy of it. (I have no idea why. I’d never even heard of the movie, and my mom is about as far as you can get from a Christian fundamentalist while still being a Christian.) I only read a little of it, though. He spends most of the book talking about how nice everyone involved in the movie was, and how much fun he had making it. Boring as hell. On the other hand, he did seem to view the movie as just another job, and not some sort of divine calling, which is heartening. Unfortunetly, the book was apparently published by some (presumedly Christian fundamentalist) micro-press and isn’t listed on Amazon, and I threw out my copy ages ago.

[Patty_O_Furniture]

@START

Siege…I do think that Paul and Jan sincerely believe in what they are doing for God and a Praise-a-thon is how they keep their vision alive.

Every time I read this, I say the words “vision alive” but I think the words “wallets overflowing”.

Do Paul and Jan describe anywhere what their vision is, exactly? What does it mean anyway: to keep one’s vision alive? Will enough cash roll in to help them actually achieve their vision some day? Would their vision die if the money stopped pouring in?

[Vlad_Igor]

In a Jim Bakker thread I posted in a while ago I made the comment that: In a perversion of Calvinism, some of these evangelists feel that the money is a reward they receive from God (through their followers) for bringing souls to Jesus; some feel that they have been specially chosen by God to do what they are doing; the ones that cross the line don’t see that they have done anything wrong, because everything that has happened so far has been God’s doing, not theirs. Everything that happens does so for a reason, and they don’t question that reason. They end up drifting over the line, unaware of the breach of professed morals and ethics.

They seem to have an odd combination of passive/aggressive behavior, but not in the typical clinical psych meaning. They are aggressive in that they actively promote their ministry, but passive when they describe how they got to where they are. They’ll take responsibility for the adulation of their followers and the activities of their ministry, but rarely admit responsibility for the mistakes, sins and errors that occur. They also seemed obsessed with the Lutherian idea of salvation (i.e. by the grace of God alone, with works or actions irrelevant and inappropriate for the discussion), leading to superficial proclamations and shallow personae.

Vlad/Igor

[Sampiro]

Channel surfing tonight I caught a show with Dave Roever. Roever was horribly and permanently scarred in Vietnam when a phosphorous grenade he was holding exploded next to his face (he was hit by a sniper before he could toss it). I do not in any way belittle his suffering or his sacrifice and can honestly say that I have never met anybody I would wish that to happen to (though i can think of a couple I haven’t met- the recent child repeat child rapist/murderer in Florida, perhaps). However, the fact he has suffered terribly does not give him the right to be a judgmental horse’s ass who condemns (of course) homosexuals, the ACLU, anybody who can’t see the wisdom in praising Jesus in homeroom at public schools, etc. Odd that for somebody who interprets the Bible so literally he can’t seem to find any of the parts about men with scars not becoming priests (except of course I’m sure that’s one of the “repealed by Jesus” ceremonial parts that only Fundies seem to be able to separate from the Commandments-in-Force).

[Guinastasia]

START, I understand you were raised with this kind of thing, but take it from someone who’s been raised Catholic-you can run a ministry on donations without the super luxuries. Look at the Franciscans, or the Capetians. They take vows of poverty, and yet they’ve been doing what they do for centuries.