Heresy on The Airwaves

By Richard N. Ostling

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 (including former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who 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.

With reporting by Michael P. Harris/New York