Stunned

By Barbara Kirchhoff

Having spent my whole life in the liberal side of the U.S. Christian Church, I am still trying to understand the conservative side.  When I first started reading about the conservative/fundamental/evangelical churches and their leaders and members the only names I readily recognized were Oral Roberts and Pat Robertson.  I didn’t even know people like Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Hagin, Paul and Jan Crouch, Paula White, Jesse Deplantis, T.D. Jakes, Joyce Meyers, and Marilyn Hickey even existed. Now that I know who they are and what they are preaching I praise the Lord that I have not been influenced by them.   

The past couple of months I have been tuning into the Trinity Broadcast Network (TBN). This has been an eye-opening, unsettling experience.  Watching Benny Hinn sing while he “heals” people, listening to Jan Crouch talk about God healing her cancer while she shakes her pink bouffant wig, watching Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Hagin, Paul and Jan Crouch, Paula White, Jesse Deplantis, T.D. Jakes, Joyce Meyers, and Marilyn Hickey joke his way through his preaching, hearing Oral Roberts tell Kenneth Copeland about his recent “vision” from God and then the two of them telling the viewers they had better vote for Bush or we are all doomed was entertaining is a sordid kind of way.  Needless to say, I shook my head a lot and every so often I caught myself staring with my mouth hanging open.  

This past week the Trinity Broadcast Network (TBN) has been (re)running a telethon to raise money for the network. During parts of the telethon there were a lot of people on stage. Dressed mostly in black, there were about 20 young people in the background who engaged in all sorts of activities throughout the show.  They sang, they danced, they prayed silently with their mouths moving, their arms were in the air a lot and they kneeled and fell prostrate once in a while.  I found this collective behavior odd and distracting. It was as if the main speakers and vocalists who were sitting up front were not enough to hold the attention of the viewers.  These young people were like the professional mourners at an old style New Orleans funeral.  Instead of mourning, these somberly dressed young people were hanging on every word of the speakers and reacting in what seemed a scripted way.  

 If this didn’t spook me enough, the hair on the back of my neck stood up as Paula White, the main speaker for the evening, cranked up her sermon.  She started out speaking calmly and slowly, but that didn’t last long.  For the next two plus hours she did not stop speaking once.  It was amazing. I have never seen anything like it.  Remember that I’m from the liberal church where the parishioners get up and leave if the service goes over an hour.  

Paula White quickly slipped into the cadence that would be more typical of a male, African-American preacher.  She hopped around on her three-inch heels, made dramatic gestures with her body and arms, and motioned toward the camera with her beautifully manicured hands almost constantly. I wasn’t too alarmed by this behavior, but again thought it was odd and distracting. It wasn’t until she started her almost hypnotic, repetitive message that the viewers should pledge $68.19 every month for the next 12 months because Psalm 68:19 says that God will send them a “daily benefit package” in return for their pledge, that I was truly stunned. I looked up Psalm 68:19 right away in three different versions of the Bible.  Psalm 68:19 says God “shares our daily burdens” or “daily bears us up.”  Not one of the versions said anything about God sending us something if we give money to other people. Stunned is the only word to describe how I felt throughout Paula White’s preaching. In my liberal Christian upbringing we were taught that we gave money to the church and other ministries because God first loved us and we should joyously love and support others in return. So what’s with the conservative church wanting to get something back when they “sow their seed?”   

All this TV watching has me thinking that the liberal church must have as much apostasy and deception being bantered about as the conservative church. From my observation it does indeed and I hope to uncover some of it and report it here. The liberal church has certainly bought into the falsehood that human political endeavors are a worthwhile way for Christians to spend their time.  

In the meantime, I plan to drastically reduce my TBN viewing time and increase the time I spend in prayer for the people who are caught up in the deception perpetuated by this organization.