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The day after the Charleston revival, I interviewed several people who had been healed onstage. A retired roofer with only four teeth claimed that he had been cured of hardening of the arteries, diabetes and myriad other ailments. He lapsed into the unknown tongue while telling me about it. As for a deaf-mute young man, his mother said his condition was unchanged. A plump matron mistakenly thought I worked for the Angley organization. She said her nerve and stomach trouble was improved, and "an inch-long thing that flopped in my ear is gone, praise the Lord!" She promised to begin mailing money soon. She asked if Angley's staff would pray for "my boy Jack, who has a demon in him". When I asked the nature of the demon, she said: "Well, Jack got sent back to prison because he couldn't stay out of fights while he was on parole."
That's one glimpse into the gospel gold mine that produces billions - billions - of dollars in America. Angley keeps his revenue tightly secret, but the scope of his national tours and 100-station telecasts indicates a gross between $10 and $20 million a year.
Here's a look down a different shaft of the gold mine:
A young Californian, Timothy Goodwin of Long Beach, was paralyzed in a car wreck that wasn't his fault. That was his first tragedy. His second was religious. He later filed a fraud suit in Auglaize County Court in Ohio, telling this pathetic story:
He was convinced by leaders of "The Way" Bible society, a talking-in-tongues outfit, that his paralysis would be cured in a year if he moved to the sect's headquarters in Ohio and donated large sums from his accident settlement. He gave $210,000 -- and later paid $10,000 more for a Cadillac for a Way leader, and $11,000 for a BMW auto for another Way chief, and $13,000 for extraneous gifts requested by Way officials. The healing didn't work, and Goodwin felt "took".
After he sued, The Way countersued him for slander. The case was settled out of court in secret, and the quadriplegic moved back to California. Goodwin's attorney, Craig Spangenberg of Cleveland, told me that the sect refunded all of Goodwin's money on the condition that he never discuss the matter. "He has kept his promise," Spangenberg said. "Tim's a decent young man. He didn't want people to know he had been such a fool."
Another vein of the gold mine was worked by Bishop John W. Barber of Alabama, a dazzler who wore white tuxedos and drove luxury cars. He persuaded believers to buy $1,000 bonds in his Apostolic Faith Church of God Live Forever, Inc. Oldsters paid $100 down and sent installments to the Christian Credit Corporation of Nashville. His operation spread over eight states and then abruptly folded, and Barber moved to North Carolina. Lawyer Henry Haile of Nashville was appointed U.S. receiver. Haile told me:
"It's unbelievable. He sold $1.5 million in worthless bonds and also borrowed from 20 banks, but I can't imagine why anyone trusted him. He testified under oath he didn't file income-tax returns for six years; yet he always had a new Lincoln and a big home."
Among Barber's victims were members of Highway Church of Christ at Marion, S.C., who lost $57,000. Their pastor, Raymond Davis, told me: "He sounded like an angel of the Lord, and my people thought he was rich. He told us the bonds would be worth twice what we paid for them. We trusted him to open us a bank account at Huntsville, and we sent our money to it. Later I flew to Huntsville, and there wasn't a dime left." Highway Church filed a fraud suit.
The Ernest Angley television-miracle crusade, The Way International, and the Apostolic Faith Church of God Live Forever, Inc., are three eddies in the much-publicized gospel flood swirling over America.
Old-time magical religion has become our chief cultural phenomenon as we enter the 1980s. Celebrity evangelists in lavish hairdos have won followings that alarm mainline churches. The Gallup Poll says 45 million Americans now consider themselves "born again", and they shell out enough money to support a booming fundamentalist industry. Sales of gospel books, magazines and records have soared to $1 billion a year. A million families have removed their children from public schools and pay for them to attend 5,000 new evangelical schools. A consortium of born-again businessmen has joined with the Campus Crusade for Christ to raise $1 billion for the world's biggest advertising campaign to prepare everyone for the Second Coming.
Revival tents of yesteryear are forgotten relics. Now the action is in astrodomes and multi-million-dollar gospel television studios. Four fundamentalist "networks" keep broadcast dishes aimed at fixed-orbit satellites, bouncing programs over the continent 24 hours a day. Competing evangelists buy $600 million worth of radio and television time a year, paid for by their followers. At last count, the United States had 1,400 all-gospel radio stations and about 30 gospel television stations, some operated by born-again folk, some run by shrewd businessmen who know where the money is.
The boom has political power. Coalitions are trying to mobilize fundamentalists into the nation's strongest voter bloc to pass "moral" laws and elect "moral" candidates. In March, Anita Bryant and revivalist Jerry Falwell launched a "Clean Up America" drive against pornography, abortion and homosexuals.
Other gospel big guns summoned 200,000 born-again believers to the April "Washington for Jesus" demonstration to back "pro-God" legislation. Evangelist Pat Robertson declared: "We have enough votes to run the country. And when the people say, 'We've had enough,' we are going to take over." Anti-abortion groups defeated U.S. senators Dick Clark of Iowa and Thomas McIntyre of New Hampshire, and have targeted others for elimination. And fundamentalist uprisings against "ungodly" textbooks have forced several school systems around the United States to change books.
The gospel boom is under intense study by pundits. Author Jeremy Rifkin says it's "the single most important cultural force in American life" and might lead to fascism. Some sociologists think it's a backlash to the radicalism of the 1960s. Some say it's a breakaway from insipid conventional churches. Some say it's a search for security as the economy worsens. Some say it's part of the "me generation", in which people focus on themselves.
But one aspect has hardly been mentioned: rip-off. Part of the billion-dollar industry is cunning fraud, or bald opportunism, or exploitation of the superstitious, or tyrannical misuse of donated money by weirdo leaders. In my job as newspaperman and religion writer, I've covered the territory for 20 years and watched it grow.
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