Robert Tilton

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Robert Tilton on his television program
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Robert Tilton on his television program

Robert Tilton (born June 7, 1946) is an American televangelist who achieved notoriety in the 1980s and 1990s through his paid television program Success-N-Life. At its peak it aired in all 235 American TV markets. At the time the first investigations into Tilton's ministry occurred in 1991, his television ministry was airing daily in many of those 235 markets and ABC's Primetime Live described it as "the fastest growing television ministry in America".[1] Within two years after the investigations began, however, Tilton was completely off the airwaves. Tilton has since returned to the television airwaves via his new version of Success-N-Life airing on BET and other outlets catering to a largely African-American audience.

Contents

[edit] Biography and early years

According to Tilton's own autobiographical materials, Tilton had a conversion experience to Christianity in 1969[2] and began his ministry in 1974, taking his new family (including wife Martha "Marte" Phillips, whom he married in 1968) on the road to, in his own words, "preach this gospel of Jesus"[3]. Tilton preached to small congregations and revivals throughout Texas and Oklahoma in the form of a Word-Faith ministry often preached by ministers like Kenneth Hagin, E.W. Kenyon, and Joel Osteen's father John, a Texas minister who was a contemporary of Tilton's and heavily influenced Tilton's own preaching style.[4] Tilton and his family settled in Dallas, Texas and built a small church in Farmers Branch, Texas called the "Word Of Faith Family Church" in 1976.[5] The church was growing steadily, but Tilton's many attempts to expand his televised ministry beyond local stations in the Dallas area were stalling until the aspiring minister went to Hawaii--his own self-described version of Jesus' forty days in the wilderness[6]--and spent time fishing and watching an increasingly popular new form of television programming, the infomercial. Tilton was particularly influenced by the style of infomercials made by real estate mogul Dave Del Dotto.[7]. Upon his return from Hawaii in 1981, Tilton--with the help of a $1.3M (US) loan from Dallas banker Herman Beebe[8]--put together his new show, called Success-N-Life.[9]

[edit] Success-N-Life

In Success-N-Life, Tilton regularly taught that all of life's trials, especially poverty, were a result of sin.[10] Tilton's ministry revolved around the practice of making "vows", financial commitments to Tilton's ministry. When a person made a vow to Tilton (Tilton's preferred vow, stressed frequently during his broadcasts, was $1,000), Tilton preached that God would recognize the vow and reward the donor with vast material riches.[11] A Dallas Morning News story published in 1992 observed that Tilton spent more than 84% of his show's airtime for fundraising and promotions, a total higher than the 22% for an average commercial television show[12]; other sources put the total fundraising time during episodes of Success-N-Life closer to 68%.[13] By contrast, the televised ministry of Billy Graham spent an average of 5% of total airtime on fundraising and promotions.[14]

As a result of Tilton's television success, the membership of the Word of Faith Family Church (renamed "Word of Faith Family Church and World Outreach Center") grew to become an 8,000 member megachurch.[15]

Tilton is the author of several self-help books about financial success, including The Power to Create Wealth, God's Laws of Success, How to Pay Your Bills Supernaturally, and How to be Rich and Have Everything You Ever Wanted. Most of Tilton's books were published in the 1980s and distributed via promotion on Success-N-Life and through the many mailings Tilton's ministry sent his followers. The books were republished in the late 1990s and are now used as centerpieces of his current infomercial series.[16]

[edit] Scandal

Even before the ABC News investigation into his ministry, Tilton had controversy in his background. In a deposition video for a lawsuit that was taped August 18, 1992, Tilton admitted to having robbed a fruit stand as a teen and abused marijuana, LSD, and various barbituates as a young man prior to his conversion to Christianity in 1969.[17] Tilton also admitted several times on Success-N-Life that he used to "drink lots of alcohol and use lots of drugs" before his conversion.

The biggest scandal of Tilton's career came about through a 1991 ABC News investigation into a group of three televangelists, Tilton being the most famous name among them. The investigation, spearheaded by Trinity Foundation president Ole Anthony and broadcast on ABC's Primetime Live on November 21, 1991, found that Tilton's ministry threw away prayer requests without reading them, keeping only any money or valuables sent to them by viewers, garnering his ministry an estimated $80 million (U.S.) a year.

Ole Anthony, a Dallas-based minister whose Trinity Foundation church works with the homeless and the poor on the East side of Dallas, had taken an interest in Tilton's ministry after some of the people coming to the Trinity Foundation for help told him they had lost all of their money making donations to some of the higher profile televangelists, especially fellow east Dallas minister Robert Tilton. Curious about the pervasiveness of the problem, the Trinity Foundation got on the mailing lists of several televangelists, including Tilton, and started keeping records of the many types of solicitations they would receive almost daily from various ministries. When former Coca-Cola executive Harry Guetzlaff came to the Trinity Foundation for help and told Anthony that Guetzlaff had been turned away from Tilton's church when he found himself on hard times following a divorce--even though he had been a longtime high-dollar donor, giving up his last $5,000 as a "vow of faith" just weeks earlier--Anthony, a former intelligence officer in the United States Air Force and licensed private investigator, started working on gathering details on Tilton's operation.[18]

When ABC producers, who had started working on their own investigation into a number of televangelists in early 1991, contacted the Trinity Foundation for information on Tilton, the two groups pooled their efforts. Anthony agreed to portray himself--a Dallas-based minister with a small church looking into the ways televangelist ministries were able to grow so quickly--in a hidden camera operation to get behind the scenes at Response Media, the group handling Tilton's mass mailings. The director of Response Media, Jim Moore, described for Anthony and the hidden cameras (concealed in the undercover Primetime Live producers' glasses and handbags) many of the techniques used by Tilton to raise funds for his ministry, and disclosed that the prayer requests returned by the donors not only were never read by Tilton, but that they were never even intended to be read by him; instead, the mailings were forwarded unopened to the many banks the ministry used in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Trinity Foundation members, acting on this information, started digging through garbage dumpsters outside Tilton's banks and the office of Tilton's lawyer, J.C. Joyce, and found tens of thousands of discarded prayer requests, bank statements, computer printouts containing the coding for how Tilton's "personalized" letters were generated, and more, all of which were shown in detail on the Primetime Live documentary.[19] In a follow-up broadcast on November 28, 1991, Primetime Live host Diane Sawyer said that the Trinity Foundation and Primetime Live assistants found prayer requests in bank dumpsters on 14 separate occasions in a 30-day period.[20]

Tilton vehemently denied the allegations and took to the airwaves on November 22, 1991 on a special episode of Success-N-Life entitled "Primetime Lies" to air his side of the story. Tilton also asserted that the prayer requests found in garbage bags shown on the Primetime Live investigation were stolen from the ministry and placed in the dumpster for a sensational camera shot, and that he prayed over every prayer request received, to the point that he "laid on top of those prayer requests so much that the chemicals actually got into my bloodstream, and...I had two small strokes in my brain."[21]

Primetime Live's original investigation and subsequent updates included interviews with several former Tilton employees. In the original investigation, one of Tilton's former prayer hotline operators claimed that the ministry cared little for desperate followers who called for prayer, saying that Tilton had a computer installed in July 1989 to make sure the phone operators were off the line by seven minutes. In a July 1992 update to the investigation, Primetime Live interviewed Tilton's former maid, who claimed that prayer requests were sent to Tilton's house and were routinely ignored until he told her to move them out of the house and into the garage; according to the maid, "they stacked up and stacked up" in Tilton's garage until he had them thrown away. In the same interview, Tilton's former secretary came forward and claimed that Tilton lifted excerpts from "get rich quick" books and used them in his sermons, and that she never saw him perform pastoral duties such as visiting with the sick and praying with members.[22]

Despite Tilton's repeated denials of misconduct, the state of Texas and the Federal government got involved in subsequent investigations, finding more causes for concern about Tilton's financial status with each new revelation. After nearly 10,000 pounds of prayer requests and letters to the Tilton ministry were found in a disposal bin at a Tulsa-area recycling firm in February 1992, Tilton admitted in a deposition given to the Texas Attorney General's office that he often prayed over computerized lists of prayer requests instead of the actual prayer requests themselves, and that prayer requests were in fact routinely thrown away after categorization. According to an October 1993 memorandum to Tilton's lawyer, J.C. Joyce, from Rev. James Eugene Ewing, Ewing used a computer demographics program that identifies and isolates some of America's poorest sub-ZIP codes to identify targets for Ewing's St. Matthew's Churches clients--Tilton among them--to send mailings soliciting for new seed-faith vows. The memo noted, among other details, that "[t]he size of each special area is about two to four city blocks[...][a]nd thank God there are tens of thousands of them across the nation."[23] As each revelation became increasingly more damaging, viewership and donations declined dramatically, prompting Tilton to stop paying for television airtime for Success-N-Life in 1993, and the last episode aired nationally on October 30, 1993.

In 1992, Tilton sued ABC for libel because of its investigation and report, but the case was dismissed in 1993. Federal Judge Thomas Brett, in his July 16, 1993 dismissal of the case, stated that information in the Trinity Foundation's logs on prayer requests reportedly found in dumpsters on September 11, 1991 "could not have been found then because the postmark date was after September 11, 1991", but also noted that Ole Anthony had recanted the erroneous entries in a subsequent affidavit.[24] Tilton appealed the decision in 1993; although the findings of the original court were upheld in 1995, Federal Judge Michael Burrage's opinion criticized ABC and the Primetime Live producers for the editing of the story and noted that ABC had been warned by their own Religion Editor Peggy Wehmeyer (who knew Ole Anthony from her work as a religion reporter at WFAA-TV in Dallas, Texas) that "Mr. Anthony could not be trusted and was obsessed with his crusade against [Tilton]."[25] Tilton once more appealed the decision, this time to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996, but the court refused to hear the case.[26]

Several donors to Tilton's television ministry sued Tilton himself in 1992 and 1993 charging various forms of fraud. One of the parties suing won $1.5M (US) in 1994 when it was discovered that a family crisis center for which they had made donations (and recorded an endorsement testimonial) was never built nor was ever intended to be built.[27] The judgment was later reversed on appeal.[28]

The decline of Success-N-Life also led to the end of Tilton's 25-year marriage to wife Marte, who had served as the administrative head of the Word of Faith Family Church and World Outreach Center, in 1993.

[edit] Transitional ministry

Tilton returned to television in 1994 with a new show called Pastor Tilton, a show with an emphasis on the demon-blasting practices--shouting as loud as possible at demons possessing people suffering from pain and illness--of charismatic pastors Sam and Jane Whaley, whom Tilton credited for "casting out [his] own demons" in 1993.[29]. Tilton was introduced to the Whaleys by his new wife, televangelist Leigh Valentine, a former beauty queen who had her own demon-blasting evangelical ministry; the couple were married in the Dominican Republic on February 10, 1994.[30] Tilton installed Leigh as an associate pastor at Word of Faith Family Church and World Outreach Center and brought demon blasting to the church, a significant change from the Word-Faith prosperity doctrine that had defined the church since its founding.

Pastor Tilton was off the airwaves due to low ratings by the end of 1994. Tilton filed for divorce from Leigh in 1996 after a brief separation and reconciliation in November of 1995[31] and fired several Word of Faith Family Church employees brought in by Leigh. The Tiltons' divorce, marked by mutual acrimonious statements to each other through the media and courtroom claims by Leigh that she was verbally assaulted and physically abused by an often-drunk Tilton (along with alleged bizarre behavior by Tilton, such as proclaiming himself Pope and claiming that "rats were eating his brain")[32], was finalized in 1997.

[edit] Reviving Success 'N' Life

Robert and Maria Tilton, 2003
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Robert and Maria Tilton, 2003

After moving to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida in 1996, Tilton returned to the airwaves in 1997 with a new version of Success-N-Life, buying airtime on independent television stations primarily serving inner city areas. Gone were the "demon blasting" sessions; back again were the Word-Faith messages and calls for "vows". In 1998, the program began airing on cable channel BET as part of the two hour late-night umbrella rotation block of religious programming entitled BET Inspiration. As of 2006, Success-N-Life is still a part of BET Inspiration, usually occupying the first hour of the programming block, as well as The Word Network. [33] Most of the episodes of Success-N-Life shown on BET Inspiration were taped in the late 1990s--with testimonials from 1980s-era episodes interspersed throughout the episodes[34]--but Tilton has also recorded infomercials for his books at least once a year since 2003, often appearing with his third wife, Maria Rodriguez, and their four French poodles. These infomercials also appear under the title of Success-N-Life on BET Inspiration.[35]

The Word of Faith Family Church and World Outreach Center, whose membership had declined to fewer than 300 by 1996, was finally formally dissolved by Tilton. Though Tilton was still listed as the church's senior pastor, he had not preached at the church since March 16, 1996, when he named Chattanooga, Tennessee minister Bob Wright as senior associate pastor.[36] The church building was purchased by the city of Farmers Branch in 1999 for use as a future civic center; however, the economy suffered a downturn and the plans were scrapped, and the building was finally demolished in 2003 to make room for a new youth hockey center.

In March 2005, Tilton started a new church in Hallandale, Florida, not far from his home in Miami Beach. The church, Christ The Good Shepherd Worldwide Church, has approximately 150 members as of 2006. Tilton has also renamed his televangelist ministry "Christ The Good Shepherd Worldwide Church", though the old name ("Word Of Faith") is used alongside it. Tilton is also listed as the pastor and overseer of a smaller church of the same name in Las Vegas, whose resident pastor is Danny Rodriguez.

[edit] Continuing scandal

When Tilton returned to television in 1997, he established his ministry's headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where his lawyer J.C. Joyce's offices were located, and set up a Post Office box as its mailing address. A woman employed by Mail Services, Inc., a Tulsa-area clearinghouse handling mail sent to Tilton's ministry, said that when she worked for Mail Services, Inc. in 2001, prayer requests were still routinely thrown away after donations, pledges, etc. were removed.[37]

Steve Lumbley, who worked for Tilton's ministry in 1991 when the original Primetime Live investigation took place, told a reporter for the Dallas Observer in 2006 that reports of prayer request disposal that were the centerpiece of the 1991 Primetime Live exposé were highly exaggerated. In an article for the dallasobserver.com blog "Unfair Park", Lumbley asserted that "[t]he mailings all had some kind of gimmick. They weren't godly at all. But the primary allegation that came out of that--that prayer requests were thrown away--was categorically untrue, and I can guarantee you that was not a normal practice." However, Lumbley, who now runs a Christian watchdog website called ApostacyWatch.com, does credit ABC and the Trinity Foundation for exposing Tilton's unethical fundraising tactics, noting that "God was using Ole and ABC to chastise Tilton and bring him down."[38]

As of 2006, the Trinity Foundation still monitors Tilton's television ministry as part of Trinity's ongoing televangelist watchdog efforts. In a 2003 interview published in Tulsa World, Ole Anthony estimated that with none of the Word of Faith Family Church overhead and television production costs at a fraction of the original Success-N-Life program, Tilton's current ministry was likely grossing more than $24M (U.S.) per year tax-free.[39]

[edit] Satire

In 1985, two American men began distributing a video they compiled lampooning Tilton and his ostensible conversations with God. The video exploits Tilton's facial expressions and preaching style. Entitled Pastor Gas, the video featured a medley of footage from Success-N-Life, overdubbed with sound effects of well-timed flatulence. Unofficial VHS copies of the video circulated in the United States through the late 1980s, under such titles as Heaven Only Knows, The Joyful Noise, and The Farting Preacher. After the hosts of The Mark and Brian Show, a radio program in Los Angeles, mentioned the video on the air, the video's authors saw the market potential and began selling official copies of their creation. The video distribution (including digital bootlegs distributed online) expanded public awareness of Robert Tilton and his controversial "television ministry".

The stand-up comedy material of Ron White also includes mention of Robert Tilton. In the opening to White's act in the first Blue Collar Comedy Tour movie, Ron claims that "while sitting in a beanbag chair naked eating Cheetos," he finds Tilton on TV and believes Tilton is talking specifically to him: "Are you lonely?" "Yeah." "Have you spent half your life in bars pursuing sins of the flesh?" "Man, this guy's good..." "Are you sitting in a beanbag chair naked eating Cheetos?" Ron gapes in horror before squeaking, "...Yes sir!" "Are you going to get up and send me a thousand dollars?" (#pause for effect#) "Close! Thought he was talking about me for a second. Apparently, I ain't the only cat on the block (who) digs Cheetos!"

In the early 2000s, the Trinity Foundation put together a number of news broadcasts, including the initial Primetime Live piece, from the years surrounding the investigations into Tilton's ministry on a DVD entitled The Prophet of Prosperity: Robert Tilton and the Gospel of Greed. The DVD also includes segments from The Daily Show's "God Stuff" (hosted by Trinity Foundation member John Bloom, a.k.a. Joe Bob Briggs), excerpts from the "Pastor Gas" videos, and a number of mocking music videos, as well as moments from Success-N-Life showing Tilton's more outrageous claims of "visions from God".

[edit] Bibliography

  • How to Be Rich & Have Everything You Ever Wanted
  • How to Pay Your Bills Supernaturally
  • Strike It Rich

[edit] Notes

  1. ↑  "The Apple of God's Eye", produced by Robbie Gordon, Primetime Live, first broadcast November 21, 1991.
  2. ↑  "Robert Tilton -- The Story", Robert-Tilton.com, retrieved June 11, 2006.
  3. ↑  "The Apple of God's Eye", produced by Robbie Gordon, Primetime Live, first broadcast November 21, 1991.
  4. ↑  "Prosperity and Healing: Is it Promised to the Believer?, Ken R. Sarles, retrieved June 11, 2006.
  5. ↑  ibid.
  6. ↑  "Robert Tilton's Heart of Darkness", Scott Baradell, first published in the Dallas Observer on February 6, 1992, p. 18; quoted in Christianity In Crisis by Hank Hanegraaff, Harvest House Publishers, 1993, p. 347.
  7. ↑  ibid.
  8. ↑  "The Apple of God's Eye", produced by Robbie Gordon, Primetime Live, first broadcast November 21, 1991.
  9. ↑  "Robert Tilton's Heart of Darkness", Scott Baradell, first published in the Dallas Observer on February 6, 1992, p. 13; quoted in Christianity In Crisis by Hank Hanegraaff, Harvest House Publishers, 1993, p. 347.
  10. ↑  "The Price of Success", Let Us Reason Minstries, retrieved June 11, 2006.
  11. ↑  "Second Coming: A Jet-Settin', Scotch-Sippin' Robert Tilton Washes up in South Florida and He Still Wants Your Money", Sean Rowe, Dallas Observer, quoted by Cephas Ministries, retrieved June 11, 2006.
  12. ↑  "TV Preachers Seen as 'Beggars': Public Dislikes Evangelists' Onscreen Methods", Dallas Morning News, first published on November 21, 1992; quoted in Christianity In Crisis by Hank Hanegraaff, Harvest House Publishers, 1993, p. 348.
  13. ↑  "Second Coming: A Jet-Settin', Scotch-Sippin' Robert Tilton Washes up in South Florida and He Still Wants Your Money", Sean Rowe, Dallas Observer, quoted by Cephas Ministries, retrieved June 11, 2006.
  14. ↑  "Prosperity and Healing: Is it Promised to the Believer?, Ken R. Sarles, retrieved June 11, 2006.
  15. ↑  Success-N-Life home page, retrieved June 12, 2006.
  16. ↑  KTUL Nightly News, KTUL-TV, Tulsa, Oklahoma, first broadcast November 16, 1992; as compiled on The Prophet of Prosperity: Robert Tilton and the Gospel of Greed, DVD produced by The Trinity Foundation, publication date not specified.
  17. ↑  "The Antichrist of East Dallas", Burkhard Bilger, The New Yorker, first published on December 6, 2004; retrieved June 11, 2006.
  18. ↑  "The Apple of God's Eye", produced by Robbie Gordon, Primetime Live, first broadcast November 21, 1991.
  19. ↑  Followup segment to "The Apple of God's Eye", Primetime Live, first broadcast November 28, 1991.
  20. ↑  ibid.
  21. ↑  Followup segment to "The Apple of God's Eye", Primetime Live, first broadcast July 9, 1992.
  22. ↑  "Second Coming: A Jet-Settin', Scotch-Sippin' Robert Tilton Washes up in South Florida and He Still Wants Your Money", Sean Rowe, Dallas Observer, quoted by Cephas Ministries, retrieved June 11, 2006.
  23. ↑  "The Robert Tilton Files", Glenna Whitley, Dallas Observer "Unfair Park" online blog, dated August 6, 2006; retrieved October 4, 2006.
  24. ↑  ibid.
  25. ↑  "Tilton Returns to Airwaves", Personal Freedom Outreach, retrieved June 17, 2006.
  26. ↑  CBS Nightly News with Connie Chung, CBS, first broadcast April 22, 1994; as compiled on The Prophet of Prosperity: Robert Tilton and the Gospel of Greed, DVD produced by The Trinity Foundation, publication date not specified.
  27. ↑  "Robert Tilton: From Downfall to Windfall", Ziva Branstetter, Tulsa World, first published May 4, 2003; quoted by The Trinity Foundation, retrieved June 17, 2006.
  28. ↑  "Tilton Returns to Airwaves", Personal Freedom Outreach, retrieved June 17, 2006.
  29. ↑  "Second Coming: A Jet-Settin', Scotch-Sippin' Robert Tilton Washes up in South Florida and He Still Wants Your Money", Sean Rowe, Dallas Observer, quoted by Cephas Ministries, retrieved June 11, 2006.
  30. ↑  "State Briefs", The Houston Chronicle, first published February 6, 1995, retrieved September 25, 2006.
  31. ↑  "Robert Tilton: From Downfall to Windfall", Ziva Branstetter, Tulsa World, first published May 4, 2003; quoted by The Trinity Foundation, retrieved June 17, 2006.
  32. ↑  "Second Coming: A Jet-Settin', Scotch-Sippin' Robert Tilton Washes up in South Florida and He Still Wants Your Money", Sean Rowe, Dallas Observer, quoted by Cephas Ministries, retrieved June 11, 2006.
  33. ↑  "Bob's Back, and More Entertaining than Ever", Steve Blow, Dallas Morning News, published September 25, 2004, retrieved June 18, 2006.
  34. ↑  "Second Coming: A Jet-Settin', Scotch-Sippin' Robert Tilton Washes up in South Florida and He Still Wants Your Money", Sean Rowe, Dallas Observer, quoted by Cephas Ministries, retrieved June 11, 2006.
  35. ↑  "The Robert Tilton Files", Glenna Whitley, Dallas Observer "Unfair Park" online blog, dated August 6, 2006; retrieved October 4, 2006.
  36. ↑  "Robert Tilton: From Downfall to Windfall", Ziva Branstetter, Tulsa World, first published May 4, 2003; quoted by The Trinity Foundation, retrieved June 17, 2006.
  37. ↑  ibid.

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