Paul Crouch

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Paul Franklin Crouch (born March 29, 1934) is a the co-founder, chairman, and president of the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), the world's largest Christian television network. The network has grown to 47 satellite stations and 12,500 affiliates, reaching nearly 100,000,000 households globally.

Crouch, raised in Missouri, is the son of Pentecostal missionaries. He became interested in amateur radio at an early age and announced he would use such technology to "send the Gospel around the world." He attended the Central Bible Institute in Springfield, Missouri. In the early 1950s, he worked for the Assemblies of God as a film librarian. He married his wife, Jan, in 1958. His sons are Matt Crouch and Paul Crouch Jr. In 1961 he was hired to run the Assemblies of God's broadcast production facility in Burbank, California. From there he left to start TBN in 1973. He claims that a vision from God in 1975 led him to move the network into satellite transmission.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy in 2004 reported Crouch's annual personal income as $403,700. The network reported that during the first twenty years of its operation, Crouch was paid roughly one-tenth his current income, with the amounts rising in the past ten years as he approached retirement. However, Crouch has produced products for TBN such as books and videos that account for a portion of his income.

Contents

[edit] Criticisms and Controversy

[edit] Fundraising

Crouch and many of the preachers who appear on Trinity Broadcasting have garnered much criticism over their style of fundraising, promising donating viewers that God will provide them with wealth and material pleasures as a reward. As such, TBN has earned the pejorative nickname "The Blasphemy Network" by opponents of such charismatic teachings.

Many conservative Christians state that donating viewers seldom if ever get their promised financial reward[citation needed], and that only the TV preachers benefit from the money, with which they finance an opulent lifestyle. According to inplainsite.org “Paul Crouch, president of California-based Trinity Christian Center of Santa Ana, received $403,700. His wife, Janice Crouch, earned $347,500 as the vice president for the organization, which broadcasts sermons nationally on the Trinity Broadcasting Network”.

The Crouches purchased a Newport Beach house for close to $5 million with "a palatial estate with ocean and city views." Paul gets around in a Canadair Challenger 600 executive jet worth about $13 million. (inplainsite.org)

[edit] Alleged sexual harassment

In September 2004 the Los Angeles Times reported that Crouch in 1998 paid Enoch Lonnie Ford, a former employee, a $425,000 formal settlement to end a sexual harassment lawsuit.[1] Ford alleged that he was forced to have a homosexual encounter with Crouch under threats of job termination at a network-owned cabin at Lake Arrowhead in 1996.[1] TBN officials acknowledge the settlement but characterize the accuser as a liar and an extortionist (as well as having a criminal record involving drug use and statutory rape), and stated that the settlement was made in order to avoid a lengthy and expensive lawsuit which could have deteriorated into "mud-slinging".[1]

Ford, who wrote a book manuscript about the alleged encounter, was forbidden by an arbitrator to publish it because of the previous settlement. From prison (for violation of a previous probation agreement from a past felony conviction), Ford offered TBN all rights to the book for $10 million for the purpose of making it into a motion picture, but his offer was rejected by Crouch, who called it extortion. In October 2004, Judge Robert J. O'Neill awarded Paul Crouch $136,000 in legal fees to be paid by Ford for Ford's violation of the terms of the settlement agreement, specifically the prohibition of discussing the settlement's details.[1]

[edit] Alleged plagiarism

In 2001, Crouch was sued by author Sylvia Fleenor, who accused Crouch of plagiarism in his popular end-times novel (and subsequent movie), The Omega Code. Fleenor's lawsuit alleged that the movie's plot was taken from her own novel, The Omega Syndrome. A former Crouch personal assistant, Kelly Whitmore, revealed that she had encountered a loose-leaf binder in Crouch's luggage that Crouch referred to as "the End Times project" and that he often called it "The Omega" but said he disliked the working title, "especially the word 'Syndrome'." The case was subsequently settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.[2]

[edit] 9/11 footage

Crouch also received criticism in 2001 from grieving families and several pastors for using fresh images from the September 11 terrorist attacks on an on-air TBN teaser for the sequel to the Omega Code film version, Megiddo. The text on the teaser read: "2,000 years ago God knew ... 2 years ago, God was creating an answer to the questions we didn't know the world was about to ask." (It is known that the 9/11 plot was conceived two years before the attacks occurred.) Despite the criticism, Crouch kept airing the teaser, saying, "My friends, if anyone can take offense at that, we are on different planets, I'm afraid."

[edit] Medical Troubles

On December 23, 2005, Paul Crouch broke four ribs and underwent surgery to repair internal bleeding and building fluid in the chest cavity suffered after he took a fall. His son, Paul Crouch Jr., said his father was doing "just fine" after the surgery and was expected to make a full recovery.

[edit] Books

  • Hello World! A Personal Message to the Body of Christ (autobiography)
  • I Had No Father But God
  • The Omega Code: Another Has Risen from the Dead
  • Megiddo: The Omega Code 2
  • Shadow of the Apocalypse

[edit] Quotes

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
  • "I am a little god! Critics, be gone!" - Praise the Lord program, July 7, 1986
  • "God draws no distinction between Himself and us. God opens up the union of the very godhead (Trinity), and brings us into it. Praise-a-thon TBN, November 1990 [3]
  • "If you have been healed or saved or blessed through TBN and have not contributed to (the) station, you are robbing God and will lose your reward in heaven." Praise the Lord, TBN August 4, 1997 [4]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Olsen, Ted. "Former TBN Employee Alleges Gay Tryst With Paul Crouch", Christianity Today, September 1, 2004. Retrieved on December 24, 2006.

[edit] External links

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