Talk:Hank Hanegraaff

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Assessment comments The following comments were left by the assessors: (edit · refresh) I was thouroughly enjoying reading about Mr.Hannegraff until I got to the contreversy section (please excuse my spelling, it is not my strong point). What a BIASED piece of .....well trash. ALthough I do appreciate the effort on the part of the author to show numerous examples of controversy in his past, it reads like a 5th grade essay with grammerical mistakes (ie- "Who know their doctrines so good")with no where near enough references and personal opinions muddying up the reading. It is too long and focuses way to much on the writers opinion and not the facts. You dont need to say 10 times that he doesnt mention other peoples books when they are better (why would he, he wants to sell his own). Not to mentin the fact that the writers claim that the donations and praise were asked for has no citation whatsoever. grrr. I am fuming and i hope that someone corrects this soon. Clarinetlaj (talk) 03:08, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

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More information about this article... The following comments have been left for this page: I was thouroughly enjoying reading about Mr.Hannegraff until I got to the contreversy section (please excuse my spelling, it is not my strong point). What a BIASED piece of .....well trash. ALthough I do appreciate the effort on the part of the author to show numerous examples of controversy in his past, it reads like a 5th grade essay with grammerical mistakes (ie- "Who know their doctrines so good")with no where near enough references and personal opinions muddying up the reading. It is too long and focuses way to much on the writers opinion and not the facts. You dont need to say 10 times that he doesnt mention other peoples books when they are better (why would he, he wants to sell his own). Not to mentin the fact that the writers claim that the donations and praise were asked for has no citation whatsoever. grrr. I am fuming and i hope that someone corrects this soon. Clarinetlaj (talk) 03:08, 27 February 2008 (UTC) (edit)

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Contents 1 Controversies website 2 Bible Answer Man 3 Books 4 Clean-up (& neutrality of 'Controversies' section) 5 Paring Down 6 Too much hearsay 7 Condescension? 8 Hanegraaff 9 Fair use rationale for Image:Hanegraaff1.jpg 10 'Recent developments' section 11 Bias 12 Extreme bias 13 Controversies Section = One-sided and Gossipy 14 Neutrality Removal 15 Firestar777 edits - April 2008 16 External Links

[edit] Controversies website

Much of the "controversies" section is documented here: [1] june 22, 2006

[edit] Bible Answer Man

I have listened to Hank's radio program nearly every day for about two years. His talkshow spends a great deal of time tearing down other denominations rather than teaching Christian doctrine. He is heavily biased against the LDS church and frequently devotes entire programs or, as he did recently, an entire week to the maligning of the LDS faith. His information is gleaned almost solely from anti-LDS writers and frequently contains misquotes, statements taken out of context, exagerated claims, and complete misrepresentations of LDS doctine, history, and lifestyle. A good example is his statement that Joseph Smith prophesied that the second coming would happen by the year 1891. This conclusion was drawn from the revelation found in Doctrine and Covenants section 130:15-17. A simple reading of the text will reveal that Joseph made no such prediction. Hank's lack of regard concerning truth and his "the ends justify the means" attitude should make anyone question both his ethics and his accuracy.(--Russell63 (talk) 06:39, 23 January 2008 (UTC))

[edit] Books

Perhaps someone would like to add a link from the Books section to the following review of "The Last Disciple"? http://www.christianbookreviews.info/lastdisciple.htm

[edit] Clean-up (& neutrality of 'Controversies' section)

I have spoken with Hank several times on the Bible Answer Man program and I have done a significant amount of research into the controversy surrounding his ministry. I have spoken directly with one of the parties who was fired by Hank for speaking up for better accounting practices at CRI. I have a CD recording of Hank getting angry with a former employee who called into the Bible Answer Man program and questioned Hank's accounting practices. All that I have read in the Controversies section appears to line up very closely with the facts I am aware of. While the list of problems at CRI seem fairly accurate, it leaves out a number of other problems which seem to have plagued the ministry. For example it appears that CRI purchased a $60,000.00 Lexus sports car for Hank's use and Hank's wife was on the payroll but employees never saw her do anything for the ministry. The combined salaries of Hank and his wife were indeed in the area of $400 to $500 thousand per year according to a number of reports. You can find out much more about all this by copying and pasting the following words into a Google search:

"Hank Hanegraaff" finances

I have not looked into it yet but I have been told that Hank's move to North Carolina (in which he left most of his staff in California) was to get out from under the scrutiny of his staff. I have also heard that he has purchased an expensive home in a gated community next to a golf course in Charlotte. I have not confirmed that info. John David 5/23/2006

I've done a major clean-up of the article today, basically re-organizing the sections, rewriting in better English, and including references etc.

The section Controversies seems to be the only remaining major problem. There are a lot of unsubstantiated claims in there, so that section needs to be redrafted more carefully and footnoted so it's clear where the claims are coming from. User:David L Rattigan 21:02 03 May 2006 GMT

Frankly, the controversies section is so NPOV that it needs to be removed. Other than Jihad and other super controversial pages, I haven't seen so biased a writing style. It almost seems like an email flame instead of Wikipedia. Delete the section if it isn't rewritten. User:Hopquick 68.13.238.221 (talk) 05:16, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Paring Down

I pared down the criticisms section to something more pithy.

Here's how it looks now:

Although not subject to widespread criticism, some have accused CRI of paying Hanegraaff an "outlandish" salary (reportedly in excess of $500,000.) He's also been criticized for an alleged intemperate attitude toward his employees and for organizational mismanagement.

I removed the this last line -

"The criticisms, however, are not widespread, and are nowhere near as vocal as those involving the multi-million dollar salaries paid to televangelists."

Besides being bad english, it's sort of a judgment call as to whether or not criticisms against Hank are widespread. Who's to say? He's kind of a minor player thus so would his critics be. The rest of the sentence is poorly written and basically irrelevant. The people who criticize Hank for earning 500 Large don't care what televangelists make. They just think HE's making too much. :)

If anyone thinks I'm being unfair here by all means let me know. I just want to see the narrative stay on track.

Big Daddy 05:02, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

I have never heard of him, but I can understand that there might be criticism for his salary. Good edit. Providing criticism in the passive voice is sometimes considered bad form on wikipedia. I can say, "some people think he cheats on his taxes" but unless it's sourcesd it's just heresay. I think there's a wikiguidance on sourcing but I am too lazy to find it right now. You might want to take out the whole thing and just say how much money he makes with a news source to back you up. MPS 23:33, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Too much hearsay

This article gets gets a little bit into hearsay I think. For example, the bit about the $500,000 salary is unsubstantiated. Is this statement based on any actual facts, or just on rumors?

This article leaves a lot to be desired on many levels I think.

"I enjoy his radio show and it helped me to break away from the word of faith movement. I hope he isn't making $500,000 each year because it would make him less credible when lambasting prosperity teachers. Now if he is making that and more from book royalties, more power to him." We need people like him and more because the common person doesn't understand how to study the Bible and heck for that matter, most ministers.

According to the 2004 IRS Form 990 (fiscal year 7/1/2004-6/30/2005), Mr. Hanegraaff was paid $199,000 plus $11,192 for expenses. His wife Kathy was employed as Director of Planning with a salary of $125,000 plus expenses of less than $2500. Copies available for public inspection at www.guidestar.org - EricP 17:48, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Woah, not so fast, Eric (my friend)! Please see my article in the Christian Sentinel that covered this. http://www.cultlink.com/news/aug_2004_sentinel_eupdate.htm The actual amount of the Hanegraaff income was "$411,727 in compensation." This was "according to the latest IRS 990 forms filed by CRI that covered the 2002-2003 fiscal year." This was based, as Eric said above, on the 990 forms available at www.guidestar.com. I also noted that it was "... up from the $358,447 of a year earlier. That is an increase of more than $53,000! CRI Vice President Paul Young, who abandoned his wife in Canada approximately a decade ago incurring the disappointment of his home church and the former president and coworkers at CRI Canada, received almost a $25,000 raise, placing his salary at $155,600. But the way the Hanegraaff compensated was reported in the IRS forms required some creativity: Hanegraaff's on paper `salary' actually went down from $251,886 to $227,167, but despite a slow speaking schedule (Hanegraaff does not speak at many churches and conferences) his expense account zoomed from $17,301 to $53,164! Meanwhile Kathy Hanegraaff's salary as `director of planning' went from $87,600 to $107,500, and her expense account went from $1,660 to $3,896. But hidden in the 990 form is the fact that Kathy Hanegraaff was the only one at CRI to receive an extra $20,000 in `contributions to employee benefit plans and deferred compensation.' Also keep in mind that according to one of the exposés of last year many CRI employees were unaware of Mrs. Hanegraaff's role at the ministry; some complained that they seldom ever saw here, and others didn't know she worked there. Yet since her hiring approximately four years ago in the newly created position, the 990 forms claim that Mrs. Hanegraaff, a parent of nine children, works more than 50 hours per week at CRI!" Of course, some new 990 forms have been filed since then that show more changes. The Christian Sentinel will report on that. Sincerely, William M. Alnor, Ph.D. Publisher, The Christian Sentinel and Assistant Professor, Dept. of Communication, California State University, East Bay (Hayward) w_alnor@yahoo.com

[edit] Condescension?

I've enjoyed his "Bible Answer Man" radio program, and found much of it helpful, but, at the same time, I am not surprised at some of the problems Hanegraaff's apparently had with CRI employees, because one can certainly detect a note of condescension when he disagrees with someone calling-in to the program. For example, words to the effect of "If you would just read the text of the Biblical passage in question, I don't think you would have the problem you are having with it," with an implication that the caller hasn't read it, or wasn't intelligent enough/reasonable enough/of good enough faith, to figure out what the text was saying. That being said, I've also heard Hanegraaff be somewhat good natured with callers he disagrees with, so he's by no means consistently condescending.

I've only listened to the program once or twice, but I thought he generally seemed to be a friendly and intelligent person. However, I think it is important to have this large criticisms section because of all the controversial positions he has taken, most of which I didn't know about before reading this article. Academic Challenger 09:33, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Does he have a college education? I have never seen any info on his holding any academic training in theology. I'm not saying you need it in order to be an effective minister but it has always been something I've wanted to know about him.

[edit] Hanegraaff

Any known realtionship between the two Hanegraaffs? --Pjacobi 22:28, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Hanegraaff1.jpg

Image:Hanegraaff1.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot 05:00, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 'Recent developments' section

The 'Recent developments' sections is a real mess. It currently looks like a talk page section and has numerous misspellings. 207.195.244.215 (talk) 02:20, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bias

Ahem...this is a well-written article, to be sure, yet I find some rather unscholarly material in the "Controversies" section. Skim over it and you'll see what I mean. It looks less like an encyclopedia article and more like a weblog. It gives in great detail attacks on Mr. Hanegraff, but does not offer any objections to those. Can we please be neutral and give both opinions, rather than just those of his adversaries? It just looks so unscholarly. Scorpionman (talk) 19:44, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Extreme bias

I think this is the most biased Wikipedia entry I've ever come across. There is no place for axe-grinding and an extended section of attack after attack in an encyclopedia-like publication.

At best, the page is the opposite of Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.30.58.241 (talk) 06:29, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Controversies Section = One-sided and Gossipy

The Controversies section is filled (indeed, that section is as large as--or larger than--the rest of the article put together) with mostly (if not entirely) opinion and hearsay from those who oppose Mr. Hanegraaff, but essentially no unbiased, verified facts are offered. The current state of that section gives it the appearance of a flame board, almost as if it should be renamed from "Controversies" to "If you want to flame Hank, post here!"

Within this discussion page (see above) the following note was added: "Much of the 'controversies' section is documented here: [2] june 22, 2006." The link offered directs the reader to the Walter Martin website, but clearly this site cannot be unbiased, as Mr. Martin's surviving relatives and their friends (i.e. those who run the waltermartin.com website) are among Hank's most adamant critics.

I am greatly concerned that the trend set, thus far, within the Controversies section is only going to encourage others whom Mr. Hanegraaff has bravely stood against to indiscriminately add flaming slander. Note that citations are missing throughout nearly the entire section, at this time.

--Beleg Strongbow (talk) 19:12, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Neutrality Removal

I'm too tired to read what the neutrality note is about, let me guess, someone is mad that Hank's bad side isn't mentioned? Well I put in a link to what is apparently site with the most documentation on his misbehavior with examples of his his credit-theft. I didn't check to see if that site uses the biblical two or three witnesses rules. Perhaps someone can ask the owner of that site, "Are these one person witness accusations as to his unkink behavior, or are there dual witnesses to any single events?"Firestar777 (talk) 16:15, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure who added it, but when an encyclopedic entry on a WP:BLP has a criticism larger than the body of the article, that is a clear sign that the article is likely in some violation of WP:NPOV. Additionally, I removed your blog-sourced Calvin/Armenian addition, as it is clearly a violation of coatracking WP:COAT, along with using blog-sourced material in violation of verifiability/notability/credibility WP:V and original research WP:NOR. Contrary to popular "Reformed" thought, rejecting Calvinist systematic theology does not automatically make one's theology Armenian.--Lyonscc (talk) 19:27, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Firestar777 edits - April 2008

Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did to Hank Hanegraaff. Your edits appear to constitute vandalism, and in violation of "No Original Research", "Coatracking" of tangential issues (Calvinist/Arminian debate), and Blog-sourcingin Biographies of Living Perons and have been reverted. If you insist on continuing in this behavior, as noted here and above, you risk being temporarily or permanently prevented from editing the Wikipedia.--Lyonscc (talk) 21:26, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Firestar, your edits are all in violation of WP:NOR, WP:V, etc. If you insist on making these changes w/o discussion (such as inserting the Armenian/Calvin debate where it has nothing to do with the notability of Hanegraff), you will be reported to admins. These are NOT false allegations--Lyonscc (talk) 12:41, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Example 1 - you wrote -

His statement about God being a cosmic rapist is also a logical fallacy as it it universally accepted that to love a person is not forcing that love on them nor is a parent or anyone classified as a rapist for loving someone who doesn't want that love. For example, a parent would not be considered a rapist for loving their child if the child was hating them at the same time.

This is an example of a direct violation of the wikipedia policy on no original research.

A person's biography page is not the place upon which to fight your theological battles.--Lyonscc (talk) 12:45, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Example 2 - you wrote -

Hank has identified himself as an Arminian by various statements such as the one below made on his Bible Answer Man call in radio show on February, 4, 2000:

God is neither a cosmic rapist who forces his love on people, nor is he a cosmic puppeteer who forces people to love him. Instead God grants us the freedom of choice.

He also repeated this in an article he wrote.[1]

In matter of fact, HH did NOT identify himself as an Arminian - this is something you are inferring (a violation of WP:NOR). Additionally, HH is not notable for his choice (or lack thereof) of systematic theology. Inserting this debate is a form of coatracking, and is in violation of Biographies of Living Persons and WP:NPOV.--Lyonscc (talk) 12:52, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] External Links

Per Wikipedia policy on sourcing WP:V, blogs are not adequate sources for Wikipedia, with the exception of the blog of the subject of a Biography of a Living Person. Additionally, the level of rigor increases for Biographies of Living Persons, particularly as it pertains to citations for criticism.

This article is about Hank Hannegraff, not the Christian Research Institute. I am removing the external links that primarily deal with CRI criticism, as these are in violation of coatracking an issue larger than Hannegraff. These links may be relevant to the CRI page in Wikipedia, depending on their use and integration. Additionally, I am removing the CRI financial link for similar reasons, in addition to the peculiarity of its inclusion, whereas most Biographies of Living Persons do not concentrate on such particulars.

I am removing the Walter Martin family statement, as it is self-published (in violation of WP:V) and disconnected from any reliable source (the site in which it is a sub-page is dead).

The 'Ministry Watch' link is broken (no article appears). If you do a lookup on the site, it is about CRI, not Hannegraff specifically. Additionally, it is self-published by this "watchdog" site. This link should not be in the article, as it is a violation of WP:V, WP:COAT and WP:BLP. The guidestar.org link is removed, as well, as it deals with CRI - not Hannegraff - and it is broken.

Please refrain from adding these back into the article.--Lyonscc (talk) 13:01, 23 April 2008 (UTC)