What Various Televangelists Promote

For several years, those who would otherwise have gone to church remained in their homes to avoid coming down with COVID-19. This greatly increased the number who stayed home and watched televised services, a trend that continued to the detriment of church attendance.

This has been a major cultural shift. As a result, many honorable and gifted pastors began to televise their sermons and homilies. Such pastors were not primarily televangelists. They were ministers and priests.

Some televangelists, such as the late Billy Graham, are admirable. They present straightforward Christianity, and in response to their messages, those who never darken the door of a church become Christians. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has been responsible for tens of thousands, if not millions, coming to faith in God through Christ.

Billy Graham made no attempt to direct those who attended his “crusades” to join a specific church or denomination. He was happy simply to introduce them to what C. S. Lewis famously called “mere Christianity.”

Since the middle of the twentieth century, in the days of black-and-white TV, ministers like Graham have televised their Sunday services. Some were sincere and faithfully represented the Christian gospel. Others, however, discovered that religion could be a lucrative business. Some of them became very wealthy, and a few went to jail for fraud or embezzlement. More than a few took advantage of their celebrity to carry on extramarital affairs.

Fleecing the sheep has a long and shameful history, as portrayed in Sinclair Lewis’ satirical 1926 novel Elmer Gantry, made into a 1960 film of the same name. Innocent but naive people in search of hope have often donated what little they had to unscrupulous predators masquerading as servants of God, even if it meant depriving their own children of food or clothing. Such practices are unfortunately alive and well in America.

Some persuasive televangelists promise listeners benefits that cause more enlightened Christians to groan. These benefits prove attractive to people looking for hope, or who want to listen to an upbeat message that avoids all reference to the value of taking an honest look at one’s personal failings and relying on the living Christ to intercede on their behalf. Those hawking such alleged benefits avoid all reference to the need for repentance. The hope they offer is false and their promises unrealistic.

Not long ago, there was a prime time television special, an exposé, about a faith healer who drove a Rolls Royce and shopped at the most exclusive stores on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. It is doubtful that he brought about much if any healing, and many of those who attended his events—we will not call them services—appeared genuinely desperate. In return for their donations, most probably experienced only disappointment, and it is likely that more than a few ended up bitterly rejecting all religion.

No reputable Christian thinker argues that becoming a Christian will automatically make a person healthier. God never promises, nor does any mainline Christian church teach, that becoming a Christian will improve anyone’s physical well-being. Jesus, who remains the Lord of the universe, may choose to grant a Christian better health, but this is by no means guaranteed. Faith healers who tell people otherwise are, at the very least, misguided. Some may genuinely have what some Christians call the gift of healing, but no one has the right to talk or act as if God is automatically going to do what they ask or pray for.

Other televangelists offer prosperity. If those in the audience will only have faith, they are told, God will bless them with financial abundance. Such anticipated prosperity may also allow them, of course, to put more money in the collection plate, or if they are watching on TV, to mail in a donation. Becoming a Christian does not mean you will automatically have more money. You are likely, in fact, to have less, since part of Jesus’ message was that Christians should be generous, especially toward the needy. A preacher of a prosperity gospel may enable that preacher to grow an ever larger audience, and sometimes become rich at the expense of those who almost certainly will never be.

Christianity doesn’t promise happiness either. It certainly does not guarantee you with an ideal husband or wife, or even one at all. Jesus, in fact, taught that a Christian may actually become less happy, at least in a conventional sense. It is good, here, to keep in mind the difference between happiness and blessedness. Someone in whose heart Christ truly lives may, counterintuitively. experience a joyful blessedness even while enduring great hardship or even persecution.

How could it be otherwise? Christians, if they are true to their beliefs, are neither fans of, nor advocates for, what the New Testament identifies as the world system. If, as Christians believe, there is a dark force operating against faith and in support of despair and cynicism, the world system is its playground.

Anyone who becomes a Christian in the expectation of better health, greater wealth, or more secular happiness is likely to be disappointed. Some who become Christians do indeed become healthier, wealthier, or happier. But God guarantees them none of this. A Christian ought rightly to give thanks for whatever blessings come along, but he or she should never expect them to come.

God promises us mortals nothing beyond life, in and through Christ, liberation from death, and a future eternal existence. Nothing else is on offer and never has been.