T.V. Evangelism and Evangelists
C. D. Norman
C. D. Norman
The current trend in evangelism is through T.V. broadcasts. It has two advantages: it reaches a wider audience and it ushers in a comfortable inflow of money for the evangelists, apparently to run more of the programmes. The viewers are happy and so are the evangelists. Besides the inflow of money, they become widely known and popular over a much wider area than it was possible during the days before the advent of TV.
The number of TV evangelists in Tamil Nadu is surprisingly high as are the number of commercial TV channels willing to accommodate them. Christian religious programmes in Tamil are telecast by channels like Raj digital, Jaya TV, Vijay TV and SS Music. Besides there are a number of English channels (round the clock): GOD channel, Miracle net, Daystar and New Hope TV. Also Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi channels. They all proclaim one decisive overt objective: To reach the gospel to the ends of the earth so as to bring the second coming of Christ sooner.. And their concealed objective is conversion.
I have been watching some of these Tamil and English programmes, not to satisfy my emotional or spiritual needs but to evaluate them in my own light.
These evangelists can be broadly grouped in to two categories.
The number of TV evangelists in Tamil Nadu is surprisingly high as are the number of commercial TV channels willing to accommodate them. Christian religious programmes in Tamil are telecast by channels like Raj digital, Jaya TV, Vijay TV and SS Music. Besides there are a number of English channels (round the clock): GOD channel, Miracle net, Daystar and New Hope TV. Also Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi channels. They all proclaim one decisive overt objective: To reach the gospel to the ends of the earth so as to bring the second coming of Christ sooner.. And their concealed objective is conversion.
I have been watching some of these Tamil and English programmes, not to satisfy my emotional or spiritual needs but to evaluate them in my own light.
These evangelists can be broadly grouped in to two categories.
1) Those with objective of propagating Christian faith and theology in a forceful and authoritative tone (unlike sermons in the churches which are docile and time bound - 15 minutes) aimed both at receptive Christians and indifferent non-Christians.
2) Prosperity gospellers who offer miracle healing and additional incentives like monetary gains, jobs, promotions and the like through their prayers. The first group of evangelists are much less watched than the second who are articulate, expressive, dramatic and capable of drawing huge crowds to their meetings and a large viewership for their TV programmes.
Prosperity evangelists are well dressed, well groomed, healthy and happy. Some of them are globe-trotters. They are, by and large, dressed in expensive clothes and if the entire family is involved in evangelism, one can guess how extensively furnished their wardrobe should be. There is a very popular family centred in Madras: father, mother, son, daughter-in-law, grand son and grand daughters all of them claiming to be evangelists in their own right and having been anointed by fire and Holy Spirit. They live off the contributions from their votaries and TV viewers, soaking up a substantial part of the money for their personal use. They live in luxurious style in expensively furnished living quarters and office areas, all air conditioned, possibly, unlike Jesus whom they proclaim to the people who was poor, homeless, and never asked for money to support himself or his disciples. Raising themselves up to the level and life style of modern social and economic standards of high society, they travel in expensive cars, demand five-star hotel accommodation wherever they are invited to organise their meetings, at the expense of the local people vast majority of whom could ill afford to support such expensive evangelism. But they do lend their support, nevertheless, because of the faith drilled into their minds that God will repay them hundred fold if they uphold the ministry, even with what little they could spare. Invariably such meetings end up with more demand for money to build a new prayer house or to expand the existing ones , which buildings eventually end up as family property under a thin veil of family-trust, assumed to be the gift from God for their service to Him
When one evangelist lady from the west who always presents herself in very expensive dresses was questioned why she was extravagantly dressed, she asked them not to be jealous for she would be dressed even more gorgeously in heaven in the presence of God. Which was not the answer to the question.
One evangelist, a sadhu in saffron robes demanded., some two years go, Rs.60 lakhs for developing a studio with equipments for the making of his TV programmes. The amount was promptly subscribed by his followers. His present demand is for rupees thirty-five crores for the expansion of his studios and TV ministry to Nepal, Tibet and other North Indian Languages. GOD channel is a typical example. Only last year it demanded eight million pound sterling from its viewers for its broadcasting studios. Amazingly, the sum was subscribed almost within a week. And their demand today is 20 million pound sterling for modernising their studios and updating the equipments to accommodate the latest technology in telecasting. Money is pouring in, though not as fast as after their first demand. 20 million pound sterling is Rs. 150 crores in our currency.
Pastor Benny Hinn who attracts large crowds for his crusades all over the world claims to spend millions of dollars for his crusades. If one observed the vast arrangements made for his crusades one will be able to realise the truth of his statements. For his Bangalore crusade in January 2005, he said, he spent two million dollars. And he conducts a crusade almost every month through the course of the year, in one country or the other around the globe.
Paul Dinakaran once said that they (the family) run 40 different programmes every week in various languages and that on an average each programme costs Rs.25,000 from the stage of planning and preparation to its telecasting. This means an expenditure of rupees five crores every year. ( In the Jesus Calls programme on 1st of May 2005 it was announced that they run 100 programmes in a week!) And this, in brief, is the financial aspect of TV evangelism. And who bears the burden? It is everybody’s guess.
Most of these programmes carry clippings from films on Jesus. These ‘cuts’ from films made by western producers are used either to motivate the viewers or to fill in ‘gaps’ in their programmes. The miracles performed by Jesus are repeatedly shown as also his suffering at the hands of the Roman soldiers and His crucifixion, in order to touch the hearts of the viewers and arouse their compassion. How many times can one watch the same visuals exhibited over and over again in one or the other channel? For a non-Christian viewer this might look ridiculous. Too frequent an exposition of the films on the life of Christ becomes a mockery and serious violation of God’s command not to represent Him in any form including visual. Jesus was human , no doubt, during the period he lived on this earth as depicted in these pictures but he was also divine, Son of God.
The influence of commercial cinema can be seen in the shooting and exhibition of song and dance sequences in religious broadcasts, the songs, in any case, are not very musical to the ear. Some of these songs are supplemented by body movements of the singer or a group of singers , such as hand gestures, jerking of the legs and gyration of hips along with zoom-in or zoom-out background shots of rivers in spate, water falls, cascades of water leaping over and between rocks, flower beds in parks, flight of colourful birds, rural scenes of moving bullock carts on village tank bunds etc. The display of dances and fanciful backdrops distract the attention of the viewer more than be helpful in conveying the real message of the programme.
The solemn and beautifully worded church hymns and lyrics have been dumped in to the dust bin by the TV evangelical programmers. . We hardly hear them sung even by church choirs in these programmes. Dinakaran (sr) comes out occasionally with a lyric sung in deep guttural voice. Another gentleman singer in the robes of a priest goes almost into a trance while singing his own compositions, very sentimental, very emotional. He also breaks in to a dance movement somewhat resembling “kummi”, as it is known in Tamil. I understand he is in great favour with Christians whose musical appreciation is quite primitive and emotional susceptibility high.
Another unhealthy trend in TV evangelism is the use of group dances similar to those in commercial cinemas . This has nothing to do with the spreading of Christian knowledge. The dancers are extravagantly and expensively dressed,dances choreographed by amateurs and the performance mainly aimed at highlighting the children of the family of evangelists.
Presenting one act plays called “short Plays” or “Kuru Natakam” in Tamil as introductory part of a programme is another hazard of watching these programmes. The people who act these plays neither have histrionic talent nor artistic inclination. The plays are meant to highlight morals which are derived from the scriptures. Themes like a drunkard husband, son addicted to drugs, office clerk indifferent and disobedient to his boss, a family deep in debt etc. At the end of the play comes a quotation from the Bible, someone in the play triumphantly declaring those verses. The erring characters repent and are instantaneously reformed . All ends well. The world is happy and peaceful again. Except the discerning one who looked for some quality in the drama. He develops a headache.
Any play intended to project a moral at the end is bound to be boring. The target audience to these plays are essentially the simple minded who are incapable of distinguishing right from the wrong and who absorb these morals at one moment and forget them the next. Bobby Talayarkhan, a famous cricket commentator once said while broadcasting from Bombay, “The TV set you are sitting before is an idiot box with the idiot at this end.” In the case of moralistic TV plays one is not sure on which side of the TV is the idiot.
When the examination months of April and May approach, the evangelists wake up afresh like hibernating frogs after the first rain. They organise prayer meetings for those hapless students lost in their study, call them together to conduct prayer sessions (not study sessions) and pray over the TV for brilliant success in their examinations in order to get easy entrance into universities and professional colleges. TV interviews are conducted where ex-students who did well in their exams in previous years are called to witness the benign effect of prayers by this or that brother or uncle. They are given prayer cards which the students are supposed to carry with them but not a word is spoken of hard work and concentrated study. Every student is promised the first place in the examination. The students are happy as also their parents. The evangelists are happy too for having made so many young believers, until the day the results are published when it becomes clear to all that only one among them can stand first, not all as prayed for.
I remember the witness of a girl who went through this regimen. She said, “A week before the examination I fell sick. I couldn’t study at all. I prayed with brother ….. ‘s prayer card . When I went to the examination hall my mind went blank. I took out the prayer card and prayed. I then went through the question paper and prayed again. And when I started to write, to my surprise, I kept on answering all the questions as if I knew the answers well. Then I realised that that it was not I but Jesus who wrote the answers. I thanked Him for that . I got good marks in the exam and obtained a first class certificate. Thanks to Jesus, thanks to bro…… “ If the girl had realised it was Jesus who wrote her papers she should also have known that she didn’t deserve her degree and must have had the moral courage to return the certificate to the university. Actually the degree must have been conferred on Jesus. There is a catch somewhere. Did Jesus help her with good memory to attempt her papers well or did Jesus connive with her in cheating? Sometimes a person’s vision goes blurred and logic gets derailed.
Now and then we find these religious channels being used for advertising the sponsor’s own products like books, videotapes, audio tapes, CDs etc. Books of Benny Hinn range from Rs. 1200 to Rs. 1700. His pictorial calendar for 2005 was priced at Rs 1850 and a made-in-Israel earthen lamp which gives out fragrant fumes when lighted is prices at Rs. 4750. Admissions to a group of engineering colleges is given wide publicity by supporting visuals of their lecture halls, laboratories, libraries, hostels, kitchens, playgrounds and other places of interest in the campus including the enclosure for prayer where offerings can be made. Some senior students of the college are called upon to give testimony on the advantages of joining this college. Evangelism then takes a second place
Evangelist Paul Dinakaran and his wife are on a visit to Norway (telecast: late April 2005) along with their camera crew on the pretext of evangelism but actually with the commercial intention of securing the collaboration of four Norwegian Universities with their own Karunya University. Full coverage of this including their meetings with the bosses of the Norway Universities and a lady member of Norwegian Parliament have been telecast with impunity in their TV programme with the sole purpose of advertising their Karunya University during the time paid for by their votaries for evangelical work. Are they so naïve to assume that their admirers are eager to see them kick the snow in Oslo (as shown in the visual) and throw hands full of snow towards the camera? Or are they blinded by their popularity as not to see what they are doing can come under fire and be criticised by observant people?
A preacher from Andhra exhibits his lovely campus of Theological College run by him and charity home for women, near Vijayawada. Quite a number of them also run orphanages, technical schools. Bible colleges, charity homes which they advertise along with their spiritual messages. Pastor Benny Hinn’s support by a contribution of 2 million dollars to a Christian charity hospital in Calcutta, every year, was widely acclaimed both by the donor and the recipient on the TV screen.
Some of the evangelists in their desire to show how popular their ministries are, show footages of visuals of the crowd attending their meetings video-graphed from different vantage points. Benny Hinn loves to declare the details and the number of ‘saints’ at his crusades. He believes that the total attendance in his three days crusade in Bangalore was 7 millions (seventy lakhs) which is one million more than the entire population of the city of Bangalore. But the Bangalore police estimated the total attendance all the three days to be around two and a half millions. Bangalore police had to file an affidavit with the Karnaraka High Court on the conduct of Benny Hinn’s crusades. Why this vast difference in the two estimates? If Benny Hinn’s team had gone wrong in their estimate in Bangalore it is likely that the went wrong at other place too. But then why the emphasis on the number?
The central theme of almost all prosperity oriented evangelists are ;miracle cure of diseases, solving of domestic troubles, settling monetary problems, childless couples to be blessed with babies, long unmarried boys and girls to find their spouses soon, recovery from deep debts in business and the like. People do claim total relief from their troubles as a result of the prayers by these evangelists and go on the stage to witness what God had done for them. Interviews are arranged which are well rehearsed before hand and video-graphed for telecasts later. Even telephone interviews are arranged for the convenience of those who live far away. These witnesses are mainly aimed at believers to strengthen their belief further and at the sceptics to convince them of the miracles
No doubt these servants of God are prayerful men and women. They claim direct communication and interaction with God through incessant and continuous prayers in their personal lives. Some of them claim that God spoke to them in audio voice or ‘appeared’ before them in all glory like brilliant light etc. One of them said in his broadcast that Jesus appeared before him while praying for a lady in bed in a hospital in Singapore and spoke to him. I sent him an e-mail asking him if Jesus resembled the pictures of Jesus which we normally assume to be his physical appearance and displayed in our homes, in what dress was he attired, was it all white or coloured, in what language He spoke to him. My enquiry may appear sacrilegious and impertinent to many but, no, it was my curiosity to know in more detail about his vision. It was an honest enquiry. He did not reply. I had a feeling he wouldn’t
Preachers like Benny Hinn, Dinakaran (sr) and (jr) and many others, while praying in general for the sick, casually call the names of the sick and the suffering, among the congregations gathered before them and sometimes names of persons even far away from the meetings. It is claimed that these names are revealed to them by the Holy Spirit Techniques of TV help them later to coordinate the earlier events of calling the names, followed by the interviews with the persons called, add the witness of miracles that had happened to them and telecast the visuals with dramatic effect in the minds of their TV audience.
Faith healings and miracles were only a part of the ministry of Christ during His life on this earth. The basic requirement of Christian faith is saving of human souls through their declaration of faith in Christ as Son of God and the acceptance of the shedding of His blood for the redemption of man from Adamic sin. Jesus had to resort to parables and miracles in order to attract the attention of the ordinary Israelites who were mostly illiterate and to bring them to the path of salvation through faith. His divine healings, restoring the sight to the blind, raising the dead back to life depended upon peoples’ declaration of their faith in his divinity and confession of their faith that Jesus could do what looked impossible for others. Unquestioned faith and commitment were prerequisites to healing and other miracles.
Jesus, being divine, could undo partly, instantaneously and briefly his own laws of nature, like raising Lazarus four days after he was buried., commanding storms to stop blowing or turning water in to wine. In the case of Lazarus there was an absolute reversal of chemical decomposition, reviving the property called life and restoring all biological functions of the resurrected physical body. Ordering the ceasing of a storm instantaneously by rebuking it involves the sudden stopping of an enormous force being conveyed by the wind and reducing the force to nothing, goes against the law of conservation of energy. When water was converted to wine, simple molecules of water H2 O changed to complex molecules of a large number of organic chemical constituents of wine as though by mutation of atoms which was against all known laws of chemistry. Jesus could do them because He was God himself (son of God), the creator, modifier, destroyer and re-maker of laws of nature. With all that He was humble after each healing. “Do not tell others about this”, “Go to the temple and make the sacrifices demanded of the cure and the cleansing of leprosy”. And that was all. It was the people who spoke of all His miracles and spread the news by word of mouth
The offer of prayer on request over the telephone by volunteers is an innovative facility offered through twenty-four hour prayer houses where people with their head phones ‘ON’ sit through night and day in anticipation of distress calls from the sick and the suffering, from far and near, just to pray for them. They are called “jeba veerar” in Tamil, (possibly derived from Salvation Army terminology). Great. One organisation has planted its volunteers in Bombay, Madras, Madurai, Thirunelveli, Trivandrum, Coimbatore, Hyderabad and God knows where else. Your woes are dutifully listened to by them and prayed for with tears pleading with God for redressing of the problems on hand. It is based on the belief that God in heaven is constantly listening to the messages from these prayer houses dealing out cures for the sick, jobs for the unemployed, promotion in jobs to the overlooked employees, and most significantly removing instantly cancerous growths from patients minutes before being wheeled to the operation theatre, to the utter amazement of the surgeons and confusion of the operating team. But the distressing thing is that the prayers are followed up, I am told, with requests (or demand) for money as contribution . It is quite likely, I have no first hand knowledge.
There are a couple of evangelists who when raising their prayers to God before the mike and a million strong congregation, cry with tears rolling down their cheeks to let the TV watchers see how deeply they identify themselves with human suffering and plead with God with burden and agony in their souls. The opening sentence of a book by a Parsi author who was a war correspondent in the Far East during the Second World War runs, “Men do not cry, not men like me.” He had been eye-witness to many a tragic war deaths and wanton destruction. But our evangelists are different.
Miracle and prosperity oriented evangelists pray for almost identical problems, repeatedly again and again. They have in stock memory a list of human ailments pertaining to the heart, the lungs, brain, blood, the circulatory system and the like which they refer to in turn, one or two at a time which they combine with requests for the gift of babies for long barren couples, early marriages for long awaiting boys and girls for their spouses, building new houses for those in need of one, wiping out of burdensome loans and restoring domestic harmony where the home is divided and in conflict. These prayers are impersonal, general and may apply to hundreds and thousands under similar circumstances world over. Praying for a named person for his or her specific needs is understandable but a general request to remove the brain tumours from all the patients all over the world is ridiculous. Had every prayer of theirs been granted there should be no sick person on this planet and all hospitals closed and the doctors and nurses thrown out of jobs.
The Bangalore crusade of pastor Benny Hinn was dedicated to bless India. There was a significant slant towards pleasing the Karnataka Govt. and local politicians while at the same time being challenged by the BJP activists who asked, “Who is this man from the US to bless us?” A number of ministers of Karnataka government including the Chief Minister and high dignitaries and officials were invited and welcomed personally on the dais. Indian national anthem and Vandematharam CD by A.R.Rahman were played full length to please the politicians. On the third day of the crusade the people were asked to bring Indian national flag with them to be waved at suitable points during the meeting,
It is well known that Dinakarans went on a pilgrimage to Delhi to meet Kanchi Sankarachariar who was camping there for the favour of his recommendation with the then BJP Govt. at the centre to grant the status of deemed university to Karunya Institute of Engineering, for which the acharya was presented with a silver Hindu puja vessel in which the holy ash (vibhuthi) is kept .
This mixing of Christian evangelists with politicians, government officials and Hindu saints for favours does not speak well of them, to say the least, whatever be the motive or compulsion that drives them into such situations. These observations of mine may be dismissed by many as negative, frivolous, mischievous and at worse, irreligious. Good, bad or indifferent, evangelism has caught up worldwide and is spreading like wild fire to every corner of the planet making use of the most modern means of communication and technical excellence made available for man through advancement in science. We have come a long way from the days of Jesus who advised his disciples ,”Do not take along any gold or silver or copper in your belts; take no bags for the journey; or extra tunic or sandals or a staff ….” and from the days when the crowd that followed Him was perhaps not more than five thousand individuals whom he addressed not through mikes and loudspeakers but by his own gentle voice. And what a difference between then and now!
Prosperity evangelists are well dressed, well groomed, healthy and happy. Some of them are globe-trotters. They are, by and large, dressed in expensive clothes and if the entire family is involved in evangelism, one can guess how extensively furnished their wardrobe should be. There is a very popular family centred in Madras: father, mother, son, daughter-in-law, grand son and grand daughters all of them claiming to be evangelists in their own right and having been anointed by fire and Holy Spirit. They live off the contributions from their votaries and TV viewers, soaking up a substantial part of the money for their personal use. They live in luxurious style in expensively furnished living quarters and office areas, all air conditioned, possibly, unlike Jesus whom they proclaim to the people who was poor, homeless, and never asked for money to support himself or his disciples. Raising themselves up to the level and life style of modern social and economic standards of high society, they travel in expensive cars, demand five-star hotel accommodation wherever they are invited to organise their meetings, at the expense of the local people vast majority of whom could ill afford to support such expensive evangelism. But they do lend their support, nevertheless, because of the faith drilled into their minds that God will repay them hundred fold if they uphold the ministry, even with what little they could spare. Invariably such meetings end up with more demand for money to build a new prayer house or to expand the existing ones , which buildings eventually end up as family property under a thin veil of family-trust, assumed to be the gift from God for their service to Him
When one evangelist lady from the west who always presents herself in very expensive dresses was questioned why she was extravagantly dressed, she asked them not to be jealous for she would be dressed even more gorgeously in heaven in the presence of God. Which was not the answer to the question.
One evangelist, a sadhu in saffron robes demanded., some two years go, Rs.60 lakhs for developing a studio with equipments for the making of his TV programmes. The amount was promptly subscribed by his followers. His present demand is for rupees thirty-five crores for the expansion of his studios and TV ministry to Nepal, Tibet and other North Indian Languages. GOD channel is a typical example. Only last year it demanded eight million pound sterling from its viewers for its broadcasting studios. Amazingly, the sum was subscribed almost within a week. And their demand today is 20 million pound sterling for modernising their studios and updating the equipments to accommodate the latest technology in telecasting. Money is pouring in, though not as fast as after their first demand. 20 million pound sterling is Rs. 150 crores in our currency.
Pastor Benny Hinn who attracts large crowds for his crusades all over the world claims to spend millions of dollars for his crusades. If one observed the vast arrangements made for his crusades one will be able to realise the truth of his statements. For his Bangalore crusade in January 2005, he said, he spent two million dollars. And he conducts a crusade almost every month through the course of the year, in one country or the other around the globe.
Paul Dinakaran once said that they (the family) run 40 different programmes every week in various languages and that on an average each programme costs Rs.25,000 from the stage of planning and preparation to its telecasting. This means an expenditure of rupees five crores every year. ( In the Jesus Calls programme on 1st of May 2005 it was announced that they run 100 programmes in a week!) And this, in brief, is the financial aspect of TV evangelism. And who bears the burden? It is everybody’s guess.
Most of these programmes carry clippings from films on Jesus. These ‘cuts’ from films made by western producers are used either to motivate the viewers or to fill in ‘gaps’ in their programmes. The miracles performed by Jesus are repeatedly shown as also his suffering at the hands of the Roman soldiers and His crucifixion, in order to touch the hearts of the viewers and arouse their compassion. How many times can one watch the same visuals exhibited over and over again in one or the other channel? For a non-Christian viewer this might look ridiculous. Too frequent an exposition of the films on the life of Christ becomes a mockery and serious violation of God’s command not to represent Him in any form including visual. Jesus was human , no doubt, during the period he lived on this earth as depicted in these pictures but he was also divine, Son of God.
The influence of commercial cinema can be seen in the shooting and exhibition of song and dance sequences in religious broadcasts, the songs, in any case, are not very musical to the ear. Some of these songs are supplemented by body movements of the singer or a group of singers , such as hand gestures, jerking of the legs and gyration of hips along with zoom-in or zoom-out background shots of rivers in spate, water falls, cascades of water leaping over and between rocks, flower beds in parks, flight of colourful birds, rural scenes of moving bullock carts on village tank bunds etc. The display of dances and fanciful backdrops distract the attention of the viewer more than be helpful in conveying the real message of the programme.
The solemn and beautifully worded church hymns and lyrics have been dumped in to the dust bin by the TV evangelical programmers. . We hardly hear them sung even by church choirs in these programmes. Dinakaran (sr) comes out occasionally with a lyric sung in deep guttural voice. Another gentleman singer in the robes of a priest goes almost into a trance while singing his own compositions, very sentimental, very emotional. He also breaks in to a dance movement somewhat resembling “kummi”, as it is known in Tamil. I understand he is in great favour with Christians whose musical appreciation is quite primitive and emotional susceptibility high.
Another unhealthy trend in TV evangelism is the use of group dances similar to those in commercial cinemas . This has nothing to do with the spreading of Christian knowledge. The dancers are extravagantly and expensively dressed,dances choreographed by amateurs and the performance mainly aimed at highlighting the children of the family of evangelists.
Presenting one act plays called “short Plays” or “Kuru Natakam” in Tamil as introductory part of a programme is another hazard of watching these programmes. The people who act these plays neither have histrionic talent nor artistic inclination. The plays are meant to highlight morals which are derived from the scriptures. Themes like a drunkard husband, son addicted to drugs, office clerk indifferent and disobedient to his boss, a family deep in debt etc. At the end of the play comes a quotation from the Bible, someone in the play triumphantly declaring those verses. The erring characters repent and are instantaneously reformed . All ends well. The world is happy and peaceful again. Except the discerning one who looked for some quality in the drama. He develops a headache.
Any play intended to project a moral at the end is bound to be boring. The target audience to these plays are essentially the simple minded who are incapable of distinguishing right from the wrong and who absorb these morals at one moment and forget them the next. Bobby Talayarkhan, a famous cricket commentator once said while broadcasting from Bombay, “The TV set you are sitting before is an idiot box with the idiot at this end.” In the case of moralistic TV plays one is not sure on which side of the TV is the idiot.
When the examination months of April and May approach, the evangelists wake up afresh like hibernating frogs after the first rain. They organise prayer meetings for those hapless students lost in their study, call them together to conduct prayer sessions (not study sessions) and pray over the TV for brilliant success in their examinations in order to get easy entrance into universities and professional colleges. TV interviews are conducted where ex-students who did well in their exams in previous years are called to witness the benign effect of prayers by this or that brother or uncle. They are given prayer cards which the students are supposed to carry with them but not a word is spoken of hard work and concentrated study. Every student is promised the first place in the examination. The students are happy as also their parents. The evangelists are happy too for having made so many young believers, until the day the results are published when it becomes clear to all that only one among them can stand first, not all as prayed for.
I remember the witness of a girl who went through this regimen. She said, “A week before the examination I fell sick. I couldn’t study at all. I prayed with brother ….. ‘s prayer card . When I went to the examination hall my mind went blank. I took out the prayer card and prayed. I then went through the question paper and prayed again. And when I started to write, to my surprise, I kept on answering all the questions as if I knew the answers well. Then I realised that that it was not I but Jesus who wrote the answers. I thanked Him for that . I got good marks in the exam and obtained a first class certificate. Thanks to Jesus, thanks to bro…… “ If the girl had realised it was Jesus who wrote her papers she should also have known that she didn’t deserve her degree and must have had the moral courage to return the certificate to the university. Actually the degree must have been conferred on Jesus. There is a catch somewhere. Did Jesus help her with good memory to attempt her papers well or did Jesus connive with her in cheating? Sometimes a person’s vision goes blurred and logic gets derailed.
Now and then we find these religious channels being used for advertising the sponsor’s own products like books, videotapes, audio tapes, CDs etc. Books of Benny Hinn range from Rs. 1200 to Rs. 1700. His pictorial calendar for 2005 was priced at Rs 1850 and a made-in-Israel earthen lamp which gives out fragrant fumes when lighted is prices at Rs. 4750. Admissions to a group of engineering colleges is given wide publicity by supporting visuals of their lecture halls, laboratories, libraries, hostels, kitchens, playgrounds and other places of interest in the campus including the enclosure for prayer where offerings can be made. Some senior students of the college are called upon to give testimony on the advantages of joining this college. Evangelism then takes a second place
Evangelist Paul Dinakaran and his wife are on a visit to Norway (telecast: late April 2005) along with their camera crew on the pretext of evangelism but actually with the commercial intention of securing the collaboration of four Norwegian Universities with their own Karunya University. Full coverage of this including their meetings with the bosses of the Norway Universities and a lady member of Norwegian Parliament have been telecast with impunity in their TV programme with the sole purpose of advertising their Karunya University during the time paid for by their votaries for evangelical work. Are they so naïve to assume that their admirers are eager to see them kick the snow in Oslo (as shown in the visual) and throw hands full of snow towards the camera? Or are they blinded by their popularity as not to see what they are doing can come under fire and be criticised by observant people?
A preacher from Andhra exhibits his lovely campus of Theological College run by him and charity home for women, near Vijayawada. Quite a number of them also run orphanages, technical schools. Bible colleges, charity homes which they advertise along with their spiritual messages. Pastor Benny Hinn’s support by a contribution of 2 million dollars to a Christian charity hospital in Calcutta, every year, was widely acclaimed both by the donor and the recipient on the TV screen.
Some of the evangelists in their desire to show how popular their ministries are, show footages of visuals of the crowd attending their meetings video-graphed from different vantage points. Benny Hinn loves to declare the details and the number of ‘saints’ at his crusades. He believes that the total attendance in his three days crusade in Bangalore was 7 millions (seventy lakhs) which is one million more than the entire population of the city of Bangalore. But the Bangalore police estimated the total attendance all the three days to be around two and a half millions. Bangalore police had to file an affidavit with the Karnaraka High Court on the conduct of Benny Hinn’s crusades. Why this vast difference in the two estimates? If Benny Hinn’s team had gone wrong in their estimate in Bangalore it is likely that the went wrong at other place too. But then why the emphasis on the number?
The central theme of almost all prosperity oriented evangelists are ;miracle cure of diseases, solving of domestic troubles, settling monetary problems, childless couples to be blessed with babies, long unmarried boys and girls to find their spouses soon, recovery from deep debts in business and the like. People do claim total relief from their troubles as a result of the prayers by these evangelists and go on the stage to witness what God had done for them. Interviews are arranged which are well rehearsed before hand and video-graphed for telecasts later. Even telephone interviews are arranged for the convenience of those who live far away. These witnesses are mainly aimed at believers to strengthen their belief further and at the sceptics to convince them of the miracles
No doubt these servants of God are prayerful men and women. They claim direct communication and interaction with God through incessant and continuous prayers in their personal lives. Some of them claim that God spoke to them in audio voice or ‘appeared’ before them in all glory like brilliant light etc. One of them said in his broadcast that Jesus appeared before him while praying for a lady in bed in a hospital in Singapore and spoke to him. I sent him an e-mail asking him if Jesus resembled the pictures of Jesus which we normally assume to be his physical appearance and displayed in our homes, in what dress was he attired, was it all white or coloured, in what language He spoke to him. My enquiry may appear sacrilegious and impertinent to many but, no, it was my curiosity to know in more detail about his vision. It was an honest enquiry. He did not reply. I had a feeling he wouldn’t
Preachers like Benny Hinn, Dinakaran (sr) and (jr) and many others, while praying in general for the sick, casually call the names of the sick and the suffering, among the congregations gathered before them and sometimes names of persons even far away from the meetings. It is claimed that these names are revealed to them by the Holy Spirit Techniques of TV help them later to coordinate the earlier events of calling the names, followed by the interviews with the persons called, add the witness of miracles that had happened to them and telecast the visuals with dramatic effect in the minds of their TV audience.
Faith healings and miracles were only a part of the ministry of Christ during His life on this earth. The basic requirement of Christian faith is saving of human souls through their declaration of faith in Christ as Son of God and the acceptance of the shedding of His blood for the redemption of man from Adamic sin. Jesus had to resort to parables and miracles in order to attract the attention of the ordinary Israelites who were mostly illiterate and to bring them to the path of salvation through faith. His divine healings, restoring the sight to the blind, raising the dead back to life depended upon peoples’ declaration of their faith in his divinity and confession of their faith that Jesus could do what looked impossible for others. Unquestioned faith and commitment were prerequisites to healing and other miracles.
Jesus, being divine, could undo partly, instantaneously and briefly his own laws of nature, like raising Lazarus four days after he was buried., commanding storms to stop blowing or turning water in to wine. In the case of Lazarus there was an absolute reversal of chemical decomposition, reviving the property called life and restoring all biological functions of the resurrected physical body. Ordering the ceasing of a storm instantaneously by rebuking it involves the sudden stopping of an enormous force being conveyed by the wind and reducing the force to nothing, goes against the law of conservation of energy. When water was converted to wine, simple molecules of water H2 O changed to complex molecules of a large number of organic chemical constituents of wine as though by mutation of atoms which was against all known laws of chemistry. Jesus could do them because He was God himself (son of God), the creator, modifier, destroyer and re-maker of laws of nature. With all that He was humble after each healing. “Do not tell others about this”, “Go to the temple and make the sacrifices demanded of the cure and the cleansing of leprosy”. And that was all. It was the people who spoke of all His miracles and spread the news by word of mouth
The offer of prayer on request over the telephone by volunteers is an innovative facility offered through twenty-four hour prayer houses where people with their head phones ‘ON’ sit through night and day in anticipation of distress calls from the sick and the suffering, from far and near, just to pray for them. They are called “jeba veerar” in Tamil, (possibly derived from Salvation Army terminology). Great. One organisation has planted its volunteers in Bombay, Madras, Madurai, Thirunelveli, Trivandrum, Coimbatore, Hyderabad and God knows where else. Your woes are dutifully listened to by them and prayed for with tears pleading with God for redressing of the problems on hand. It is based on the belief that God in heaven is constantly listening to the messages from these prayer houses dealing out cures for the sick, jobs for the unemployed, promotion in jobs to the overlooked employees, and most significantly removing instantly cancerous growths from patients minutes before being wheeled to the operation theatre, to the utter amazement of the surgeons and confusion of the operating team. But the distressing thing is that the prayers are followed up, I am told, with requests (or demand) for money as contribution . It is quite likely, I have no first hand knowledge.
There are a couple of evangelists who when raising their prayers to God before the mike and a million strong congregation, cry with tears rolling down their cheeks to let the TV watchers see how deeply they identify themselves with human suffering and plead with God with burden and agony in their souls. The opening sentence of a book by a Parsi author who was a war correspondent in the Far East during the Second World War runs, “Men do not cry, not men like me.” He had been eye-witness to many a tragic war deaths and wanton destruction. But our evangelists are different.
Miracle and prosperity oriented evangelists pray for almost identical problems, repeatedly again and again. They have in stock memory a list of human ailments pertaining to the heart, the lungs, brain, blood, the circulatory system and the like which they refer to in turn, one or two at a time which they combine with requests for the gift of babies for long barren couples, early marriages for long awaiting boys and girls for their spouses, building new houses for those in need of one, wiping out of burdensome loans and restoring domestic harmony where the home is divided and in conflict. These prayers are impersonal, general and may apply to hundreds and thousands under similar circumstances world over. Praying for a named person for his or her specific needs is understandable but a general request to remove the brain tumours from all the patients all over the world is ridiculous. Had every prayer of theirs been granted there should be no sick person on this planet and all hospitals closed and the doctors and nurses thrown out of jobs.
The Bangalore crusade of pastor Benny Hinn was dedicated to bless India. There was a significant slant towards pleasing the Karnataka Govt. and local politicians while at the same time being challenged by the BJP activists who asked, “Who is this man from the US to bless us?” A number of ministers of Karnataka government including the Chief Minister and high dignitaries and officials were invited and welcomed personally on the dais. Indian national anthem and Vandematharam CD by A.R.Rahman were played full length to please the politicians. On the third day of the crusade the people were asked to bring Indian national flag with them to be waved at suitable points during the meeting,
It is well known that Dinakarans went on a pilgrimage to Delhi to meet Kanchi Sankarachariar who was camping there for the favour of his recommendation with the then BJP Govt. at the centre to grant the status of deemed university to Karunya Institute of Engineering, for which the acharya was presented with a silver Hindu puja vessel in which the holy ash (vibhuthi) is kept .
This mixing of Christian evangelists with politicians, government officials and Hindu saints for favours does not speak well of them, to say the least, whatever be the motive or compulsion that drives them into such situations. These observations of mine may be dismissed by many as negative, frivolous, mischievous and at worse, irreligious. Good, bad or indifferent, evangelism has caught up worldwide and is spreading like wild fire to every corner of the planet making use of the most modern means of communication and technical excellence made available for man through advancement in science. We have come a long way from the days of Jesus who advised his disciples ,”Do not take along any gold or silver or copper in your belts; take no bags for the journey; or extra tunic or sandals or a staff ….” and from the days when the crowd that followed Him was perhaps not more than five thousand individuals whom he addressed not through mikes and loudspeakers but by his own gentle voice. And what a difference between then and now!
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