Paul Crouch

Paul Crouch (born 1934) is the co-founder, chairman and president of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, or TBN, the world's largest Christian television network. The network has grown to 47 satellites 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. 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 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 reports that during the first twenty years of the network's operation, he 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.

Criticisms and Controversy

Crouch and many of the preachers seen on Trinity Broadcasting have garnered much criticism over their brand of fundraising, promising donating viewers that God will provide them with wealth and material pleasures as a reward. This charismatic theology, called the "prosperity gospel" or Word of Faith theology, is presented as Biblical truth by a slew of TV preachers like Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, and Pat Robertson. However, critics have pointed out that donating viewers seldom if ever get their promised financial reward, and only the TV preachers benefit from the money, with which they finance a king's lifestyle. The Crouches are said to own thirty homes across America, as well as a Gulfstream private jet. The Crouches have also been known to have a passion for antiques, and have been known to purchase items worth thousands of dollars during single shopping trips.

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 lawsuit about an alleged homosexual encounter in 1996. 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". 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 flat out rejected by Crouch who deemed it an extortion plot. The allegations against Crouch were never proven. 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 setllement agreement, specifically the prohibition of discussing the settlement's details.

In 2001, Crouch was sued for by author Sylvia Fleenor accusing Crouch of plagiarism over his popular end times novel (and subsequent movie) The Omega Code. Fleenor's lawsuit alleged that the plot for the movie came straight from her own novel called 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.

Crouch also received criticism in 2001 for using fresh images from the September 11 terrorist attacks on an onair 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." (9/11 conspirators have confessed that the attack was planned two years in advance) Despite the criticism, Crouch kept playing the teaser, saying, "My friends, if anyone can take offense at that, we are on different planets, I'm afraid."

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 is doing "just fine" after the surgery and is expected to make a full recovery.

Crouch is the author of an autobiography, Hello World! A Personal Message to the Body of Christ. He also penned the books "I Had No Father But God" and "The Omega Code: Another Has Risen from the Dead." Crouch was also a sponsor of Justice Sunday III

Quotes

"I am a little god! Critics, be gone!" - "Praise the Lord" program, July 7, 1986

--Taken from Wikipedia.org

Selected Books

• The Shadow Of The Apocalypse
• The Omega Code: Another Has Risen from the Dead

Additional Resources

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