Robert Gibson Tilton (born 1946) is an American televangelist of the welfare gospel who is widely known for his successful-minded television advertising program Success-N-Life, which peaked in 1991 on display in all 235 American TV markets (every day in most of them), carrying nearly $ 80 million annually, and described as "the fastest growing television ministry in America."
Within two years after ABC PrimeTime Live examined Tilton's fundraising practices, initiated a series of investigations into the ministry, the program was taken from the air. Tilton then returned to television via his new version of Success-N-Life which aired on BET and The Word Network.
Video Robert Tilton
Biography and early years
Tilton was born in McKinney, Texas, on June 7, 1946. He attended Cooke County Junior College and Texas Technological University.
According to Tilton's autobiographical material, he had conversion experience to evangelical Christianity in 1969 and started his ministry in 1974, taking his new family (including Martha's wife Marte "Phillips, whom he married in 1968) on the road to, in his book. words, "preach this gospel of Jesus." Tilton preaches to small congregations and revivals throughout Texas and Oklahoma. Tilton and his family settled in Dallas, Texas, and built a small nondenominational charismatic church in Farmers Branch, Texas, called "Word Of Faith Family Church" in 1976. The church also started a local television program which became known as Daystar (unrelated to Daystar TV Network, although both started in the Dallas area). Tilton's broadcaster on Daystar is Miami's radio personality and voice artist Dave Mitchell, based in Dallas at the time.
The young church of Tilton grew steadily, but Daystar failed to expand the area of ​​Dallas until Tilton went to Hawaii - a self-described version of Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness - and spent time fishing, drinking and watching the form of television programs newly increasingly popular: late night infomercials.
Tilton is primarily influenced by Dave Del Dotto, a real-time, hour-long infomercial promoter who shows his glamorous life in Hawaii (which he constantly emphasizes so that anyone can achieve it simply by following the principles laid down in many books "quickly rich ") and" interviews "with students brought to their Hawaiian villas for interviews, especially for their camera testimony of the successes in life that they now enjoy thanks to his teachings. Upon his return from Hawaii in 1981, Tilton, with the help of a $ 1.3 million loan from Dallas Herman Beebe banker, converted Daystar into a "religious infomercial" for an hour under the title Success -N- Life .
Maps Robert Tilton
Success-N-Life
In Success-N-Life, Tilton regularly teaches that all trials of life, especially poverty, are the result of sin. Tilton's ministry consists primarily of impressing his viewers about the importance of making "promises" - a financial commitment to Tilton's ministry. The oath of choice, often emphasized on its broadcast, is $ 1,000. Sometimes, Tilton will claim to have received a word of knowledge for someone to give an oath of $ 5,000 or even $ 10,000. When a person swears to Tilton, he preaches that God will recognize a pledge and reward the donor with immense material wealth. The show also featured "testimonials" from viewers who gave Tilton service and reportedly received miracles in return, a practice that will be used as a basis for later lawsuits from donors demanding Tilton's services with fraud. The story of Dallas Morning News published in 1992 observes that Tilton spent more than 84 percent of his broadcast time for fundraising and promotion, totaling more than 22 percent for the average commercial television show; other sources put the total fundraising time during the Success-N-Life episode approaching 68 percent. Some of the Tilton fundraising letters were written by Gene Ewing, who heads a multimillion dollar marketing empire that writes letters to other televangelists like W. Grant and Don Stewart.
As a result of Tilton's success, Word of Faith Family Church (renamed "Family Church of Key of Faith and World Outreach Center") grew into a megachurch, with 8,000 members at its peak.
Tilton is the author of several self-help books on financial success, including the Power of Creating Wealth, The Law of God's Success, How to Pay Your Supernatural Bills , and How to Get Rich and Have Everything You Want . Most of Tilton's books were published in the 1980s and distributed through promotions at Success-N-Life and through many of Tilton's mail sent his followers. The books were re-published in the late 1990s to be used as the center of the 1997 infomercial series and are now promoted on their current live broadcasts (as of 2010).
Ministries and fundraising scandals
In 1991, Diane Sawyer and ABC News conducted an investigation into Tilton (as well as two Dallas-area televangelists, W.V Grant and Larry Lea). The investigation, assisted by the president of the Trinity Ole Anthony Foundation and broadcast on ABC PrimeTime Live on November 21, 1991, alleges that the Tilton ministry dumped the prayer request without reading it, simply saving the money accompanying it or valuables sent to service by viewers, collect their ministries about US $ 80 million per year.
Allegations of exploitation of vulnerable people
Ole Anthony, a Dallas-based pastor whose Trinity Foundation church works with the homeless and poor on the east side of Dallas, was first attracted to Tilton's ministry in the late 1980s after several people came to the Trinity Foundation to ask for help to him for losing all their money by donating to some high-profile televangelists, especially fellow Dallas pastor Robert Tilton. Curious about the widespread problem, the Trinity Foundation broke into the mailing list of several televangelists, including Tilton, and began keeping records of the many kinds of requests they receive almost daily from various ministries.
Former Coca-Cola executive Harry Guetzlaff came to the Trinity Foundation after he was turned away from Tilton's church when he found himself in a difficult time after divorce. He has been a long-time donor of dollars and handed over his last $ 5,000 as a "vow of faith" just weeks before. Guetzlaff's experience, combined with the size of mail delivery from the Tilton ministry, spurred Anthony, a former intelligence officer in the United States Air Force and a licensed private investigator, to begin a thorough investigation of Tilton's ministry. Guetzlaff joins Anthony in the task of gathering details about Tilton's operations and then does a lot of hard work in finding and tracking paper for ABC news investigations.
Incognito investigation
On November 21, 1991, promotional appearances for primetime live television investigation at Stay with Regis and Kathie Lee, Diane Sawyer said she had watched several televangelist programs, including Robert Tilton's > Success-N-Life , during the trip as a reporter and "fascinated" by them, but also "disturbed". Emphasizing that he knows how sensitive people are to journalists who question religion, he says that he talks with other reporters, and then eventually to ABC producers, who then decide to conduct their own investigations into some of the more prominent televangelists, eventually settling in 1991 on three featured in episodes of Primetime Live : W.Ã, V. Grant, Larry Lea, and Tilton. According to Sawyer, ABC producers, including Tilton segment producer Robbie Gordon, learn about the resources available from Ole Anthony and the Trinity Foundation, and contact Trinity for information on Tilton. After comparing the accumulated records, data, and details, the two groups decided to unite their efforts and begin planning the undercover part of the story. Anthony agreed to portray himself as a Dallas-based pastor with a small church looking into how the televangelist service can grow so fast, and ABC producer will play the role of "media consultant" Anthony.
Meetings with Response Media
The team, armed with hidden cameras and microphones, arrived for a meeting in Response Media, a Tulsa-based marketing firm handling Tilton's mass mailings, to discuss a proposal sent by Anthony to Media Response about fundraising for a TV-based talk show religion. The Media Response Director, Jim Moore, describes Anthony and the hidden camera (hidden under the disguises of Primetime Live), many of the techniques Tilton uses to raise funds for his ministry. Moore also said that Tilton did "much better than anyone knows" and described Tilton's main strategy used for high returns on his mail - that is, sending a "gimmick" receiver that forces the recipient to send something back in return, the big recipient will include some money with him. Moore refused to reveal how much Media Response paid for his services or how much money sent letters to the Tilton ministry.
However, as part of its sale to Anthony, Moore revealed that the response letters generated by the Media Response mail-raising mailing list for his clients were never delivered to clients; instead, they are sent unopened to the client's financial institution or other elected institution. "You do not have to touch it," Moore added in response to Ole Anthony's clarification question about dealing with a gimmick object that was sent to potential donors in the mail. One ABC producer asked whether this is a standard practice - "So the letter goes directly to the bank?" - and Moore confirms that it is: "The letter goes to the bank, and they put the money into your account We just get the paper with the person's name and how much they give."
1991 Primetime Live Documentation ("The Apple of God Eye")
Members of the Trinity Foundation, acting on this information, began digging through dumpster outside many of Tilton's banks in the Tulsa area as well as the dump outside Tilton's attorney's office, J.C Joyce (also based in Tulsa). Over the next 30 days, Trinity "garbologists", like Anthony dubbed them, find tens of thousands of discarded prayer requests, bank statements, computer prints containing coding for how Tilton's "private" letters are produced, and more, all of which are shown in detail on the Tilton segment in the PrimeTime Live documentary, is now titled "The Apple of God Eye". In a follow-up broadcast on November 28, 1991, Primitive Live host Diane Sawyer said the Trinity Foundation and Primetime Live assistant found a prayer request at a junk bank on 14 separate occasions. in a 30 day period.
Disclaimer
Tilton vehemently denied the accusation and took the airwaves on November 22, 1991, on a special episode of Success-N-Life titled "Primetime Lies" to air the side of his story. Tilton asserted that the prayer requests found in the garbage bag indicated in the PrimeTime Live investigation were stolen from the ministry and placed in the trash for sensational camera shots, and that he prayed for every request of prayer received, the point that he "put on top of the prayer requests so much that 'chemicals actually get into his bloodstream, and... [he] has two small strokes in his brain. Tilton remained opposed to claims about the use of donations to his ministry to fund purchases, asking, "Am I not allowed to have nothing?" related to its ownership of several million-dollar plantations. Tilton also claims that she needs plastic surgery to repair capillary damage on her lower eyelid from ink that seeps into her skin from prayer requests.
Further disclosure
After Trinity Foundation members spent several weeks researching the details of documents they and ABC had found, sorting and researching every prayer request, bank statement, and computer prints related to bank codes and Tilton's legal staff used when categorizing returned items, Ole Anthony was called a press conference in December 1991 to present what he described as Tilton's "Wheel of Luck", using a large screen covered by actual prayer requests, a copy of a receipt for the disposition of documents, and other information showing what happened to money and prayer requests which Tilton's average television program audience sent him. When Tilton and his lawyer JC Joyce reacted to the news by claiming Anthony's items had somehow been stolen by an "insider," Anthony responded in a subsequent interview that "Joyce is our mole - many of these items are from a dumpster in outside his office. "
Primetime Live native investigation and subsequent updates include interviews with some of Tilton's former employees and acquaintances. In a preliminary investigation, one of the Tilton prayer hotline operators claimed that the ministry was not particularly concerned with desperate followers calling for prayers, said Tilton had a computer installed in July 1989 to ensure telephone operators spoke without callers for more than seven minutes. The former employee also revealed very specific instructions given to them in terms of how to talk to the callers and they are told to always ask for a $ 100 "promise" at least. Also in the original report, a former college friend Tilton (who remains anonymous and displayed in silhouette) claims both he and Tilton will attend the tent-building meeting as a "sport" and will claim to be anointed and cured at the meeting. He added that the two often discussed the idea that after graduation they would establish their own resurrection ministry "and go around the country and become rich." In a July 1992 update to the investigation, PrimeTime Live interviewed former Tilton aide, who claimed a prayer request sent to Tilton's home by the ministry was routinely ignored until she told him to move them out of the house. and into the garage; according to his helpers, "they piled up and piled" in Tilton's garage until he was thrown away. In the same interview, Tilton's former secretary came forward and claimed Tilton picked up a quote from the "get rich quick" book and used it in his sermon, and he never saw him perform normal pastoral duties like visiting sick people and praying with members.
Government engagement
Despite repeated denials by Tilton, the state of Texas and the federal government were involved in further investigations, finding more cause for concern about Tilton's financial status with each new revelation. After nearly 10,000 pounds of prayer requests and letters to the Tilton ministry were found at a garbage disposal site at a Tulsa area recycling company in February 1992, along with a detailed receipt of their shipment from Tilton's main mail handling service in Tulsa, not from the church. based in the Farmers' Branch, Tilton admitted in a deposition given to the Texas Attorney General's office that he often prayed over computerized prayer requests rather than actual prayer requests, and that prayer requests were in fact routinely disposed of after categorization.
As each revelation becomes more destructive, viewers and donations decline dramatically. The last episode of Success-N-Life was aired nationwide on October 30, 1993. By then, viewers had dropped 85 percent and monthly donations rose from $ 8 million to $ 2 million.
Pollution actions failed
In 1992, Tilton sued ABC for defamation and reporting, but his case was rejected in 1993. Federal Judge Thomas Rutherford Brett, on July 16, 1993, dismissed the case, stating that information on Trinity Foundation records of prayer requests was reportedly found in place garbage on September 11, 1991, "could not be found later due to postmark date after September 11, 1991", but also noted that Ole Anthony had withdrawn the incorrect entry in the next written statement. Tilton appealed the decision in 1993; although the original court findings were enforced in 1995, Judge Michael Burrage's opinion criticized ABC and PrimeTime Live producers to edit their story and noted that ABC had been warned by their own religious editor, Peggy Wehmeyer (who knew Ole Anthony from his job as a religious reporter at the ABC affiliate of WFAA-TV in Dallas), that "Mr. Anthony can not be trusted and obsessed with his crusade against [Tilton]." Tilton once again appealed the decision, this time to the US Supreme Court in 1996, but the court refused to hear the case.
Tilton sued for fraud
Several donors to the television ministry Tilton sued Tilton in 1992-1993, which charged various forms of fraud. One plaintiff, Vivian Elliott, won $ 1.5 million in 1994 when it was found that the family crisis center where he had contributed (and recorded testimonials of support) was never built or even intended to be built. The verdict was later canceled on appeal.
As part of a defensive strategy for fraud, Tilton sues Ole Anthony, Harry Guetzlaff and four plaintiffs lawyers who have filed a fraud case against him in federal court in Tulsa. This tactic is known as criticism as "SLAPP" (strategic suit against public participation) accordingly. Tilton claims that people conspire to violate the right of the First Amendment under a post-Civil War federal law designed to protect blacks from the Ku Klux Klan. (42 U.S.C. Sec. 1985) Defense counsel Martin Merritt from Dallas and ACLU lawyer Michael Linz, also from Dallas, with others winning the dismissal of the six defendants in the federal district court. On appeal, at Tilton v. Richardson, 6 F.3d 683 (10th Cir.1993), the 10th Circuit Court of Appeal affirms the dismissal on the grounds that 42 U.S.C. Seconds. 1985 does not protect nonminority individuals against pure private conspiracy, if any. The fraud case continued until the Texas Supreme Court finally decided that the plaintiff could not prove the damage because they could not show it, if Tilton had actually prayed for prayer requests, the prayers would be answered.
Success-N-Life's decline also resulted in the end of Tilton's twenty-year marriage with his wife Marta, who had been the administrative head of the Family Church of the Key of Faith and World Outreach Center, in 1993. Dallas lawyer Gary Richardson representing many who demanded Tilton for fraud, attempted to intervene in Tiltons divorce, citing the potential for divorce settlement that would be used to hide financial assets that are currently part of many fraud cases; Richardson petition to postpone the divorce suit until after the fraud case is resolved. Marte intervened in Tilton's second divorce from Leigh Valentine, who had asked the court to include the church and all its properties as belonging to the community in the process. Under Texas law, the property accumulated during marriage is considered to belong to the community and thus subject to the division between the parties in divorce. The jury finally decided to refuse the request.
Lexington Academy
Lexington Academy is a small private Christian school in Farmers Branch, Texas (Dallas suburb), founded in the early 1980s by Robert Tilton and his wife Marte. The name "Lexington" was chosen to honor the Battle of Lexington. The school mascot is the Patriot. This school is a member of TAPPS (Association of Texas Private Schools and Parishes), and won dozens of State Championships in Athletics, Academics and Art for less than 20 years of existence, including five State TAPPS Championships overall. The school was dissolved in 1998 as a result of debt arising from lawsuits against Tilton and his ministry.
Transition service
Tilton returned to television in 1994 with a new show called Pastor Tilton, a show with an emphasis on Satan's "demon" escape, usually involving Tilton who shouted as loudly as he could at a demon who supposedly had a sick person. and disease. However, the program is much less successful than its predecessor, and was canceled at the end of the year.
Relive Success 'N' Life
After moving to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1996, Tilton returned to the airwaves in 1997 with a new version of Success-N-Life, buying airtime on an independent television station primarily serving the inner city area. The new version of Success-N-Life returned to Tilton's previous message to ask for "faith oath" from the audience, not exorcism. In 1998, the program began airing on Black Entertainment Television (BET) as part of a two hour night block of umbrella rotation from a religious program entitled BET Inspiration . In 2008, Success-N-Life typically occupied the first hour of the programming block and also ran on The Word Network. Most of the Success-N-Life episodes featured on BET Inspiration were recorded in the late 1990s - with testimonials from episodes of the 1980s punctuated throughout the episode - but Tilton also recorded infomercials for his book at least once a year from 2003 to 2007, often appearing with his third wife, Maria Rodriguez, and their four French poodles. This infomercial also appears under the title Success-N-Life at BET Inspiration .
The Word of Faith Family Church and the World Outreach Center were eventually officially disbanded by Tilton in 1996. Although Tilton is still listed as a senior pastor of the church, he did not preach in churches since March 16, 1996, when he named Chattanooga, Tennessee, minister Bob Wright senior association pastors, and membership has fallen to less than 300. The church building was bought by the town of the Farmers Branch in 1999 to be used as a future civilian hub; However, the economy slumped and the plan was canceled, and the building was finally dismantled in 2003 to make room for a new sponsored Dallas youth hockey center.
In March 2005, Tilton started a new church in Hallandale, Florida, not far from his home in Miami Beach. The church has been around for some time under the former televangelist pastor David Epley. The new Church of Tilton, now called "Christ the Good Shepherd Worldwide Church," had about 200 members in 2007. On May 13, 2007, the church moved to a new location in Miami and was officially renamed "Word of Faith Church" originally in Dallas. Tilton also founded a church in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2005, also originally named Christ the Good Shepherd Worldwide Church. It has also been officially renamed "Word of Faith Church". The pastor of the Las Vegas church church is Natalie Vafai.
Current service
When Tilton returned to television in 1997, he set up his ministry headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where his attorney J. C Joyce's office was located, and set up a post office box as his shipping address. A woman employed by Mail Services, Inc., a clearinghouse in the Tulsa area that handles mail sent to the Tilton ministry, said that while she worked for Mail Services, Inc. in 2001, prayer requests were routinely discarded after donations and appointments were abolished.. However, Tilton dropped the Tulsa address at the end of 2007 and used the box of the Miami Post Office to receive a response to fundraising submissions. In January 2014, Tilton currently holds a service at Courtyard Marriott in Culver City, California, while getting another donation sent to a post office box in Tulsa.
In 1998, The Washington Post reported that Tilton's followers disappeared after the investigation but he had "joined dozens of other preachers to be a match in BET". As a result, Tilton, along with Don Stewart and Peter Popoff received "criticism from those who say that preachers with a long trail of disappointed followers have no place in the network that makes itself an entrepreneurial model for the black community."
Steve Lumbley, who worked for Tilton's ministry in 1991 when the original Primetime Live investigation took place, informed a reporter for the Dallas Observer in 2006 that the report on the removal of a central prayer request from 1991 < i> Primetime Live exposÃÆ' Â © is greatly exaggerated. In an article for the dallasobserver.com blog "Unfair Park", Lumbley insists that "[t] he sends all have some kind of ruse, they are not godly at all, but the main assumption comes out of it - that the prayer request is thrown away - categorically not and I can assure you that it's not a normal practice. "However, Lumbley, who now runs a Christian supervisory website called ApostasyWatch.com, did credit ABC and the Trinity Foundation to expose Tilton's unethical fundraising tactics, noting that" God using Ole and ABC to punish Tilton and drop him. "
The Trinity Foundation still monitors Tilton's television service as part of an ongoing evangelistic evangelistic effort. In a 2003 interview published at Tulsa World, Ole Anthony estimated that with no Family Family Mean Word above and with television production costs in a fraction of the original Success-N-Life program, Tilton's current organization is likely to generate more than $ 24 million per year tax-free.
Satir
In 1985, two people began to share a video, they composed Tilton's lampooning and his real conversation with God. This video exploits the facial expressions and style of Tilton preaching. The original video does not contain a title screen and is roughly edited. This video features a recording medley of Overdubbed Success-N-Life overlapped with bloated sound effects. An unofficial VHS copy of a video circulated in the United States until the late 1980s with titles like Tooting Tilton , Heaven Only Knows (first title by original distributor), << i > Reverend Gas , Noise Rejoice Frizz Preacher . After the host The Mark & ​​â €
The song "I Know" on the 1996 album Barenaked Ladies Born on Pirate Ship includes the line "If a hundred monkeys can each get their own show/maybe one day a chimpanzee might say:" followed by an example of Tilton says "and you have faith! You just need to use it, God says."
Pogo musicians created the song, "Hoo Ba Ba Kanda" using Tilton's voice and words from "Life-N-Success" program.
Ron White's comedy material also includes mentioning Tilton. In the opening for acting White in the first movie Blue Collar Comedy Tour, Ron claims that "while sitting in a bare beanbag chair eating Cheetos", he finds Tilton on TV and believes Tilton speaks specifically to him. : "Are you lonely?" "Yes." "Have you wasted half your life on bars praising the sins of the flesh?" "This guy is good..." "Are you sitting in a bare beanbag chair eating Cheetos?" Ron horrified before he squeaked, "... Yes sir!" "Do you feel the urge to get up and send me a thousand dollars?" (Pause for effect) "Shut up! I think he talked about me in there for a while, apparently, I'm not the only cat in the block (that) digging Cheetos!"
In the early 2000s, the Trinity Foundation collected a number of news releases, including the beginning of Primetime Live , from the years around the investigation of Tilton's ministry on a DVD titled Prophet of Welfare. : Robert Tilton and the Gospel of Greed . The DVD also includes a segment of The Daily Show's "God Stuff" (organized by members of the Trinity Foundation, John Bloom, aka Joe Bob Briggs), quotes from the video Pastor Gas , and some mock music videos, as well as moments from Success-N-Life that show Tilton's more embarrassing claims about "the vision of God."
A comedian at BET ComicView has mocked Success-N-Life , especially since BET usually airs it immediately after their explicit music video show Uncut .
The name "Tilton" is mentioned in the song "Cash Cow (A Rock Opera In Three Small Acts)", from an album titled Squint by music artist and film director Steve Taylor, where it says:
Cow cash! The gold cash cow has a body like an ancient Egyptian cow, and a face like Robert Tilton's face - without horns. And for centuries, he has been exploring the Earth like a starving cow, looking for who might - lick it! [Between about 1:11 and 1:36 on CD version]
Tilton's antics were also reviled in the field of software technology by Douglas Crockford. Crockford created "The Tilton Macro Preprocessor", which he described as "one of the worst programming languages ​​ever".
Bruce Prichard, who portrays Brother Love at WWE, has stated that his character is largely based on the way Tilton speaks.
Comedian and satyrist John Oliver criticized Tilton's televangelism services for cheating on his national television program "Last Week Tonight" on August 17, 2015. Oliver and his team have corresponded with the Church of Satan Faith Tilton for seven months; it begins when a $ 20 donation is sent to the organization. Oliver explained what happened during those months: the organization sent back $ 1 bills asking Oliver to "send it back" with more offers, leading to many appeals for further donations without any substantive rewards, according to an account in the Christian Post :
That's right... I have to send $ 1 back with the recommended additional offer of $ 37, which I did. So at this point, we have only two letters and it is like having deep pen pals with some loan sharks.
Oliver founded his own megachurch "televangelism" on his broadcast, which he called Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption.
References
Further reading
External links
- Official website
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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