THE DISTURBING LEGACY OF CHARISMA MAGAZINE

The August 2000 issue of Charisma celebrated the magazine’s 25th anniversary. The issue revisited 25 people featured on its covers during its 2-1/2 decades of publication.

Apologist and researcher Jackie Alnor writes: “Charisma magazine’s 25th Anniversary edition looks at the legacy of those who have graced its covers. The list is a Who’s Who of people who have brought shame to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This self-tribute is the biggest compilation of evidence against the charismatic renewal ever put to paper. Stephen Strang (founding editor) and Lee Grady (editor-in-chief) have unknowingly demonstrated what a miserable lack of accountability exists in their ranks.”

The discerning reader of Charisma may question whether Strang and Co. are genuinely ignorant in their lack of accountability or if they just don’t care. Strang is on record as criticizing Inside Edition’s exposé of Benny Hinn saying, “I was appalled at their lack of journalistic integrity in ‘faking’ a healing” (“Practicing What We Preach,” June 1993, pg. 10).

Yet, Hinn routinely “fakes” healings at crusade after crusade. He has said he emptied a hospital in Canada and has raised people from the dead. These claims have been debunked. Strang’s lack of outrage at Hinn is curious. While Inside Edition did fake a healing, it was for the express purpose of showing Hinn is the fake. Hinn should be so forthright about his claims, which are nothing more than a device to finance his ministry and extravagant lifestyle.

In 1993, PFO twice contacted Strang about statements in Charisma that had misrepresented PFO’s research and writing on Hinn. Strang had allowed his magazine to foster the myth of Hinn’s father being the mayor of Jaffa, Israel. PFO asked Strang to “Please show us with whom, for whom, and over whom Costandi Hinn functioned as mayor.” Four months and two letters later, PFO received a reply in which Strang concluded, “I am not interested in engaging in a debate over Benny or the validity or the lack thereof of your claims.”

Additionally, Strang described in a 1995 editorial the standards that made up the magazine’s advertising policies. Among the policies were ones that said advertisements “should be in good taste,” “should not promise what they cannot prove that they can deliver,” or “promise that people will receive special anointings” (“Thoughts About Advertising,” July 1995, pg. 108).

Yet, advertisements in Charisma repeatedly have violated Strang’s own standards. For example, on the back of the anniversary edition, Rod Parsley advertises “anointing” and “impartation” at his “Raise the Standard 2000” conference. “Receive impartation and instruction to propel you into a new millennium of ministry,” the Parsley advertisement promises.

Another advertisement promotes a “campmeeting” with Bob Shattles, which claims that “Gold Dust comes upon him when he preaches.”

It’s not just the advertising in Charisma that demonstrates a lack of accountability. Articles in the anniversary edition repeatedly gloss over facts, exclude information that would undermine their philosophy and present half-truths. In a piece on John Wimber, details of the late “Power Evangelism” advocate’s ongoing struggles with cancer, strokes and heart disease are absent. Wimber taught a “signs and wonders” Christianity, but failed to achieve in his own life what he taught. One wouldn’t know it from reading the Charisma piece.

Another story examined the disgraced ministry of televangelist Robert Tilton through the eyes of his ex-wife, Marte. A photograph with the article contains a caption that says, “Tilton was often criticized in the 1980s for his prosperity message.”

Tilton’s messages went far beyond a simple “prosperity message” to shameless financial exploitation of his audience. Tilton frequently used spiritual intimidation as he demanded money from his viewers.

“[You say,] ‘Well, I want to give a hundred’ or ‘I want to give two hundred and fifty,’” he would often say. “Nope. Nope. Let me tell you something, if you don’t have faith to make a vow of faith to God for a thousand dollars and believe that He’s going to show you where to get the seed to pay on it or pay it the best you can, it won’t work.”

In addition, the focus of the criticism that brought about his ruin was not his “prosperity” theology but his illegal and unethical fund-raising activities — accusations that Marte denies in the article. Repentance from a lavish lifestyle, lawsuits, and divorces are all missing from the magazine’s report.

The periodical also devoted three pages in its anniversary issue to Hinn, the faith healer who twice was featured on the cover. Charisma offered readers a sampling of Hinn’s prophecies:

Hinn predicts that a group of Israeli rabbis will see a vision of Jesus so magnificent that they will preach the gospel in their synagogues; within two years there will be a new pope; a young Egyptian male converted from Islam will preach the gospel so well that hundreds of thousands of Muslims will accept Christ.

Yet, by virtue of a series of prophecies Hinn made on Dec. 31, 1989, he already had proved himself a false prophet by Charisma’s own standards in Strang’s March 1999 editorial, “The Vital Gift of Prophecy.”

Editor J. Lee Grady, in his “First Word” editorial, concedes that in the 1980s the Charismatic movement had problems. He writes: “We sought the Holy Spirit’s touch so we could claim our anointing and our divine prosperity. Some evangelists even taught us to ‘write our own tickets with God’ by demanding that He fulfill all our materialistic desires. What began as sincere Christian faith became infected with nauseating selfishness. At that point, I believe the Lord withdrew His blessing and moved on.”

However, one reading Charisma in the 1980s never would have suspected that “the Lord withdrew His blessing and moved on.” It has always been business as usual in its articles and advertisements, which foster a spiritual elitism of “anointed” men and women while glossing over sin and ignoring false doctrine and false prophecy.

Even today, as Grady denounces as “nauseating selfishness” the idea that we can “write our own tickets with God,” Charisma profiles and honors Kenneth Hagin Sr., the evangelist who taught his followers “how to write your own ticket with God,” without ever noting the inconsistency.

Hagin contended that the basis of his “You can have what you say” theology came by direct revelation from Jesus Christ. Hagin told his readers, “Then the Lord Jesus Himself appeared to me. I saw him as clearly as I would see you” as Jesus gave him the four points of how to write your own ticket with God. The Charisma tribute passes over this and other of Hagin’s unorthodox theology claiming, “Though he has his share of critics — including some who have called him a heretic — Hagin ignores them and says he would not change a thing about what he has taught through the years.”

Regrettably, for most of its 25 years, the Charisma legacy — like that of its electronic counterpart, Trinity Broadcasting Network — has been one of an unabashed advancement of men and women who undermine the authority and sufficiency of God’s Word, quash scriptural discernment, distort proper biblical understanding for their own gain, and bring reproach upon the Gospel with undisciplined lives and heretical theologies.

—MKG

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