#598: Paul Crouch

The Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) used to be the third most significant network in the Christian Broadcasting world (after Jim Bakker’s PTL and Pat Robertson’s CBN), though it advanced a couple of places when Bakker’s PTL took some familiar damage back in the days. TBN’s programs are mostly concerned with name-it-and-claim-it preachers and faith healing, and Paul Crouch is its monstrously insane pentecostal televangelist founder.

The TBN's most important program is probably “Praise the Lord”, which features several expensively-dressed evangelical preachers discussing obscure religious doctrine, how Jesus made them rich, and claims to the effect that Jesus was indeed wealthy himself and his disciples wore designer robes – one senses a certain dim awareness of the conflict between the prosperity gospel and religious doctrine, and the theology is pretty tortured. The viewers of “Praise the Lord” then send the preachers shitloads of money so that they (the viewers!) can get rich as well, though the rest of us tend to see the discrepancy between the goal and this particular strategy for achieving it. At TBN’s Praise-a-Thon telethon events, however, the agenda is more direct; in this case viewers are told that they will get their reward in heaven rather than in earthly lives.

TBN also owns and runs The Holy Land Experience, a particularly bizarre theme park (or, really, a chain of gift shops) devoted to showing you the Middle East from a fundie perspective; it was founded by the particularly insane and controversial Messianic Jew Marvin ‘Marv’ Rosenthal, but was taken over by TBN after Rosenthal experienced some financial troubles. The theme park was an important stop during Herman Cain’s 2012 campaign tour.

In 2012 TBN was the subject of some lawsuits e.g. from Paul Crouch’s own granddaughter. Paul and his son Matt reacted in interesting ways – “God help” anyone who gets in the way of TBN – and Paul claimed to have attended the funerals of two people who had tried. One wonders how many kneecaps Jesus and his “disciples” were breaking to pay for those designer robes, but I suppose it would be easy for Jesus and co. to extort protection money out of bronze age shepherds given how his Family had previously treated recalcitrant Pharaohs and pretty much anyone else standing in their way in the Old Testament.

As for other projects, Crouch himself has the production company Resurrection Pictures, which is supposedly behind the (still) forthcoming(?) movie “Creation” concerning the life of Kent Hovind, and Crouch himself wrote the “popular” End Times novel and subsequent movie The Omega Code.

Crouch rather suddenly resigned from Trinity in October 2011, but it was all left to his son who is also called Paul Crouch, which is very convenient since it means that we don’t have to create two separate entries.

Diagnosis: Some may argue that Crouch is a fraud, but if he isn’t he is certainly a loon. The two are not mutually exclusive.

[Note to readers in response to requests: we’ll keep an eye on Ted Cruz – a wingnut’s wingnut, to be sure, but thus far he has primarily exhibited dishonesty, bigotry and extremism, and for instance avoided clear commitments to denialism or critical thinking failures (that he thinks that “George Soros is in a conspiracy to prohibit golf courses” relies, strictly speaking, on an uncharitable interpretation).]

#563: Morris Cerullo

Morris Cerullo is a Pentecostal Christian evangelist and a faith healer of the good old kind. He encourages people with serious illnesses and disabilities to attend his revival meetings so Jesus can heal them (and he can receive well-deserved financial compensation for letting the sick access his Jesus), and uses posters of people leaving wheelchairs and crutches to promote his efforts.

Cerullo was an early champion of the Satanism scare, to the extent that he put up a traveling exhibit dubbed the ”Witchmobile,” in which horrified spectators and frightened children would see on display various occult artifacts used for Satanic rituals, such as astrology items, Ouija boards, and Tarot cards, in order to recognize and combat these nefarious enemies in their ordinary lives. As late as 1999 Cerullo ran an ad in the UK, claiming that ”Satanic hordes” occupy ”principal palaces of power in Europe” (and that homosexuality is an abomination). The campaign was not an unqualified success, particularly since Cerullo’s faith healing campaigns in the UK had previously left a trail of death. Cerullo was subsequently challenged to produce his three best examples of claimed miraculous healings for scrutiny by a panel of doctors. They were not particularly impressed. Cerullo has also been expelled from India after his inability to actually heal people caused a riot (30 000 people apparently showed up to Cerullo’s event, including several disabled people, and Cerullo rather audaciously just declared that they had all been healed, something many of them rather obviously felt was inaccurate).

His evangelical campaigns targeted at the Jewish community have been met with some criticisms as well (Rev Dr Chris Wright, principal of All Nations Christian College, denounced Cerullo's methods as ”spiritually perverted and pastorally disastrous”).

He may be most famous, however, for his stint as an amusement park owner, having got his hands on the PTL Club and Heritage USA amusement park that Jerry Falwell appropriated from Jim Bakker after the latter’s fall from grace. He later lost the park but retained the PTL television network (currently named ”Inspiration” and run by his son David).

Diagnosis: Raving mad, of course, and sufficiently insane to jeopardize his own influence. That, of course, doesn’t scare away the most gullible of the gullible, and he still seems to enjoy a modicum of influence.

#522: Barbara Brennan

Barbara Ann Brennan is an author and intuitive healer who works in the field of “energy healing”. According to the Watkins Review she was the 94th most spiritually influential person in the world in 2011. Brennan has pretty much adopted every conceivable form of imaginary woo, from Wilhelm Reich’s Orgone energy to chakras and astral healing, as well as most other typical crank baggage, such as promoting herself as a doctor of philosophy (Greenwich University) and doctor of theology (C. Norman Shealy’s Holos University), both from unaccredited diploma mills.

Brennan’s first book, Hands of Light: A Guide to Healing Through the Human Energy Field, is still viewed as a classic among the reality impaired. In writing it Brennan claimed to “receive intuitive information about her clients during sessions, and to see repetitive patterns in the energy fields of her clients indicating common roots underlying their difficulties”, and the whole thing is a mess of auras, “energy fields” that interact with each other, and promotion of “the seven-layermodel of the energy field, each layer being structured of differing frequencies and kinds of energy and performing different functions.” The chakras are supposedly transformers that receive and process universal energy. It is hard to believe that Brennan actually believes any of the bullshit she’s spewing.

According to Wikipedia Brennan “is best known for taking a methodical, scientific approach to energy healing,” but – suffice to say – it is doubtful that anyone taking Brennan seriously has the faintest clue about what a scientific approach implies (hint: “let anecdotal evidence take you where you want to go” is not a scientific approach).

As mentioned Brennan has developed “energy healing techniques” (she calls them “full spectrum healing”) to work on the seven layers of the human energy field or auras, including what she calls “spiritual surgery” applied to the “fifth level” using the power of a spirit surgeon. It really is all about energy, and neither Brennan nor her adherents understand what energy actually is (hint: energy is not a buzzing, glowing, luminescent. magical cloud surrounding objects that one can tap into by the right means – even if focusing one’s will were “the right means”).

In 1982, she established the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, designed to train professional healers in Florida, which has come to be known as one of the epitomes of New Age healing. It is licensed by the State of Florida Commission for Independent Education (i.e., it is unaccredited) and listed here. She herself has moved to Austria to open more branches of the school (there are branches in Austria, Germany, and Japan).

Brennan has a listing in Quackwatch’s helpful Dictionary of Metaphysical Healthcare, Alternative Medicine, Paranormal Healing, and Related Methods.

Diagnosis: The epitome of New Age healing, few people do woo more thoroughly than Barbara Brennan. She’s had a lot of influence and must be considered a dangerous enemy of reason and reality.

#110: Larry Dossey

A staunch opponent of the scientific method, Larry Dossey argues that the scientific method leads to Hitler and that indoctrinating children with the scientific method is a form of child abuse.

It is unclear what he wants to replace it with; presumably intuition, anecdotal evidence and “different ways of knowing” (i.e. “facts are just opinions and claims that are true for you may not be true for me”); perhaps something like this. You see, Larry is completely out there – he’s a virulent defender of all kinds of woo - Deepak Chopra, Gary Null, Joe Mercola, Gary Zukav and those kinds of people. He is, in fact, reckoned as one of the “Three musketeers of Woo”. Dossey is the author of (among other books) “Healing words: the power of prayer and the practice of medicine”, “The power of premonitions” (uh-oh) and, with Lewis Mehl-Madrona (who must be considered equally insane on this evidence alone) “Coyote healing” about the power of Native American healers to produce "miracles". Betcha there was a lot of controlled studies behind that one. He is also the former co-chairman of the Panel on Mind/Body Interventions, National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, National Institutes of Health. And he is the executive editor of the “peer-reviewed” journal “Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing” (the journal known for this one, and this one). He seems to accept any conclusion as long as it is not science-based, since science is a conspiracy of the pharmaceutical companies and therefore a sham (which, you know, does not follow even if the premise is true – it’s called “ad hominem”, and is, in this case, a fallacy). Kinda like Alex Jones.

Diagnosis: Clinically lacking in critical thinking skills and understanding of the scientific method, and utterly lost to confirmation bias. Impact uncertain, but he does (of course) write for Huffington post on a regular basis. Total moron.

#101: Randy Demain

Randy Demain is seemingly one of ordinary daily life’s amiable, calm and nice guys (well, I imagine that he is). But when he dons his True Christian™ suit he obeys the word of God and … raises the dead. That’s what he claims, literally. He just walks up to a corpse, tells it to get up, and – woosh – up it pops and starts walking around. Apparently Randy does this all the time. To some it seems baffling for some reason, but the whole thing is apparently really easy.

So can he back up his claims? Oh yes. You see, he can tell at least two stories – curiously both took place in Africa –when he raised a woman and a baby from the dead. He admits that it is harder to do it in the West, presumably because westernized Christians have adjusted themselves to a demystified worldview or something, but he encourages all true Christians to give it a try.

The utterly insane bloggers at endtimespropheticwords think Demain is a false prophet. However, I am not sure they count as the voice of reason even in this matter.

His website is here. Demain has also written (at least) the book “Dominion Surges", which, according to the product description “is an equipping manual for mobilizing the body of Christ into an offensive posture, restoring in us a sense of dominion and power over the enemy.”

Diagnosis: Utterly, irrevocably, completely insane; the kind of person you may encounter in an asylum who appears jovial and sane until he opens his mouth. He’s probably harmless, though.

#40: Caleb Lee Brundidge

Caleb Lee Brundidge is a self-professed former gay man who conducts sessions to “heal homosexuality”, and an associate of the slightly weird ex-gay guru Richard Cohen. He is also involved in the gay treatment organization Exodus (also here).

In fact, he is also involved in the ministry Extreme Prophetic (lead by one Patricia King), which even among the most extreme fanatics is considered “fringe”. According to their website:

“Raising the dead has always been a mandate of the church. Jesus commissioned us to go in His name and preach the good news of the Kingdom. He then went on to explain, that includes healing the sick, casting out demons, and raising the dead. Our evangelism teams, led by Caleb Brundidge and Melissa Fisher recently grabbed hold of this and went out to practice raising the dead.”

I guess evidence that curing homosexuality tends to fail and is morally problematic would not necessarily make much of an impact on Brundidge’s brain.

His most egregious crime against humanity must presumably be his involvement with monster Scott Lively in the events leading up to the Ugandan anti-homosexuality bill. He claimed that he felt duped, but there is little doubt that the group was using rhetoric implying that criminalizing homosexuality would be exactly what they want (though given Brundidge tenuous hold on reality his grasp of cause and effect may be relatively poor as well).

Diagnosis: That this guy has any influence whatsoever is quite simply appalling. He’s your standard high-ranking cult member with virtually no connection to reality whatsoever. Completely mad.