Huckabee to appear on 'prophet's' TV show
Posted November 18, 2007
Huckabee links with evangelist for 6 TV spots
Some say Copeland heads cult
BY FRANK LOCKWOOD ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Copyright © 2007, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc.
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee will appear on national television this month with a Texas televangelist whose teachings have been branded “heretical” and whose lavish spending has sparked a congressional inquiry.
Huckabee, a minister and former head of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, will sit down with Fort Worth preacher Kenneth Copeland “for six days of frank discussion on the biblical perspective of character, and the vital relevance true character has to the Church today,” a full-page advertisement in the December issue of Charisma magazine proclaims.
The programs are scheduled to air across the nation Nov. 25-30.
Former Gov. Huckabee could not be reached for comment Friday or Saturday by press time.
Earlier this month, in an interview with the Democrat-Gazette, Huckabee said he has stayed at the home of Kenneth and Gloria Copeland and considers them friends.
“They mainly are just real encouragers,” Huckabee said.
Asked if the televangelist had given him any advice when they crossed paths at a DeSoto, Texas, campaign fundraiser Nov. 3, Huckabee said, “The main advice he gives me is to stay faithful. His advice is spiritual, not political.”
But Malcolm Yarnell, director of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Center for Theological Research, said Huckabee is joining forces with a false teacher who is spreading a “false gospel.”
“Kenneth Copeland is a heretic,” Yarnell said Friday. “I’m not sure it’s wise for [Huckabee] to use Kenneth Copeland’s pulpit to promote himself as a politician. I don’t like that.”
Others compare Copeland to a “snake-oil salesman” and liken his ministry to a cult.
Excerpts from the program have not been posted online yet, but Charisma founder Stephen Strang, a Huckabee donor, says he’s seen an advance tape of the Believer’s Voice of Victory programs featuring Copeland and the presidential candidate.
“They sit at the table, they open the Bible and talk about Scripture,” Strang said. “Gov. Huckabee is a minister, and he’s very comfortable in that setting, and he did great.”
Skipping the show would’ve been a mistake for Huckabee, Strang said. “Kenneth Copeland is widely respected. Many, many people watch the program.”
COPELAND’S ‘KEY’
Copeland, 70, worked as a co-pilot for faith healer Oral Roberts and took classes at Oral Roberts University in the 1960s, before dropping out to enter fulltime ministry.
Today, he oversees a worldwide religious empire with offices in the United States, South Africa, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and Ukraine.
The Texan teaches that Jesus was a wealthy man, and that all of Christ’s faithful followers are entitled to physical health and financial prosperity. But to receive, you must give first, because “giving is the key that opens the door” to blessings, the preacher states on his Web site. The evangelist also teaches that anyone can be healed of any infirmity — provided they have sufficient faith.
Copeland is a mentor for other prosperity gospel preachers and according to his magazine, he has helped provide 26 airplanes to fellow ministries.
Copeland and his wife have also given $4,600 to the Huckabee campaign, the evangelist told the Democrat-Gazette earlier this month.
He said Huckabee’s chances of winning the election are “big” with God’s help, and he predicted evangelicals will rally around the former governor.
“If you ever get all this bunch stirred up at the same time, it makes a big difference, and I think it’s stirring time,” Copeland said.
Copeland has been stirring television audiences since 1979.
His Web site promises riches to anyone who gives generously — provided they have the right attitude.
“Do you want a hundredfold return on your money? Give and let God multiply it back to you. No bank in the world offers this kind of return! Praise the Lord,” one online article reads.
In Copeland’s terminology, a donation is a “seed,” a $20 bill is a “little green blessing” and a southwest Arkansas vacation home is a “prayer cabin.”
Dozens of his messages focus on money. Many others focus on healing. Gloria Copeland, a native Arkansan who became a Christian in Little Rock decades ago, now offers “healing schools” where people are “taught” how to obtain healing.
ONLINE PROPHET
A Charismatic Christian, Kenneth Copeland speaks in tongues and posts dozens of “prophecies” on his Web site, purportedly channeling the voice of God on a range of topics.
Here’s a 2003 prophecy, spoken in the name of the Lord, which is posted at www.kcm. org: “I have taken over the politics and the politicians. Listen to My voice. Vote the way I say in all elections. America’s place as a nation is coming to its fullest and finest hour. Not just as the military power but as the source and supply of the gospel, My gospel, in power and witness to the whole earth.”
A few years ago, Copeland asked donors to help him buy two $20 million Cessna Citation X jets — planes the preacher said would help him and his wife “spread the gospel around the globe faster than ever before.”
Eventually, Copeland downsized the request to just one plane.
The eight-passenger jet was purchased in 2006.
Now, U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is asking the Copelands to explain layovers the plane reportedly made in Fiji, Maui and Honolulu, plus side trips to a ski area in Colorado and a hunting region in southern Texas.
Grassley is also asking questions about the Copelands’ spending, including a gift of more than $2 million that the Copelands reportedly received early this year. Happy Caldwell, pastor of Little Rock’s Agape Church, told his congregation in January that fellow evangelists had provided Kenneth and Gloria Copeland with the money during a gathering earlier in the month.
“They were speechless,” Caldwell said, as members of his audience gasped. “That’s about a million dollars apiece.”
Copeland’s son spearheaded the fundraising, Caldwell said, adding that the couple deserved the gift.
“When you’re a heroic giver, eventually you’re going to be a heroic receiver,” Caldwell told his congregation.
Ministry officials could not be reached for comment Friday. But a statement posted online by the Copelands’ son, Chief Executive Officer John Copeland states, “Kenneth Copeland Ministries has been, and always will be, a ministry of integrity. Our ministry’s goal remains clear: to bring people around the world from the milk to the meat of the Word of God. We are committed to meeting this goal with the highest ethical standards.”
“We operate openly and legally,” John Copeland wrote, adding, “We will not participate in a public spectacle. We operate our ministry with privacy — not secrecy.”
‘MARKS OF A CULT’
In his book, Christianity in Crisis, Christian Research Institute president Hank Hanegraaff writes that Kenneth Copeland Ministries “bears all the marks of a cult.”
Copeland’s nonprofit agency rakes in untold millions of dollars. Because it is classified as a church, it does not have to release key financial data like other nonprofits do. MinistryWatch, an organization that monitors Christian ministries, gives Kenneth Copeland Ministries an “F” grade for transparency, saying it has not released a detailed budget.
An investigator with a Dallas-based televangelist watchdog group, says Copeland preys on desperate people. “It’s extremely sad and heartbreaking that these people are giving their last dollars and expecting to get either a financial or a physical healing,” said Pete Evans of the Trinity Foundation. “He’s certainly a snake-oil salesman. He’s promising healings that he can’t deliver.”
Huckabee himself has steered clear of “health and wealth” theology. Preaching at Prestonwood Baptist Church near Dallas on Nov. 3, Huckabee told the crowd: “The Bible says God has plans to prosper us. ... Now, there’s no guarantee that following Jesus means that we’re going to be wealthy. Neither is it his goal to make us poor. His goal is to make us like Jesus, and that is prosperity.”
Prosperity theology, in general, has been condemned not only by Southern Baptists, but by the Assemblies of God, the largest Pentecostal fellowship in the United States.
While mainstream Pentecostals do believe that God answers prayer and blesses faithful Christians, they do not believe that poverty is a sign of God’s wrath or that wealth is necessarily a sign of his favor.
“Scripture teaches that the rain falls on the just and the unjust,” said George O. Wood, general superintendent of the Assemblies of God.
Wood says his own parents served God faithfully as missionaries to China and Tibet, but lived on Social Security after they retired. When they died, they left little in the way of material possessions.
They never bought into “the Las Vegas slot machine of Christian stewardship,” he said. “My mother always used to say to me, ‘Son, when we stand before Jesus, he will not ask us if we’ve been successful. He’ll ask us if we’ve been faithful.’”