Televangelism is a special kind of big business. In less than two decades, the vocation of preaching the Word of God via video has grown from hardscrabble beginnings into far-flung real estate and broadcast empires with assets ranging in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In almost every instance, those holdings are dominated by a single dynamic individual who decides how the money will be spent and who strives, above all, to keep vital donations flowing from the faithful.
Who are the televangelists and how well are those multimillion-dollar stewardships handled? What exactly happened at PTL? Could it affect other major television ministries? To answer these important questions, which involve hundreds of thousands of devout Americans and the huge amounts of money they give, TIME conducted a month-long investigation of these often secretive organizations. In the process of piecing together a comprehensive picture of the inner workings of PTL and other ministries, correspondents scrutinized hundreds of documents and crisscrossed the U.S. to speak with the key performers and more than 100 inside sources, many of whom had previously refused all interview requests.
Despite the many hovering suspicions and accusations, none of the major organizations, including the renovated PTL, are currently caught in any scandal. But TIME's examination revealed a continuing pattern. In case after case, the basic management problem that gave birth to the PTL scandal was glaringly evident in other evangelical organizations: a lack of effective accountability.
The controversy in the field of televangelism is being stirred by six Protestant conglomerates of varying wealth and influence. The gaudiest is scandal-tarred PTL: proceeds from all operations in 1986 came to $129 million. PTL is currently run by Fundamentalist Jerry Falwell, 53, who also telecasts weekly services from his own 22,000-member Baptist church in Lynchburg, Va., and operates Liberty University, a 7,500-student institution, and a 1.5 million-subscriber cable system, the Liberty Broadcasting Network. Annual proceeds from Falwell's ministry amount to about $84 million. In Baton Rouge, La., Pentecostal Jimmy Swaggart, 52, has his 4,300-member local church, plus daily and weekly TV shows; he stage-manages elaborate preaching tours in the U.S.and overseas and leads a Bible college. Proceeds from the ministry: some $142 million.
Based in Virginia Beach, Southern Baptist Pat Robertson, 57, formerly presided over a daily talk show (The 700 Club), his Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and a graduate school. (All those activities are now run by subordinates while Robertson campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination.) His ministry's activities earn some $183 million annually. In Tulsa, Oral Roberts, 69, a member of the United Methodist Church but Pentecostal in style, oversees daily and weekly television shows and presides over a $500 million complex, including the 4,650-student Oral Roberts University and the City of Faith Hospital. Annual budget: some $120 million. Robert Schuller, 60, who was ordained by the Reformed Church in America, broadcasts his syndicated weekly Hour of Power shows from the $20 million Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif., and takes in some $42 million annually.