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The Agony of Deceit, whose contributors lean heavily toward orthodox Calvinism or Lutheranism, saves its hottest brimstone for those "faith" preachers who appear to undermine the uniqueness of God's incarnation in Jesus Christ. Such thinking has been popularized by Paul Crouch ("I am a little god"), of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, Tilton and fellow Texan Kenneth Copeland. Tilton contends that "man was designed or created by God to be the god of this world." Copeland says, "You don't have a god in you. You are one!" The dean of the little-god teachers is a Tulsa-based radio speaker, Kenneth Hagin, who proclaims to followers that "you are as much an incarnation ((of God)) as is Jesus of Nazareth," and maintains that even Jesus needed to get himself born again.
A Crouch staffer justifies such talk by noting Jesus' quotation of Psalm 82: 6, in which God says to human beings, "you are gods." What that means, the staffer explains, is that "you were created just less than the angels" and that "the Christian has more power than he realizes." (Roberts, Copeland, , Tilton and Hagin declined to comment on the book's accusations about their teaching.)
The editor of Agony is Michael Horton, 25, a clergyman in the Reformed Episcopal Church and head of Christians United for Reformation, a small theological think tank in La Mirada, Calif. Horton asserts that far too many Evangelical clergy and lay people are ignorant of basic Christian doctrine, and thus are easily misled by slick preachers who "sling the right lingo" and emphasize emotional appeals over rational thought. In short, he argues, U.S. Evangelicalism needs the sort of intellectual and theological cleanup that Martin Luther sought for medieval Christendom. The preachers that Horton and company cite most frequently for theological errors are ministers from Pentecostal and Charismatic groups, which emphasize speaking in tongues, faith healing and other miraculous or ecstatic "gifts of the Holy Spirit."
On the other end of the scale, Agony makes no mention of such old-line non- Charismatics as Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell, both Baptists, who pass muster without doctrinal blemish. Jim Bakker also escapes any critical examination -- presumably because the defrocked Pentecostal is no longer on the air, having booked his act into federal prison for the next 45 years.