
DATE: Sunday, June 22, 1997                 TAG: 9706220123

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:  130 lines

ROBERTSONS' RICHES FUEL DEBATE OVER CHRISTIANITY AND WEALTH

How does great wealth sit on a man dedicated to spreading the gospel of Jesus, who never owned a thing? Is it appropriate for an evangelist to be in the ranks of the richest Americans?

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson and his son, Tim, just made a personal profit of $227 million from the sale of the parent company of the Family Channel. The family already had an estimated worth of nearly $200 million.

``Secular people don't think that religious people should be wealthy,'' says Roger Visser of Virginia Beach, who has supported Robertson, including financially, for more than 20 years.

``But the Bible doesn't say it's wrong to have money. It says if you use it badly, that's wrong. Abraham, David and Solomon are all very wealthy.''

Randall Balmer, an evangelical himself and a professor of religion at Barnard College in New York, sees a regrettable change in philosophy.

``When I was growing up within evangelicalism, the most damning thing you could say about a fellow believer was that he or she was worldly. It meant a number of things, but one thing it meant was that they were affluent.''

In the past 20 years, Balmer says, Robertson and other ministers ``have put a theological gloss on avarice, to put it bluntly.''

Robertson rarely gives interviews. His spokeswoman, Patty Silverman, says the key to his philosophy about wealth is the distinction between using money and loving money.

``The bottom line is what you do with the wealth that you have. It's not the money that's evil, it's that you don't make money your god. It's the love of money that is evil.''

``God used wealthy men,'' Silverman points out, ``and he used men who were not wealthy.''

The issue of wealth and Christianity is at the heart of Robertson's business empire.

And, just as different people view Robertson's actions differently, they all point to the Bible's book of Luke for their own reasons.

In one of Robertson's books, he refers to an early incident in his career when he was driven to consider Luke 12:33, in which Jesus urges his followers to sell all they have and serve the poor. Robertson says he did.

But since he began broadcasting from Portsmouth in 1961, Robertson has built a business empire and helped to redefine evangelism in the 20th century. Along the way, he has accumulated considerable wealth and spent probably even more.

A satellite television network can't be run without large amounts of money, Robertson's staff points out, and that network reaches many Christians. The success of the Family Channel, drawing viewers to a mix of old and new programming without sexual themes, would be impossible without money.

Silverman says that in Luke there is also the verse, ``To whom much is given much will be required,'' another of Robertson's principles.

But Robertson's critics point to Luke as well.

``Pat Robertson doesn't have a biblical leg to stand on,'' says Jim Wallis, a pastor and editor of Sojourners, a Christian magazine published in Washington, D.C. ``Pat Robertson's wealth shapes his view of the world much more than the New Testament.''

It is in Luke, Wallis says, that Jesus said, ``You cannot serve God and wealth.''

``Jesus speaks to this very clearly,'' Wallis says. ``He says, choose whom you serve. He doesn't say you can make deals and come out all right.

``Pat Robertson thinks he can do both at the same time.''

Robertson's supporters maintain that the money is serving Christianity, not the other way around.

``I think Christians are fighting for a chance to be heard in the marketplace,'' says Roger Beutler, a CBN investor who lives in Naperville, a Chicago suburb. ``Everyone has a chance to be heard - but at the end of the day, the market votes.

``Why shouldn't Christians and Christian leaders be involved in the world and in making good things happen? This is an almost unprecedented intersection of the ministry with the world.''

Beutler says he was a little concerned about the Robertsons' dealings with Murdoch. The media giant's holdings have produced television shows like ``Married . . . With Children'' and ``Melrose Place,'' in which the Bible is unlikely to be quoted.

But Beutler says he's convinced the Family Channel's ideals will be left intact, as well as ``The 700 Club,'' on which Robertson appears. In fact, he says, through Murdoch's broadcasting Robertson will be heard more widely.

Visser says Robertson isn't promoting the so-called ``prosperity gospel'' of some evangelists, which advocates actually praying for prosperity.

``The idea that if you pray it is given to you, that's another matter,'' Visser says. ``I don't agree with that.

``The right Christian attitude allows people to have money, to use for Christian purposes. `Seek ye first the kingdom of God.' That thought helped me. It's the Lord's money. Don't use it the wrong way.''

No, says theologian Stanley Hauerwas, it's not that simple. Hauerwas, who holds the Gilbert T. Rowe Chair of Theological Ethics at the divinity school of Duke University in North Carolina, says wealth is a problem for evangelical ministers because they don't have a tradition of poverty to remind them of its importance.

``They never had monasticism around to remind them that there is really a problem with being a bourgeois Christian with a lot of money,'' says Hauerwas.

``The New Testament's very clear. If you have a lot of money, you're in deep trouble. So if you're an evangelical, you have trouble reading those passages about greed, which are very clear. And you find a way to read around them in a way you don't with the passages on, say, homosexuality.''

Catherine Syvertsen, a CBN ``partner'' from Connecticut, has known Robertson for about 25 years.

``I've found him to be more than a televangelist who's living off the contributions of others,'' she says. ``He is one of the largest contributors to the ministry. One reason we support CBN is that we see that the money is always going out, doing the work, not just being spent on extravagance.''

She says Robertson ``thinks big,'' certainly demonstrated by the IFE deal.

But Wallis, the Washington pastor and editor, takes a dim view of the deal with Murdoch.

``What's not going on here is a confrontation between Christian ideals and secular ideals,'' he says. ``Robertson and Murdoch come together as rich men who know how to make deals.

``Millionaires do not make good evangelists.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

Pat Robertson

Graphic

TWO VIEWS

MONEY ISN'T EVIL: ``The Bible doesn't say it's wrong to have

money. It says if you use it badly, that's wrong. Abraham, David and

Solomon are all very wealthy.''

Roger Visser, a supporter of Pat Robertson for more than 20

years.

WEALTH IS BAD:

``The New Testament's very clear. If you have a lot of money,

you're in deep trouble.''