Schuller Again Airs Case, This Time on National TV

He got through the court of law with a fine and a public apology. His followers apparently are standing behind him. But there remains the court of public opinion, no small matter for a man whose evangelist ministry reaches millions around the world through television.

So the Rev. Robert H. Schuller went onto “Larry King Live” Thursday evening to insist again that he had “aggressively grabbed” a United Airlines attendant on a June 28 transcontinental flight only because he had been provoked.

Schuller displayed flashes of defiance and contrition in a one-hour appearance with the CNN television host. He repeated his assertion that the incident arose from disputes over whether the attendant would hang Schuller’s garment bag and serve him a dessert plate without cheese. He also said the flight attendant had told him a “blatant, outward, open, shocking lie.”

Schuller did not go into detail, but he said that the attendant alleged in general that the reverend had insulted him. So, Schuller said, he took the man by the shoulders in an attempt to tell him that was not so. “I did not shake him,” he said. “I swear I didn’t shake him.”

But the Garden Grove televangelist also said a lifetime of flying on airlines had made him “a spoiled child” and that he was “very, very sorry” he did not take steps to defuse what he called an “atmosphere of hostility.”

The appearance came a day after Schuller was charged in New York with one misdemeanor count of assault when a federal investigator concluded he had shaken the flight attendant by the shoulders “a number of times” and caused his head “to move up and down in a vigorous manner.”

Schuller pleaded not guilty. But the 70-year-old founder of Crystal Cathedral Ministries in Garden Grove cut a deal with federal prosecutors that enabled him to avoid a trial by apologizing in court and submitting to six months of supervision by a federal case officer. Prosecutors said they will drop the charge if Schuller keeps a clean record in that time.

He also paid a $1,100 civil fine, from his personal funds, he said.

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On the show Thursday, Schuller and his attorney, Terry Giles, suggested that flight attendants played up the incident to help their position in contract negotiations with the airline. A caller from Alabama who identified herself as a United flight attendant said that was untrue.

Schuller also said he wondered whether the assault allegation arose because he was traveling with a black companion and was en route to the funeral of Malcolm X’s widow, Betty Shabazz. Later, he said he could not judge whether racial prejudice was a factor.

The flight attendant who alleged he was assaulted by Schuller has not responded to interview requests. Nor has his name been made public.

In Garden Grove, cathedral workers and tourists said the media have made too much of a story that by now should have ended.

“He apologized. Give him his due,” said Leota Hill, 73, of Neosho, Mo., who described herself as a frequent viewer of Schuller’s weekly Christian show “Hour of Power.”

Hill was visiting the famed star-shaped cathedral Thursday afternoon with a daughter from West Hollywood. “He’s a man of the cloth,” Hill said of Schuller. “We need to be very careful when we criticize God’s people.”

Said the Rev. Glenn DeMaster, executive pastor of the cathedral: “It’s been thrashed out in the news media. We need to move on with our ministry. There needs to be an end.”

But one religious scholar said Schuller, who rubs elbows with presidents and broadcasts sermons in 44 countries, should expect public scrutiny. “He is a creature of the media, so that goes with the territory,” said Gary Tiffin, dean of Pacific Christian College in Fullerton.

Naturally, the run-in between a televangelist and a flight attendant is the sort of story that moves people to call radio or television talk shows. Some pick up a pen and write the newspaper. A Fullerton man, in a letter to The Times, complained that Schuller had qualified his apology.

“In a day when so many public figures are saying, ‘I didn’t do it!’ or, ‘I did it, but it wasn’t that bad,’ what a shame that Rev. Schuller didn’t speak the eight simple words, ‘I did it. It was wrong. I’m sorry,’ ” wrote Van C. Elliott, 60, a business consultant. “He missed a marvelous opportunity.”