Southland: Television’s Bible Belt

Lit up at night, the new world headquarters of Trinity Broadcasting Network in Costa Mesa looks like a cross between Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty castle and a Middle Eastern palace.

Inside, a sweeping brass and marble staircase leads to a 15-foot-tall statue of Michael the Archangel stomping the head of Satan. Behind is a high-definition video theater with a 48-channel sound system and a state-of-the-art television studio.

The building, which will be formally dedicated in May, is a monument to the modern reach of television ministries. It combines studios and offices with tour attractions worthy of a theme park. More importantly, it loudly signals the ascension of Southern California as the international capital of televangelism.

Some of the biggest stars in religious broadcasting have been lured here by the access to entertainment technology and a friendly environment, where religious fervor is embraced and the privacy of public figures is protected.

They’re an eclectic bunch, with varying styles and doctrines, and with their share of critics. But they are all bound by the belief that their divine mission is to use the electronic media to promote Christianity.

“We are the communications capital of the world,” said entertainer Pat Boone, whose gospel music show formerly appeared on TBN.

“It makes sense that if Christians are going to be in the communications business it would emanate from here.”

Consider:

* Trinity Broadcasting Network, formerly based in Tustin, is the world’s largest Christian television network, a nerve center for more than 700 broadcast, cable and satellite affiliates spanning the globe. Paul Crouch, who runs TBN with his wife Jan, is viewed as the most powerful figure in televangelism--a Christian equivalent of media moguls Rupert Murdoch and Michael Eisner.

* The Rev. Robert Schuller’s hugely successful “Hour of Power” telecasts of his services at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove are beamed around the world on TBN. A minister of the mainstream Reform Church of America, Schuller started out preaching from the roof of an Orange drive-in, drawing a following with his focus on the power of positive thinking.

* Gene Scott, pastor of the Los Angeles University Cathedral, is a favorite on the tube with his combative sermons and prize show horses. The white-haired, cigar-chomping Stanford PhD is known as a sort of shock jock of televangelism--a religious TV host who doesn’t shy from taking provocative stands on issues.

* Benny Hinn, a new age charismatic whom boxing champ Evander Holyfield credits with healing his defective heart, plans to open the Hinn World Media Center in Aliso Viejo as the hub of his global TV ministry. A fast-rising star who will also maintain his ministry in Florida, he built his following by appearing on TBN.

* And there are others, including the All American Network, a smaller version of TBN based in San Dimas, and the popular Los Angeles-based pastors Frederick K. C. Price and E. V. Hill, both of whom are considered among the nation’s most prominent black televangelists.

Of course, Southern California isn’t the only place religious broadcasters call home. There are about 2,500 television and radio evangelists in the United States, who collectively take in more than $3 billion annually from followers. One of the biggest names in televangelism, Pat Robertson, is based in Virginia.

But few places have such a high concentration of religious media might as Los Angeles and Orange counties.

For televangelists, the advantages to being in Southern California can be as straightforward as access to production equipment and expertise.

“When we get ready to produce, we can go to this vast media pool in Southern California and draw on the best people in the industry,” said Don Matthews, executive director of Faith for Today Television in Simi Valley, an offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Matthews, who produces a health-related show that is broadcast on TBN, has a tiny staff and no studio of his own. So when he gets enough money together to produce a block of shows, he books a studio somewhere in the Los Angeles area and hires 30 to 40 production workers under temporary contract. “It’s all so readily available here in Southern California,” he said.

Perhaps even more important than access to studios and production gear, Boone said, is that “there’s just something about the climate and the creative community here that attracts the creative mind.”

Being in the media capital also puts televangelists within easy reach of many of the celebrities who help drum up support.

TBN, whose daily fare includes the standard preacher-at-a-pulpit as well as programs on marriage and health, carries shows featuring Dale Evans, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Carol Lawrence and former “Love Boat” captain Gavin MacLeod. Other celebrities frequently turn up on the flagship “Praise the Lord” show to talk, sing or join in prayers.

Schuller, whose gleaming 12-story glass-and-steel sanctuary is equipped with a giant video screen, in the past year has been host to such celebrities as Naomi Judd, poet Maya Angelou, musician John Tesh and former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda.

Hinn has even hired a veteran entertainment publicist, Los Angeles-based David Brokaw, whose other clients include Bill Cosby, Loretta Lynn and Amy Grant.

Brokaw recently helped Hinn land a spot on CNN’s “Larry King Live.” He believes such appearances will help the preacher become better known to a mainstream audience. “That’s what modern PR and marketing can do, is help close that gap,” he said.

“For religion to exist in contemporary life, it has to exist in the media and public spheres,” said Stewart Hoover, a professor of media studies at the University of Colorado and author of “Mass Media Religion.”

“Marketing and PR principles rule the day,” Hoover said. “The successful, high-profile, financially stable, nontraditional religious organizations like these televangelist ministries know that, and they are making the most of it.”

Like the celebrities they court, California’s televangelists also benefit from the state’s privacy laws, considered the most rigid in the nation, said Ole Anthony, founder of Trinity Foundation, a Dallas-based evangelical watchdog group not affiliated with TBN.

These laws restrict such activities as the use of hidden cameras, accessing motor vehicle records and even the inspection of garbage. Anthony says these laws hamper his organization’s efforts to gather information and investigate complaints against California-based TV ministries.

Others say the penchant for privacy is merely a trademark of televangelists.

“Anyone who’s an evangelical TV preacher wants to be his own boss,” said Stephen Winzenburg, a communications professor and televangelist expert at Grand View College in Des Moines, Iowa.

“It’s not that the Crouches and others are not reputable. They just choose to live on their own terms and not have someone else tell them what to do. That’s very evangelical.”

The region’s strong base of religious conservatism also makes Southern California a “friendly environment” for televangelists, said Mike Regele, president of Percept, a Costa Mesa-based religious research and consulting firm.

Los Angeles is the birthplace of Pentecostalism. In 1906, the Azuza Street revival began in what is now Little Tokyo, with reports of healings and speaking in tongues. That led to the founding of the Assemblies of God and other Pentecostal denominations.

Two other large evangelical movements, Calvary Chapel and the Vineyard Christian Fellowship, were started in Orange County.

Crouch, a missionary’s son from the Midwest, came to California in the 1960s to manage the Assemblies of God TV and film production center in Burbank.

A few years later he launched his own broadcasting operation with then-partner Jim Bakker, but the pair soon had a falling-out. Bakker left and founded the PTL Club in South Carolina, and later became involved in a sex-and-money scandal and was convicted on federal fraud charges.

The scandal left televangelism with a black eye from which it has never fully recovered. That’s partly why, observers say, this area’s Pentecostal roots are no small matter for today’s televangelists.

“You want to locate, when you’re doing something that has the potential of raising eyebrows, where you have some friends,” Regele said.

Southern California is also a place where success is flaunted, and where an unbridled display of opulence, like the new TBN headquarters, seems to fit right in.

The Crouches preach a “success” theology in which they contend Christ and the Apostles were actually wealthy merchants. Viewers are told that if they give money, God will reward them with health and wealth.

Their regular “praise-a-thons” and other fund-raisers produce tens of millions of dollars, according to tax returns. The Crouches declined to be interviewed for this story.

The new Costa Mesa facility, acquired two years ago for $6 million--TBN won’t disclose how much it spent on renovation--is a “kind of church triumphant thing,” said Benjamin J. Hubbard, chairman of Cal State Fullerton’s department of comparative religion.

“It’s very California. It symbolizes to the world that ‘We’ve made it.’ ”

The building contains the network’s administrative offices, a large gift shop, and a studio where the Crouches’ flagship “Praise the Lord” and other shows will be produced. In one part of the building, the faces of cherubs on the ceiling mural came from baby pictures provided by TBN employees. Another ceiling fresco depicts Christ on a white horse--an image envisioned in a biblical passage.

The facility also has a virtual-reality re-creation of Jerusalem’s Via Doloroso, where Jesus is believed to have taken his final walk, and high-definition video presentations of stories from the life of Christ and Apostle Paul.

Though the building is only partially open, TBN started giving free tours in November.

Richard and Marion Alf, Minnesota snowbirds who winter at a Newport Beach mobile home park, took in the tour and video and gave it a ringing endorsement. “This is just lovely,” said Marion, 72. “I’m sure the Lord will be pleased with it.”

Added their son, Dan, 36, of Long Beach: “It’s very Versace.”

It was a vision from God, in which the Almighty beamed lights across a den ceiling and uttered the word “satellite,” that Crouch says led him to build TBN into what he calls “one of the greatest voices for God in the history of the world.”

But the growth of TBN has also led to a major battle with the Federal Communications Commission. A scathing ruling in November 1995 by FCC Administrative Law Judge Joseph Chackin stated that TBN “committed serious, willful and repeated violations” of federal law by allegedly setting up phony minority groups to skirt rules designed to limit the number of TV stations under common ownership.

That decision, which stripped TBN of its Miami-area license, is under appeal. Meanwhile, TBN faces more challenges under the minority-ownership rules by the FCC, which could cost the network other important broadcast licenses at various stations.

An unfavorable outcome could be devastating to TBN, and to the multitude of televangelists who have risen to stardom on the network. Among them is Hinn, whose wild gestures inspired Steve Martin’s portrayal of a faith healer in the movie “Leap of Faith.”

Hinn is one of the many religious broadcasters whose shows are available to millions on TBN, and he’s pushing ahead with his plans for a media base here so “when he comes out to Southern California to do his TV shows he can just completely focus on TV,” said his spokesman, Brokaw.

On his Web site, Hinn urges followers to help cover the $4.5 million he says is needed to pay off a loan on the Aliso Viejo building and renovate the interior, so he can tape his “This Is Your Day!” show there.

He said the new media center is the modern way to make good on the divine directive to “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel.”

“It is amazing,” he said, “to see the impact of television.”

Times staff writer Lee Romney contributed to this report.