For the record, I think the whole question of whether or not ABC's investigation of Tilton and the other two televangelists was on the up-and-up is a side issue. Even if that investigation was done legitimately--and after all this time, who knows?--that is not the focus of Wendy's book. These questions were raised by Glenna Whitley, the reporter who did the [i:a1c719f351]Observer[/i:a1c719f351] piece, who read some things in the court documents that troubled her during the course of her research for her article. It really has no bearing on the points Wendy makes in her book.

The Letters to the Editor from the [i:67f4a549e0]Observer[/i:67f4a549e0] article just came out. Here is one from an old high school friend of mine:

The Gospel of Ole

Lose yourself: I'm glad someone finally had the courage to publish a book about the real Ole Anthony. Thank you, Wendy Duncan. And thanks to the Dallas Observer for having the journalistic savvy to follow up on it ("The Cult of Ole," by Glenna Whitley, August 3).

On the surface, your comical front page seems almost as silly as depicting Ole behind a locked compound, handing out Nikes and serving Kool-Aid. Just hard to take seriously. But that doesn't mean that the danger at Trinity isn't real. Unfortunately, the very word "cult" conjures up visions of something evil and extreme, and it's easy to miss the subtle criteria. Does a "cult leader" only earn that eerie title by causing a newsworthy tragedy? Isn't causing personal tragedy enough? Ole's ability to maintain such a startling level of psychological control over people's lives for so many years is scarier to me than a flash-in-the-pan madman.

I doubt we'll ever see the dreaded headlines that something snapped and it all got ugly. It only gets personally ugly for people like Doug and Wendy, who trusted Ole Anthony, only to be devastated and disillusioned by his abuse and deception. No wonder they couldn't hear God anymore.

Wendy Duncan's husband Doug was a close high school friend of mine, before and during the time he got into this Trinity Foundation mess. So I've known Ole was bad news since 1977, when Doug initially had some serious questions and wanted me to meet with him to check out his theology. Ole sat uncomfortably close to me in a circular booth at Denny's, with an imposing sensuality that was quite intimidating to a 21-year-old. After first testing my scriptural knowledge, he fed me his twisted revision. His spiritual pitch was about surrendering individual identity in favor of losing oneself in a melting oneness of all believers. He said this was the only way God would accept us in heaven, because expressing individuality meant asserting self, which was sinful. Ole said this was our eternal destiny, heavily implying that it should begin more tangibly in the here and now.

Contrary to Ole, I felt that my relationship with God depended on it being personally intimate. So the obvious red flag was that if I bought his theology and laid down my identity, then I'd also relinquish my free will and the ability to make my own decisions. No, I wasn't thinking "Run, it's a cult!" But I did get his agenda--loud and clear.

Doug didn't see things my way and told me more about Ole's ideas, like the unsurprising revelation that premarital sex was totally fine because "to the pure all things are pure" (a wildly irresponsible interpretation of Titus 1:15). With this kind of theology, which allowed so-called freedom without offending the Christian conscience, it's no wonder that young people were drawn to Ole. When my friend's strong faith was misdirected so easily, it certainly foreshadowed Ole's uncanny influence. What I didn't see was the years of misery it would cost him.

I've always believed that, from its very roots, Trinity represented something quite foreign from the true gospel. And it seems from all reports that Ole just continued in that vein and built more falsehood on that faulty foundation. As for his watchdog business, the oldest trick in the book is finding someone worse to criticize to make yourself look better. He did that masterfully by going after the big ministry guns. The bigger the gun, the better it would make him seem. He wasn't one of "them"--he was the Christian crusader for justice. Or was he?

Being the wife of an ordained minister for many years has put me on the forefront of concern about corruption in the church. I am distraught when people are hurt. But Ole's methods of exposing televangelists were almost gleeful and bloodthirsty. Based on that alone, you gotta wonder what team he's batting for. He is like a surgeon who goes after a disease by slicing the patient to death with a kitchen knife. A skilled surgeon will treat the patient, not ravage him. Apparently, he dealt with his own ministry the same way.

I hope that Ole's antics being exposed will curtail others from getting involved with him. I also hope that his career as a watchdog is shut down. Ministers are people, too, and inevitably some will do things wrong. There is certainly much to correct. But who should handle the wrong and how? Ole is surely not the "who," and he doesn't have the compassion or a clue about the scriptural way to do the "how."

Ole Anthony claims to represent my God? I don't think so.

J.T.

Plano

A reporter up in Pittsburgh just quoted Ole in an article about a preacher. I wrote to her via e-mail to make her aware of the book my wife wrote and the subsequent article in the [i:465a6ec8cb]Dallas Observer[/i:465a6ec8cb]. She wrote back to me and said that she was aware of both the book and the article, but that Ole still had the best archives and the most information on various ministries, so she still used him to get the information she needed for her story. She said if she had to wait around for morally pure sources to use she might as well get out of journalism.

I'm still sorting this one out. On the one hand, I guess she has a point. If you need information you have to go to the people who have that information. On the other hand, when Ole is quoted in the press like that it tends to lend him an air of moral authority that he does not deserve. If his goal is to get quoted a lot in the media (and I think it is), then he has carved out a pretty good little niche for himself.

I would be interested to hear some other people's thoughts on this. Kind of an "Ethics of Journalism" question, I guess.

The Dallas Observer article appears to be an isolated one expressing a minority opinion about Ole Anthony.

He has quite a few fans in the media because he has been around for some time and exposed some pretty awful stuff regarding ministries that have hurt and/or exploited people.

Is Ole Anthony a "cult leader" or does he have a "cult following" of deeply devoted people that share his values and sense of mission?

It seems like the "jury is till out on that one."

After my wife broke the story in her book ([i:2602092116]I Can't Hear God Anymore: Life in a Dallas Cult[/i:2602092116]) about the way Ole had fabricated much of his background, the reporter for the [i:2602092116]Observer[/i:2602092116], Glenna Whitley, took the trouble to actually check into Ole's claims and she found that my wife was absolutely correct in what she said in her book. Glenna was able to take it a step further and uncovered some things that even we did not know. See the excellent sidebar to her main article, The Man and the Myth: [www.dallasobserver.com]

It is a mischaracterization to say "the jury is still out" because Wendy and Glenna are the only ones to have actually examined the evidence, and they both have, indeed, reached a verdict. Ole's popularity with the rest of the "Drive-by Media" is based on their simply taking him at his word and not doing any due diligence to check out anything he says. If they did, they would discover the same things that Wendy and Glenna did.

An example of this is the puff piece in the [i:2602092116]New Yorker[/i:2602092116] by Burkhardt Bilger, which represents one of the true low-water marks in the history of American journalism. Bilger even put my name in the piece without ever bothering to contact me to verify if anything he was saying was true.

The point is, Trinity Foundation is indeed a cult, conceived in deception, maintained in falsehood, and protected by a covering of lies. The fact that only a few people have caught onto that so far is no justification for Trinity. The truth is beginning to surface, and it will work its way inexorably into the light.

The revelations in the sidebar you mention are not that shocking.

So what if Anthony was not "Wickenburg's most notorious juvenile delinquent."

And what a shocker that instead "Anthony did not have long hair and a beard in high school...was an ordinary teen...Safeway employee...neatly groomed" and a National Honor Society member...co-editor of the yearbook and belonged to the radio club."

Anthony was also not "arrested for setting fire to a 40-foot wooden cross in a desert amphitheater" and "given the choice of prison or the military."

Instead, he simply enlisted on his own in the Air Force.

Ole Anthony also exagerrated his military record.

His resume is also somewhat misleading.

"Trinity press releases say that he received his 'formal education' at the University of Arizona, SMU and Harvard." But this actually consisted of "uncompleted semester at UA, a seminar at SMU and a short continuing-education business management course at Harvard."

"Records provided by Anthony show that since 1985, he has received an annuity of $600 a month, plus lump sum payments paid on November 1 every five years, for a total of approximately $214,000 to date. The last lump sum payment was $25,000 in 2005."

Summing up:

Ole Anthony has spun yarns about being a "bad boy" and is also guilty of telling "Cold War" stories about his time in the military. His resume was somewhat misleading and he makes money, something like $12,000.00 per year.

Wow, the Observer really uncovered some startling stuff.

Considering what Anthony and Trinity uncovered about Tilton, Hinn, TBN and others, this seems small.

And the "Drive-by-Media" label looks more applicable to the Observer, that did a "drive-by" on Ole Anthony.

The mainstream media has worked with Anthony, such as ABC News and the LA Times, and the results have been major and important stories about widely known ministries filled with compelling facts, in part provided by Trinity.

This is far more startling and meaningful than what the Dallas Observer has to say in its sidebar about Anthony.

Anyone interested in Trinity and Anthony's history of exposing ministries should read the following:

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

[www.culteducation.com]

These are just some of the articles citing Anthony and his work that are within the Ross Institute archives, many more may be found elsewhere.

This reminds me of that old fast food commercial, which featured a little old lady questioning some hamburger place, "Where's the beef"?

When the mainstream media wanted substance Anthony and Trinity gave them steak, serving up the facts about TV preachers such as Benny Hinn, Robert Tilton, John Hagee, Mike Murdock and Paul and Jan Crouch.

But when it came time for the Dallas Observer to serve up the facts about Ole Anthony, all they had was hamburger.

No doubt Hinn and his ilk hate Ole Anthony, and for good reason, given the negative press and TV exposure he has helped to create concerning such hi-profile ministries. Trinity has been instrumental in exposing the excesses of modern televagelism.

However, there doesn't seem to be much substance based upon the Observer sidebar to paint Anthony with the same brush, and he appears to be little more than a man given to spinning yarns and a little BS about his personal history.

Not the gravest sin.

Thank you, Rick, for that last post. It gives me an opportunity to clarify what I think some of the problems are with Ole/Trinity. It also helps me to understand why Wendy’s book and Glenna’s article have not had as big an impact as I thought they would—especially with members of the media.

First of all, let me explain why I think it is such a big deal that Ole engaged in “spinning yarns and a little BS about his personal history.” From the very outset, Ole taught that absolute honesty is the most important quality in the life of the believer. Indeed, I have heard Ole say many times that, “If God requires anything from you other than your complete honesty, then He has failed.” Rigorous honesty is the foundation upon which the entire house of faith is built, and without that, nothing. [i:48192a1a6d]Sine qua non[/i:48192a1a6d]. It was the basis of his critique of the televangelists, the rationalization of why it was permissible for a group of believers to make a ministry out of destroying other ministries. It even was used to justify why we were publishing [i:48192a1a6d]The Door[/i:48192a1a6d], which was a way to use humor to bring more honesty into the church. And yet, now it transpires that Ole himself is far from honest, though he presents himself as being the most honest person alive.

Part of the problem here, I think, is that for people like yourself and the many reporters he has dealt with, you are looking at the public face of Ole and what he does out in the media world in terms of the investigations. Ole raises some valid points about some of those whom he critiques, and there is no denying that Trinity has amassed an impressive library of information on the ministries they have monitored—mostly through the hard work and dogged persistence of Harry Guetzlaff, who has certainly achieved something remarkable. However, to those of us who have looked to Ole for spiritual leadership and guidance, the fact that he has turned out to be a hypocrite has deeper implications.

One of the facts that it seems like neither you nor many members of the media want to really take an honest look at is the personal devastation Ole has wrought in the lives of some of his followers. In conducting the research for her book, Wendy interviewed dozens of former members of Trinity Foundation. All of them told stories of psychological and spiritual abuse and very painful healing processes, sometimes requiring thousands of dollars worth of psychotherapy. Though most of these people have found a way to move on past the trauma (excepting, I guess, the three who committed suicide), the sad fact is that most of them have had their relationships with God destroyed in the process. The former member who said, “Every day that Ole Anthony goes on living is another day in which I know that there is no God,” expresses well the sentiment of many of the others. That seems to me to be a terrible legacy for a self-proclaimed minister of the Gospel to have.

On the subject of the money, I have a couple of points to make. First, you are correct in saying that we are not talking about a huge amount here. I have personally witnessed some of the pain that Ole suffers as a result of his accident at the health club, and I do not begrudge him any amount of settlement he was able to get. I wish he had been awarded even more money, but that is beside the point. For years I sat in on meetings and watched Ole give verbal haircuts to hapless members of Trinity Foundation who had shorted on their tithes. It was brutal. People had stories read to them from the Bible that put them in fear of their very salvation for lying to the Holy Spirit and not being transparent about their income and giving a complete accounting and “bringing the full tithe into the storehouse.” Now, it turns out, Ole has hidden and not tithed on part of his own income. Even that may not seem like a big deal to those who are outside of Trinity and not taught what we were taught, but anyone who was at Trinity understands the implications of this. The part that bothers me the most, though, is how he was able to savage others for not fully tithing, while at the time he was guilty of the same thing. He was squeezing people hard who were often struggling to get by, while he is sitting on several thousand dollars in his Merrill Lynch account. Oh, and what was the settlement for, anyway? Wasn’t it so he could pay his medical costs? Well, since nobody knew about the settlement he always had the foundation pay his medical bills while he just salted away the money he got from the settlement.

One last point, and I will leave off for now. When I first started this thread I mentioned the fact that Trinity shuns its former members—even quoting you from your interview with The Door. You said that shunning is one of the marks of cultic groups, and it is one that certainly applies to Trinity. In fact, pretty much all of them apply. Our critique of Ole/Trinity has never been about the work they do in the investigations. Our bottom line point has always been about the abuse, manipulation, and control that characterizes the Trinity community and defines it to be a cult. Everyone in the media will have to sort out for themselves what that implies for working with Trinity. No doubt they have a lot of useful information in their archives. I just hope that we are past the point where people think that makes Ole some kind of a hero.

Doug:

Perhaps there will be a sorting out process regarding the internal matters you describe concerning Trinity and Ole Anthony.

Nothing has come out officially as a response regarding the book your wife published fron Trinity that I am aware of.

So far we have only heard one side of the story publicly from those participating in the book and the Observer article you cite.

A few posts have appeared here from a Trinity supporter or two and nothing more. No substantial response, maybe there will never be one.

Historically, I have not received complaints from families about Trinity claiming that the group is a "cult."

But nevertheless your wife's book does raise some serious questions.

An official response from Trinity and Anthony would be meaingful and I hope the organization comes forward with one.

There was one response that John Rutledge—one of the elders and Vice-President of the foundation—posted on the [i:62d27229cf]D Magazine[/i:62d27229cf] blog back in May, just after my wife’s book came out. Here is the link to it if you want to read it:
[frontburner.dmagazine.com]

About a month after that appeared, I responded to it on that same blog. Here is my response: [frontburner.dmagazine.com]

They may have decided after that little exchange that they did not want to engage in open debate. It seems they believe that their best strategy is basically to ignore all of this and let it blow over. In terms of protecting their reputation as televangelist watchdogs, that is probably right. Of course, it has nothing to do with the proper Biblical response to people who believe they have been wronged by you.

I do take issue with your statement that we have heard only one side of the story, and that is our side—corroborated by Glenna Whitley in the [i:62d27229cf]Observer[/i:62d27229cf]. The fact is, Ole has had twenty years of favorable media, culminating in the fawning article in the [i:62d27229cf]New Yorker[/i:62d27229cf] by the sycophantic Burkhardt Bilger. We have not even begun to get equal time, yet.

Don't hold your breath for a response from Ole himself nor from TFI. Probably won't happen. Like I said, apparently the party line is that the sin is allowing someone else’s actions remove you from your perfect place of rest in Him. "It is finished." Translation: "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" I was only involved with TFI for around four months and my feelings about my experiences there are mixed, but in general look at that time as a blessing (Romans 8:28) and my feelings as well are mixed about Ole himself. He's just a man, common flesh. A brilliant, charismatic, deeply cynical, and seriously misguided man. I never thought he was very nice, in fact kind of an a**hole, but percieved he had a basically good heart underneath all that ascerbic cynicism, which proved toxic to his soul and to the souls of those who have sat under him for any length of time. Somebody once said that at the heart of every cynic is a defeated idealist, Amen? I have met some folks who would probably gratefully drink poisoned Kool-Aid if Ole said they were all going to board a UFO together (specifically, I think of the guy who did the interview with you Rick.) That man used to be my boss and he is a 100% true-believing Ole-ite. That level of total trust and devotion to a mere man spooks me out. There is no more Pete, you know? It makes me sad that TFI is noplace special; I came there and wanted to be involved in TFI's mission on purpose, I was neither broke nor homeless or anything like that and wanted to help expose the televangelists. And watching all that TBN was so valuable an experience, armoring me up thoroughly. As was God's intervention in introducing me to the Duncans (thanks again for the dinner and your fellowship and counsel, Doug and Wendy); that particular eye-opener as well was unspeakably valuable to the end of further sharpening my powers of discerment. I do not regret my experiences along my spiritual journey, but am grateful to have been brought out of it, and frankly grateful that I did not have to spend 20 years there in order to "get it". God gave a me crash-course Holy Spirit breakdown blessing of a journey there...praise the Lord, brother and sisters! His redemption draweth nigh!