Benny Hinn - WikiHQ

Toufik Benedictus "Benny" Hinn (born 3 December 1952) is an Israeli-born American-Canadian televangelist associated with the charismatic movement. He is best known for his regular "Miracle Crusades," large-scale revival meetings featuring claims of divine healing that are broadcast internationally.

Hinn's ministry emphasizes practices such as faith healing, the "anointing," and phenomena commonly described as being "slain in the spirit," in which participants fall during prayer of physical gestures.

Hinn's ministry has been the subject of sustained criticism from journalists, scholars, and religious figures, particularly regarding the lack of independently verified medical evidence for healing claims. Financial practices, including fundraising methods and the use of ministry funds, have also drawn scrutiny, including a United States Senate inquiry into televangelists. as well as live events and international broadcasts. He remains an influential figure within charismatic Christianity and has ongoing associations with ministries such as Jesus Image. He was raised within the Eastern Orthodox tradition and baptized by the patriarch of Jerusalem.

Soon after the 1967 Arab–Israeli War ("The Six-Day War"), Hinn's family emigrated to Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1968, where he attended Georges Vanier Secondary School. He did not graduate. In his books, Hinn states falsely that his father was the mayor of Jaffa at the time of his birth and that he was socially isolated as a child and had a stutter, and he was a first-class student.

In 1972, he claimed to become a born-again Christian. Hinn has written that on 21 December 1973, he traveled by charter bus from Toronto to Pittsburgh to attend a "miracle service" conducted by evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman. Eventually, he began claiming that God was using him as a conduit for healings and began holding healing services in his church. These new "Miracle Crusades" were soon held at large stadiums and auditoriums across the United States and the world, the first nationally televised service being held in Flint, Michigan, in 1989. In 1990, he launched a new daily talk show called ⁣⁣This Is Your Day⁣⁣, which still airs clips of supposed miracles from Hinn's Miracle Crusades. However, TBN dropped Hinn's program in 2016, and Daystar stopped airing it in 2017. As of April 2025, Hinn's website lists Kenneth Copeland's Victory Channel as the only network broadcasting This Is Your Day, with a single weekly airing.

thumb|Benny Hinn ministering at Jesus Image Church in Orlando, Florida (2025).

Hinn conducts regular "Miracle Crusades"—revival meeting / faith healing events held in sports stadiums in major cities throughout the world. In February 2024, Hinn held a Healing the Nation Crusade at Nyayo National Stadium in Nairobi, Kenya, attended by an estimated 500,000 people, including Kenyan President William Ruto and First Lady Rachel Ruto. Evander Holyfield, who was diagnosed with a non-compliant left ventricle, has credited his healing to Benny Hinn, stating that through God working through Hinn, he was healed as he had "a warm feeling" go through his chest as Hinn touched him.

Hinn has maintained a recurring presence at Jesus Image, a charismatic ministry based in Orlando, Florida, founded by his son-in-law Michael Koulianos. Hinn has preached at numerous events and Sunday services hosted by the ministry, including an evening service that was live streamed on June 22, 2025. He is also listed as a teaching author on the Jesus Image website, underscoring both his ongoing prominence and the theological alignment between the two ministries.

Theology and practices

Hinn's theology places strong emphasis on the anointing, which he claims is a divine empowerment capable of tangibly affecting bodies and being ministered through touch, gestures, or breath. Contemporary reporting has documented how this is expressed at his services: he has been observed blowing on attendees, rubbing or flicking his suit jacket toward the crowd, and making sweeping arm gestures, after which people fall or stagger, phenomena he attributes to the Holy Spirit’s power. Hinn cites healing evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman as a formative influence, linking his understanding of the Holy Spirit’s power and ministry style to her meetings and writings.

Slain in the Spirit

thumb|Benny Hinn preaching at Jesus Image Church in 2025. Several attendees are seen lying on the floor after falling during a practice commonly described as being “slain in the Spirit.”A recurring feature of Hinn’s events is the phenomenon commonly called 'slaying in the Spirit,' in which participants fall backward, often into the arms of attendants (“catchers”), after prayer or physical contact on stage.

Scholars of religion and culture have analyzed such charismatic manifestations in broader charismatic contexts, variously interpreting them through lenses of embodiment, suggestion, ritual, and trance rather than exclusively supernatural causation. Investigative writer Joe Nickell reported from a Hinn crusade that the responses resembled hypnotic suggestion and role-expectation, a view he contrasted with participants’ supernatural interpretations.

Benny Hinn Ministries donated $100,000 for relief supplies for Hurricane Katrina victims in 2005 and $250,000 to the tsunami relief effort in 2007. In July 2024, the Trinity Foundation expressed skepticism about Hinn's actual net worth, noting the large drop in ratings for his TV viewership. and severe physical injuries. However, investigative reports by the Los Angeles Times, NBC's Dateline, CBC's The Fifth Estate, and the Nine Network's 60 Minutes have called these claims into question. An employee of Inside Edition also faked a healing from cerebral palsy, which was shown on Hinn's regular broadcast.

Hinn has also caused controversy for theological remarks and claims he has made during TV appearances. In 1999, he appeared on the Trinity Broadcasting Network claiming that God had given him a vision predicting the resurrection of thousands of dead people after watching the network—laying out a scenario of people placing their dead loved ones' hands on TV screens tuned into the station—and suggesting that TBN would be "an extension of Heaven to Earth".

1987 Oklahoma lawsuit and safety concerns

thumb|228x228px|Benny Hinn places his hands on an attendee during a sermon.In August 1987, Benny Hinn and his ministry were named in a lawsuit filed in Oklahoma County District Court after an 85-year-old woman, Ruth L. McClung, died 15 days after being injured during one of his faith-healing crusades. According to court documents cited by The Washington Post and The Oklahoman, the suit alleged that another attendee was struck on the forehead by Hinn during a service at the Myriad Convention Center in Oklahoma City and fell backward into McClung, fracturing her hip. Family members asserted that Hinn and his associates failed to render aid or summon emergency medical help after the incident and sought $5 million in damages from Hinn and World Outreach Church, his affiliated ministry at the time.

A Question of Miracles

In April 2001, HBO aired a documentary entitled A Question of Miracles that focused on Hinn and a well-documented fellow Word-of-Faith German minister based in Africa, Reinhard Bonnke. Both Hinn and Bonnke offered full access to their events to the documentary crew, and the documentary team followed seven cases of reputed miracle healings from Hinn's crusade over the next year. The film's director, Antony Thomas, told CNN's Kyra Phillips that they did not find any cases where people were actually healed by Hinn. Thomas said in a New York Times interview that "If I had seen miracles [from Hinn's ministry], I would have been happy to trumpet it ... but in retrospect, I think they do more damage to Christianity than the most committed atheist."

"Do You Believe in Miracles"

In November 2004, the CBC Television show The Fifth Estate did a special titled "Do You Believe in Miracles" on the apparent transgressions committed by Hinn's ministry.

With the aid of hidden cameras and crusade witnesses, the producers of the show demonstrated Hinn's apparent misappropriation of funds, his fabrication of the truth, and the way in which his staff chose crusade audience members to come on stage to proclaim their miracle healings. and has attended numerous Hinn crusades since 2000 as part of his research for his thesis and for a seminar he developed about the Word of Faith movement entitled A Call for Discernment, also demonstrated to the hidden cameras that "people who look like me"—Peters has cerebral palsy, walks with arm crutches, and is obviously and visibly disabled—"are never allowed on stage ... it's always somebody who has some disability or disease that cannot be readily seen." Peters was quickly intercepted as he came out of the wheelchair section (there is one at every crusade, situated at the back of the audience far away from the stage and never filmed for Hinn's TV show) in an attempt to join the line of those waiting to go onstage and was told to take a seat. Benny Hinn Ministries is not a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.

Senate investigation

thumbnail|right|Critics accuse Hinn of using the ministry's [[Gulfstream IV|Gulfstream G4SP jet for personal vacations funded by tax-free donations.]]

In 2007, United States Senator Chuck Grassley announced that the United States Senate Committee on Finance would investigate Hinn's ministry. In a letter to , Grassley asked for the ministry to divulge financial information to the Senate Committee on Finance to determine if Hinn made any personal profit from financial donations and requested that Hinn's ministry make the information available. The investigation also scrutinized five other televangelists: Paula White, Kenneth Copeland, Eddie L. Long, Joyce Meyer, and Creflo Dollar. The ministry subsequently responded to the inquiry, and Grassley said that "... Benny Hinn [has] engaged in open and honest dialogue with committee staff. They have not only provided responses to every question but, in the spirit of true cooperation, also have provided information over and above what was requested."

The investigation concluded in 2011 with no penalties or findings of wrongdoing. The final report raised questions about personal use of church-owned luxury goods and a lack of financial oversight on the ministries' boards, which are often populated with family and friends of the televangelist. Hinn's group reported to the committee that it complied with tax regulations and had made changes in compensation and governance procedures.

Prosperity theology

In 2017, Pastor Costi Hinn, a nephew of Hinn, came forward with a testimony of his time spent in Hinn's ministry and what made him leave. In the testimony, Costi Hinn described the expensive cars and lavish houses that he and his family members owned and the luxury that surrounded their travel. Costi Hinn criticized the prosperity gospel and teachings of his uncle, writing, among other things, that healings only seemed to work in the crusades, where music created an atmosphere, and that many of their prophecies contradicted the Bible. In the book, Costi Hinn calls the prosperity gospel "damning and abusive," exploitative of the poor and vulnerable, and "arguably the most hateful and abusive kind of false teaching plaguing the church today".

In September 2019, he said that Benny Hinn no longer believed in prosperity theology and decided to stop teaching it.

Personal life

Hinn married Suzanne Harthern on 4 August 1979. The couple have four children. She filed divorce papers in California's Orange County Superior Court on 1 February 2010, citing "irreconcilable differences".

In July 2010, Hinn and fellow televangelist Paula White were photographed leaving a hotel in Rome holding hands. Both Hinn and White denied allegations in the National Enquirer that the two were engaged in an affair. Hinn was sued in February 2011 by the Christian publishing house Strang Communications, which claimed that a relationship with White did occur and that Hinn had violated the morality clause of his contract with the company.

In May 2012, Hinn announced that he and Suzanne had begun reconciliation during the Christmas season of 2011, stating that the split had been caused by her addiction to prescription drugs and antidepressants and citing his busy schedule and lack of time for his wife and children. Benny and Suzanne remarried on 3 March 2013, at the Holy Land Experience theme park, in a traditional ceremony lasting over two hours and attended by approximately 1,000 well-wishers, including many visiting Christian leaders. Jack Hayford referred to the remarriage as "a miracle of God's grace". However, in July 2024, Suzanne would once again file for divorce, this time in the Hillsborough County Court in Tampa, Florida.

Published works

References

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