Robert Tilton - WikiHQ

Robert Tilton (born June 7, 1946) is an American televangelist and the former pastor of the Word of Faith Family Church in Farmers Branch, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. At his ministry's peak in 1991, Tilton's infomercial-style program, Success-N-Life, aired in all 235 American television markets (on a daily basis in the majority of them) and brought in nearly $80 million per year; it was described as "the fastest growing television ministry in America."

When ABC's Primetime Live raised questions about Tilton's fundraising practices, a series of investigations into the ministry were initiated, and Success-N-Life was taken off the air. Tilton later returned to television on a new version of the program airing on BET and The Word Network.

Life and career

Robert Tilton was born in McKinney, Texas, on June 7, 1946 to Margaret (Gibson) and Clyde Tilton. He attended Cooke County Junior College and Texas Technological University. He married his first wife, Martha "Marte" Phillips, in 1968. According to his autobiographical materials, Tilton had a conversion experience to evangelical Christianity the following year and began his ministry in 1974, taking his family on the road to, in his words, "preach this gospel of Jesus." His family settled in Dallas and built the Word of Faith Family Church, a small nondenominational charismatic church in Farmers Branch, in 1976. and came upon an increasingly popular new form of television programming: the late-night infomercial. Tilton was particularly influenced by Dave Del Dotto, a real estate promoter who hosted hour-long infomercials showing his glamorous life in Hawaii, as well as on-camera testimonials lauding his "get rich quick" books. Occasionally, Tilton would claim to have received a word of knowledge for someone to give a vow of $5,000 or even $10,000. When a person made a vow to Tilton, he preached that God would recognize the vow and reward the donor with vast material riches. The show also ran "testimonials" of viewers who gave to Tilton's ministry and reportedly received miracles in return, a practice that would be used as the basis for a later lawsuit from donors charging Tilton's ministry with fraud.

A Dallas Morning News story published in 1992 observed that Tilton spent more than 84% of his show's airtime for fundraising and promotions, a total higher than the 22% for an average commercial television show; other sources put the total fundraising time during episodes of Success-N-Life closer to 68%. Some of Tilton's fundraising letters were written by Gene Ewing, the head of a multimillion-dollar marketing empire writing donation letters for other televangelists like W. V. Grant and Don Stewart.

As a result of Tilton's television success, Word of Faith Family Church grew to become a megachurch, with 8,000 members at its height. Tilton also wrote several self help books about financial success, including The Power to Create Wealth, God's Laws of Success, How to Pay Your Bills Supernaturally, and How to be Rich and Have Everything You Ever Wanted. Most of his books were published in the 1980s and distributed via promotion on Success-N-Life and through the many mailings Tilton's ministry sent his followers. The books were republished in the late 1990s to be used as centerpieces of his 1997 infomercial series and are now promoted on his current () daily live internet broadcast.

Ministry and fundraising scandal

In 1991, ABC News conducted an investigation of Tilton (as well as two other Dallas-area televangelists, Grant and Larry Lea). The investigation, assisted by Trinity Foundation president Ole Anthony and broadcast on ABC's Primetime Live on November 21, 1991, alleged that Tilton's ministry threw away prayer requests without reading them, keeping only the accompanying money or valuables sent to the ministry by viewers, garnering his ministry an estimated US$80 million a year.

Undercover investigation

In a November 21, 1991, promotional appearance on Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, Diane Sawyer said that she had incidentally watched several televangelist programs, including Success-N-Life, and was both "fascinated" and "disturbed" by them. Stressing the public's sensitivity to reporters questioning religion, Sawyer said that she spoke with other journalists, and then eventually to ABC producers, who then decided to conduct their own investigation into Grant, Lea, and Tilton. ABC producers learned about possible resources available from Anthony and Trinity, and contacted them for information. After comparing their accumulated notes, data and details, the two groups decided to pool their efforts and began planning the undercover portion of the story. Anthony agreed to portray himself as a Dallas-based minister with a small church looking into the ways TV ministries could grow so quickly, and the ABC producers would pose as Anthony's "media consultants."

Denial

Tilton vehemently denied the allegations and took to the airwaves on November 22, on a special episode of Success-N-Life entitled "Primetime Lies", to air his side of the story. He asserted that the prayer requests found in garbage bags shown on Primetime Live were stolen from the ministry and planted in the dumpster for a sensational camera shot, and that he prayed over every prayer request received, to the point that he "laid on top of those prayer requests so much that 'the chemicals actually got into [his] bloodstream, and... [he] had two small strokes in [his] brain."

Further revelations

After Trinity members spent weeks poring over the details of the documents they and ABC had uncovered, sorting and scrutinizing each prayer request, bank statement, and computer printout dealing with the codes Tilton's banks and legal staff used when categorizing the returned items, Anthony called a press conference in December 1991 to present what he described as Tilton's "Wheel of Fortune", using a large display covered in actual prayer requests, copies of receipts for document disposition, and other information which demonstrated what happened to money and prayer requests which the average viewer of Tilton's television program sent him. When both Tilton and his lawyer J. C. Joyce reacted to the news by claiming the items Anthony was displaying had somehow been stolen by "an insider", Anthony responded in a subsequent interview that "Joyce was our mole—a lot of this stuff came from the dumpster outside his office."

Failed libel action

In 1992, Tilton sued ABC for libel because of its investigation and report, but the case was dismissed in 1993. Federal Judge Thomas Rutherford Brett, in his July 16, 1993, dismissal of the case, stated that information in Trinity's logs on prayer requests reportedly found in dumpsters on September 11, 1991, "could not have been found then because the postmark date was after September 11, 1991", but also noted that Anthony had recanted the erroneous entries in a subsequent affidavit. Tilton appealed the decision in 1993; although the findings of the original court were upheld in 1995, federal Judge Michael Burrage's opinion criticized ABC and the Primetime Live producers for their editing of the story and noted that ABC had been warned by their own religion editor, Peggy Wehmeyer (who knew Anthony from her work as a religion reporter at ABC affiliate WFAA-TV in Dallas), that, "Mr. Anthony could not be trusted and was obsessed with his crusade against [Tilton]."

Tilton sued for fraud

Several donors to Tilton's television ministry sued Tilton in 1992–1993, charging various forms of fraud. One plaintiff, Vivian Elliott, won $1.5 million in 1994 when it was discovered that a family crisis center for which she had made a donation (and recorded an endorsement testimonial) was never built or even intended to be built.

Lexington Academy

Lexington Academy was a small private Christian school in Farmers Branch that was founded in the early 1980s by Robert and Marte Tilton. The name "Lexington" was chosen in honor of the Battle of Lexington; the school mascot was the Patriots. The school was a member of the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools (TAPPS), and won dozens of State Championships in Athletics, Academics, and Fine Arts during the less than twenty years of its existence, including five overall TAPPS State Championships. The school was dissolved in 1998 as a result of debts incurred from lawsuits against Tilton and his ministry.

Reviving Success-N-Life

After moving to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1996, Tilton returned to the airwaves in 1997 with a new version of Success-N-Life, buying airtime on independent television stations primarily serving inner city areas. The new version of Success-N-Life returned to Tilton's previous message of asking for "vows of faith" from viewers instead of exorcisms. In 1998, the program began airing on Black Entertainment Television (BET) as part of its two-hour late night umbrella rotation block of religious programming entitled BET Inspiration. In 2008, Success-N-Life usually occupied the first hour of the BET programming block and also ran on The Word Network. Most of the shown on BET Inspiration were taped in the late 1990s—with testimonials from 1980s-era episodes interspersed throughout the episodes

The Word of Faith Family Church and World Outreach Center was finally formally dissolved by Tilton in 1996. Though Tilton was still listed as the church's senior pastor, he had not preached at the church since March 16, 1996, when he named Chattanooga, Tennessee, minister Bob Wright as senior associate pastor, However, Tilton dropped the Tulsa address in late 2007 and used a Miami post office box to receive responses to his fundraising mailings. In January 2014, he was holding services at the Courtyard Marriott in Culver City, California, while having donations again sent to a post office box in Tulsa.

In 1998, The Washington Post reported that Tilton's following disappeared after the investigations but he had "joined dozens of other preachers to become fixtures on BET". Consequently, Tilton, along with Stewart and Peter Popoff, received "criticism from those who say that preachers with a long trail of disillusioned followers have no place on a network that holds itself out as a model of entrepreneurship for the black community."

Trinity still monitors Tilton's television ministry as part of its ongoing televangelist watchdog efforts. In a 2003 interview published in the Tulsa World, Anthony estimated that with none of the Word of Faith Family Church overhead and with television production costs at a fraction of the original Success-N-Life program, Tilton's current organization was likely grossing more than $24 million per year tax-free.

Oliver set up his own "televangelism" megachurch on his broadcast, which he called Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption.