Word: schuller
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...Religious history books will be talking about Schuller 100 years from now," contends Religious Historian Dennis Voskuil. The question, Voskuil says, is whether he will be remembered as a theologian or a showman. Like his early model, Positive Thinker Norman Vincent Peale, Schuller combines an affirmative outlook with old-fashioned piety to assure his audiences that self-esteem and success are desirable and achievable. During an hour that sometimes resembles a celebrity talk show, Schuller speaks earnestly of the abiding desire for self-worth, of "every person's deepest need--one's spiritual hunger for glory." Schuller attempts to assuage...
...long time, Schuller confesses, he harbored doubts about his own self- worth. Born in Iowa to a devout, hardscrabble farm family, he resolved early on to be a preacher. After seven years of study at Hope College and Western Theological Seminary, both in Holland, Mich., he was ordained in the Reformed Church in America in 1950. Five years later he went to Garden Grove, Calif., to set up a new ministry. Schuller's fledgling show-biz instincts led him to begin preaching from the roof of a rented drive-in theater's concession stand. Within four years he had attracted...
...Today Schuller presides over an ecclesiastical empire. In 1982 his 10,000member congregation contributed $4 million, and his TV audience mailed in $30 million, which helped support a staff of 400. His slickly made TV programs cost $8 million annually. Schuller has stopped accepting a salary, living well off his publishing income and $15,000-a-shot lecture fees...
...Schuller's sunny world is not without a few darkling clouds. Last December California billed Schuller $475,185 for unpaid taxes, citing such profit- making uses of the building as music concerts, aerobic dance classes and a Ticketron outlet. According to William Underwood, president of Robert Schuller Ministries, the state has since refunded $247,922 of the original assessment...
...Schuller's critics complain about both his method and his message. Conservative theologians maintain that he is mass-marketing an ersatz, individual-centered gospel that glosses over the troublesome doctrine of sin. Mainstream clergy are disturbed by Schuller's zealous push for conversion and his carnival-barker style. "His success-oriented message," says Congregationalist Browne Barr, former dean of the San Francisco Presbyterian Seminary, "is a happy optimism; it sells nicely, but it is just very shallow...