By Brian Birmingham
In an effort to let Ole Anthony explain himself here is an excerpt from a “Primetime Live” interview he did with Dianne Sawyer November 21, 1991. Here Anthony discusses with Sawyer the problems he sees inherently with TV ministries.
Ole Anthony: “The longing of a man’s heart is for community, for a sense of being able to lay down his life for something important. That can’t happen with a television tube.”
Diane Sawyer: “But there are people who come forward and say, ‘I got a miracle because of, what, because of the money I gave, because I watched, I did get a miracle.’”
Ole: “Did you ever see ‘The Wizard of Oz?’ Dorothy got her heart’s desire, the tin man received his heart’s desire, the lion received his heart’s desire, and the Tin Man received his heart’s desire, even though the Wizard was a charlatan. Why? The God of the Universe was already resident within them, he just had to be let out!”
Diane Sawyer: “So, what do you say to the person sitting at home, watching?”
Ole: “Let’s open your eyes, and look at the need around you. Give to that need instead of to some faraway evangelist that’s talking you into playing a heavenly lottery, or a heavenly slot machine.”
Diane Sawyer: “And they’ll get those miracles they want?”
Ole Anthony
That was Ole Anthony some thirty years ago. Ole Anthony died last week at the age 82.
It has been said that no bad person has all bad qualities, and no good person has all good qualities.
Everybody, all of us, has a mixture of what can be seen as perhaps saintly and conversely diabolical attributes.
And so, it was with Ole Anthony, founder and elder of the Trinity Foundation, of Dallas, Texas.
Trinity Foundation is best known for its work in monitoring and exposing various “televangelist” ministries. In doing so, Trinity Foundation and Ole Anthony probably did some good.
However, former members of Trinity Foundation have also spoken and written of a “dark side” to Ole Anthony and the Trinity Foundation. Trinity Foundation has been described by some as a “cult”.
Ole Anthony also lied extensively about his background. He has claimed that he was (before founding Trinity Foundation in 1972) a broadcaster, a spy, a wealthy industrialist, a political strategist and candidate. In fact, he was none of those things.
Trinity Foundation has been described by former members as employing a number of cult-like, abusive practices. For example, notorious “hot seat” confrontational group encounter sessions, which broke down members’ personal boundaries and fostered an atmosphere of fear and anxiety. Though this practice ended in the early 1990s.
Ole Anthony taught that everything in ones’ natural mind was an enemy of God, and that ones’ mind is actually the Antichrist. And according to Anthony unless one is living in community one cannot become free of one’s Antichrist nature.
If that is true, why then would anyone listen to Ole Anthony? After all, these ideas were all products of his own mind.
But Ole Anthony believed that he had discovered things, some spiritual truths, which other Christians had somehow missed for the last 2,000 years.
However, Ole Anthony was hardly an original thinker.
Many of the founders and leaders of controversial Bible-based groups, some called “cults,” believed that they too were totally unique and special.
Joseph Smith, founder of the LDS (Mormon) church taught that he was the latter-day prophet of “the restored Gospel.”
Gene Spriggs, founder of the so-called “Twelve Tribes” communities, taught that the Holy Spirit had been absent from the face of the Earth until he founded a truly authentic community.
Sun Myung Moon taught the same thing about his supposedly unique Unification church. Moon went so far as to claim to be the Second Coming of Christ.
There are so many examples of various Bible-based thinkers that taught, whether implicitly or explicitly, that they’d figured something out that nobody had every really understood before for 2,000 years.
Ole Anthony was yet another self-proclaimed latter-day prophet, and in many ways, not unlike Moon, Spriggs, and all the rest.
What then is the legacy of Ole Anthony?
Trinity Foundation served to highlight the excesses and frauds of various radio and TV preachers and their ministries. This served the public good.
But behind his good work, and largely unknown to the general public, Ole Anthony held an inordinate amount of power and control over the lives of his followers within the Trinity Foundation. He’d deny his disciples permission to marry. And he ruled through fear and intimidation. Anthony often punished those who would dare to question him or his authority.
Those who focus only on what Ole Anthony did through his well-publicized activities regarding unscrupulous evangelical ministries, may be unaware of the issues surrounding accountability concerning his own behavior, and the authoritarian way in which he ran Trinity Foundation.
For all of Ole Anthony’s preaching about accountability he himself was accountable to no one. And in many ways the personality-driven Trinity Foundation existed to support Anthony’s own pretentious posturing and narcissistic needs.
Note: Brian Birmingham is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts in Boston with a BA in Psychology and Sociology. He is a native of Dallas, Texas and was once a member of the Trinity Foundation community.
