Contemporary Authors

• The Gospel of Self: How Jesus Joined the GOP - 2017 OR Books, https://smile.amazon.com/Gospel-Self-How-Jesus-Joined-ebook/dp/B072JMRQ7S/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1522099025&sr=8-1
• Reinventing Local Media - DONATA Publishing 2008, https://smile.amazon.com/Terry-Heaton/e/B073TSHKW6/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
• Reinventing Local Media: Ideas for Thriving in a Postmodern World, Volume II - 2010 DONATA Publishing, https://smile.amazon.com/Reinventing-Local-Media-Postmodern-Paperback/dp/B011YTK2G2/ref=la_B073TSHKW6_1_4_twi_pap_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1522099275&sr=1-4
• Princess of the Pond - 2000 Terry Heaton, https://smile.amazon.com/Princess-Pond-Terry-Lee-Heaton/dp/0978914724/ref=la_B073TSHKW6_1_5_twi_pap_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1522099275&sr=1-5
• The Hoppers of Palmer's Meadow - 2000 Terry Heaton, https://smile.amazon.com/Hoppers-Palmers-Meadow-Terry-Heaton/dp/0978914716/ref=la_B073TSHKW6_1_6_twi_pap_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1522099275&sr=1-6Terry Heaton
• The Butterfly Tree - 2000 Terry Heaton, https://smile.amazon.com/Butterfly-Tree-Terry-Lee-Heaton/dp/0978914708/ref=la_B073TSHKW6_1_7_twi_pap_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1522099275&sr=1-7

• Amazon - https://smile.amazon.com/Gospel-Self-How-Jesus-Joined-ebook/dp/B072JMRQ7S/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1522099025&sr=8-1

  Biography
  Terry Heaton is a retired television news executive, news consultant, and the author of seven books, including his latest, 'The Gospel of Self: How Jesus Joined the GOP.' The memoir draws on his experience as executive producer of The 700 Club in the 1980s, up to and including Pat Robertson's run for president in 1988. A media theorist, he is the author of Reinventing Local Media, Volumes I & II, and has written for media news websites and media companies throughout the United States. He's a leading expert on cultural postmodernism and author of the Pomo Blog. Heaton plays guitar and five-string banjo and is a bluegrass music aficionado. He lives in Madison, Alabama

• Huffington Post - https://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/terry-heaton

  Terry Heaton
  Retired television executive; Author, 'The Gospel of Self: How Jesus Joined the GOP'

  Terry Heaton is a retired television news executive, news consultant, and the author of seven books, including his latest, 'The Gospel of Self: How Jesus Joined the GOP.' The memoir draws on his experience as executive producer of The 700 Club in the 1980s, up to and including Pat Robertson's run for president in 1988. A media theorist, he is the author of Reinventing Local Media and has written for media news websites and media companies throughout the United States. Heaton plays guitar and five-string banjo and is a bluegrass music aficionado. He lives in Madison, Alabama.

• The Pomo Blog - http://thepomoblog.com/index.php/about/

  Transparent Terry

  I blog for two reasons. One, it is the greatest method ever created to challenge my own assumptions, something that I believe is necessary for anyone who wishes a seat at the discussion table. It’s one thing to have opinions, but until those are shared in an environment of unrestricted feedback, all they do is echo in my own mind. Blogging permits me to not only see those ideas and memes expressed in writing, but it also asks readers to comment if they disagree. For someone who is attempting to sell new ideas, this is profoundly important. Secondly, I blog because it’s good for business. The viral nature of the Internet has placed my thinking in front of people I couldn’t possibly have reached otherwise. I believe in the law of attraction, which is the essence of Internet marketing. As such, I don’t need to employ conventional marketing methods to reach potential customers. I believe they will come to me, if my ideas are compelling. That seems naive to many, but it’s actually terribly smart.

  Among other things, I believe…

  • That the political process in the U.S. has been the servant of special interests since the early 20th century, when Walter Lippmann, Edward Bernays, and their Creel Commission cronies brought into being the ideas of public relations and “professional” journalism.

  • That Bernays’ The Engineering of Consent is at the root of much of what’s wrong with our culture in the 21st century, including the intellectual dishonesty known as political correctness.

  • That citizen media, in the form of bloggers and blogging, offers hope and an alternative to the false journalism hegemony of objectivity that has destroyed the public trust.

  • That we are in the midst of a cultural change of eonian proportions wherein people are increasingly masters of their own ship, and that the disruptive innovations threatening the status quo are driven by this demand. I call this change Postmodernism, while understanding that the term has different meanings to different people. My interpretation is simple and practical. The modern era, with its emphasis on logic and reason, is giving way to a new era that I call “The Age of Participation.”

  Premodernism: “I believe, therefore I understand.
  First Gutenberg moment (the printing press)
  Modernism: “I think and reason, therefore I understand.
  Second Gutenberg moment (Internet)
  Postmodernism: “I participate, therefore I understand.

  • That mass marketing is dead or dying, and that attempts to resuscitate or rescue it are self-defeating.

  • That transparency is the new paradigm for marketing conversations.

  • That intellectualism without an open mind is foolishness gone to seed.

  • That contempt prior to investigation is a bar to all progress.

  • That institutional education serves first the institution and, in so doing, discourages imagination.

  • That life’s true prophets are found in the artistic community and that creative works, as such, belong to the public.

  • That support of the arts is the duty of every citizen in a democracy.

  • That using the Internet, with its associative links and references, forces one unknowingly into an exercise in deconstruction and away from absolutism, and that this will ultimately alter the political landscape of our culture.

  • That the more individual people use the Internet, the more disruptive they become.

  • That life is not a struggle to become what you wish but an adventure to discover who you are.

  • That the only thing worse than a person without an opinion is one who is afraid to express the opinion he or she has.

  • That while humankind is capable of great good, most people default to a self-centered core.

  • That the process of self-governance begins inside each individual, and that, without this, a self-governing community is impossible, and totalitarianism is inevitable.

  • That John Wycliffe was right when he said, upon completion of the first common English language Bible, “This book shall make possible government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

  • That the paradox of prosperity is this: Discontent increases with opportunities for acting on it.

  • That not to decide is to decide.

  • That if you want to catch trout, you’ve got to use trout bait.

  • That expense, and even great expense, may be an essential part of true economy.

  • That, as Murrow wrote, we can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result.

• DFW Word Press Group - https://dfwwp.org/21470/mobile-more-than-another-screen/

  2014 #DFWWP Keynote: Terry Heaton presents Mobile: It’s Not What They Say It Is

  For traditional media companies, mobile is being positioned as just another method of distributing content. “TV Everywhere” isn’t going anywhere. So-called “Second Screen” apps are wishful thinking for people who believe the First Screen is just fine. Newspaper mobile apps, likewise, are extensions of brands destined for the junk pile. Meanwhile, mobile sits there as an opportunity for those willing to accept it for what it is – an entirely new communications mechanism based on the network and its horizontal attributes.

  Photo of Terry HeatonTerry Heaton is President of Reinvent21, a consulting company specializing in business reinvention for the 21st Century. He’s an internationally-recognized creative expert on all things web-related, especially as they relate to local media, and is widely seen as a visionary, an iconoclast and an authority on doing business via the World Wide Web.

  He is the author of “Reinventing Local Media, Volumes I & II and of the acclaimed series of essays Local Media in a Postmodern World, which is published in many languages worldwide, and he writes the popular “Pomo Blog.” He is a sought-after speaker on college campuses and at media conferences, and he’s the author of three other books.

  He coined the term “unbundled media” to describe not only what’s happening to and with all forms of media but also as a strategy to move mainstream media to the web. He created definitions and descriptions of Media 2.0 that are now widely used by media observers everywhere, including “We are not in the content business; we’re in the advertising business.” His characterization of real-time streams of news and information in 2005 as “continuous news” leads the revolution in the online display of news as a stream. His current passion is to help media discover a replacement for advertising that interrupts or accompanies news content.

  He retired from television news management in 1998 to concentrate on the internet. He is a 28-year veteran of television news and was a news director in six different markets. Terry lives with his computer and his dog in Frisco, Texas.

  when: January 22, 2PM-4PM
  where: Richardson Civic Center — 411 West Arapaho Road, Richardson, TX 75080
  cost: $10. or $69 Season Pass for 2014

• State of Belief - http://stateofbelief.com/segments/terry-heaton-author-the-gospel-of-self-how-jesus-joined-the-gop/

  Host Rev. Welton Gaddy will be joined by Terry Heaton, a retired television executive and author of The Gospel of Self: How Jesus Joined the GOP, who in the 1980s served as executive director of Pat Robertson’s 700 Club TV show. For many Americans, Robertson turns up in rather amusing clips shared on the Internet; but for millions, he is a trusted and omnipresent voice of authority – who once made a credible run for the presidency himself. Terry will share his experience working with Robertson and how understanding the political Religious Right can shed light on our current political landscape.

Pat Robertson And The Rise Of The
Religious Right
Rob Boston
Church & State.
70.9 (Oct. 2017): p19+. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Americans United for Separation of Church and State http://www.au.org/
Full Text:
The Gospel Of Self: How Jesus Joined The GOP by Terry Heaton, OR Books, 210 pp.
Terry Heaton worked for TV preacher Pat Robertson as a television producer for two stints in the 1980s. His new book, The Gospel of Self: How Jesus Joined the GOP, is part memoir, part political analysis.
It's a curious book. Heaton is at times critical of Robertson and the way he ran his Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) but still seems to harbor respect for the man and his achievements. He even seems to believe that in one case, Robertson actually performed a miraculous healing.
Nevertheless, advocates of church-state separation will find much of interest in the book. Heaton, for example, sheds some light on Robertson's disdain for the separation of church and state. (In my 1996 book, The Most Dangerous Man in America? Pat Robertson and the Rise of the Christian Coalition, I listed a number of Robertson attacks on that principle. He has asserted that it is a "lie of the left," insisted it's not in the Constitution and called it communistic, among other things.)
Heaton reports that Robertson was so obsessed with the issue that in September 1984 he commissioned the Gallup polling firm to seek Americans' opinions on separation of church and state. The pollsters found that people were, in the main, fuzzy on the actual wording of the First Amendment. For example, some believed the literal words "separation of church and state" were in the Constitution. An angry Robertson decided he would correct that misconception--by attacking the legitimacy of the very concept of church-state separation. He carried this strategy into his 1988 presidential campaign.
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Although it's largely forgotten today except by political junkies, Robertson's quixotic campaign for the Oval Office actually started off with a bit of a bang. He took second in the Iowa caucuses, besting Vice President George H. W. Bush, the GOP's eventual nominee. But things went downhill quickly from there. Robertson boasted that an "invisible army" would carry him to victory, but his troops failed to materialize, and he fared poorly in New Hampshire and during the Super Tuesday primaries. He soon suspended his campaign.
The sections of the book that deal with the aftermath of Robertson's quest for the White House are interesting. Heaton notes that both the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Elections Commission looked into alleged financial irregularities, and he even includes excerpts from a deposition he did with the 1RS on Sept. 8,1988. During its turbulent though short-lived course, Robertson's campaign was fraught with controversy and possible violation of the law.
Elsewhere, Heaton has some illuminating things to say about how Robertson ran his "700 Club" show. The program often featured segments profiling people who had positive things happen to them, usually after donating to CBN. Robertson insisted that only attractive people be interviewed, and even had a rule that no overweight guests were allowed.
Writes Heaton of CBN's guests, "They were young. They were good looking. Their testimony provided a witness that others would wish to emulate. They always ended up on top. They were always prospering after giving to CBN. In this way, we presented the tilted view that those who gave money to CBN--the greater the donation, the bigger the blessing--were always blessed by God. We didn't dare go near anyone who could claim the opposite, regardless of the reason."
Heaton also writes about the news operation of the "700 Club" and how it was Fox News before Fox News existed. As someone who used to watch the "700 Club" on a regular basis, I can testify that its spin on the news, often filtered through Robertson's interpretation of Bible prophecy, was unique, to say the least.
Christians, especially those of a progressive bent, will find Heaton's final chapter, "Towards a Post-Christian Tomorrow," of special interest. In it, he lays out a vision of Christianity (based loosely on what has been called the "Emergent Church" model) that looks quite different from the faith espoused by Robertson and his followers. (Heaton now disavows Robertson's "prosperity gospel.")
Observes Heaton, "We simply must find a way to shape the Christian message to one that's more ecumenical and less 'I'm in the special group,' which is a key part of the self-centered faith."
The Gospel of Self provides a compelling insider's view of Robertson's operation in the 1980s. Some readers, however, may find that Heaton is too soft on Robertson, a man who has, over the years, said a lot of nasty things about progressives, women, LGBTQ Americans, non-believers and others. To many longtime observers, Robertson is clearly a charlatan and a man who has used his worldwide TV pulpit to spread fear and division, not unity and love.
Heaton doesn't call Robertson out for it, and that is a shame.
Here are two other recent books that readers of Church & State might find of interest:
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* In Paranoid Science: The Christian Right's War on Reality (NYU Press, 256 pp), Antony Alumkal examines the Religious Right's embrace of pseudo-scientific ideas such as creationism and gay conversion therapy, as well as its opposition to stem-cell research and its refusal to believe in climate change.
Alumkal, associate professor of sociology of religion at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, explains the title of his book by outlining the paranoid worldview of many Religious Right activists who invoke conspiracy theories to cover their lack of solid scientific research. In the world of paranoid science, creationists can't get published in peer-reviewed journals not because their ideas have been discredited, but because the atheistic scientific establishment is arrayed against them.
Observes Alumkal in the book's introduction, "Christian Right authors don't concede scientific truth, they create an alternative science and thus an alternative reality--where their religious beliefs are safe from threat. In this alternative reality the scientific data indicate that humans were intelligently designed by a creator, gays can be cured of their 'illness,' embryonic stem cell research is unnecessary for medical progress, and humans can consume all the fossil fuel they want with no harmful effects on the environment."
Unfortunately, the Religious Right's rejection of science has affected public policy, as anyone who has witnessed the long-running debate over teaching evolution in public schools can testify.
Alumkal's book is troubling and eye-opening.
* In November of 1978, more than 900 people either killed themselves or were murdered at a rural compound in Jonestown, Guyana. The dead were members of the Peoples [sic] Temple, an unconventional Christian group led by a charismatic American preacher named Jim Jones.
Jones, who launched the Temple in Indianapolis and later moved it to a small town in California, had fled to Guyana in South America because he was convinced that nuclear war was imminent. He also had fears that the U.S. government was going to come after him.
Much has been written about Jonestown since the massacre (during which a visiting U.S. congressman, Leo Ryan, was gunned down). Jeff Guinn's new book, The Road To Jonestown: Jim Jones And Peoples Temple (Simon & Schuster, 544 pp.), is notable because of the depth of the author's research. Guinn provides a full account of Jones' life, his harrowing descent into madness and the sad fate of those who chose to follow him to Jonestown.
In the wake of the suicides and murders, there were unspecified calls for Congress to do something about "cults" and unconventional religious groups. The U.S. Senate did hold what was described as an unofficial "investigative hearing" on the matter, but nothing came of it.
In June 1979, Paul C. Guttke, an Assemblies of God pastor, wrote in Church & State: "Two things are required to mitigate the danger of future Jonestowns: truth and personal initiative. It is not within the scope of the power of the state to offer either one; you just cannot legislate truth or initiative."
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Readers will find Guinn's crisply written book compelling, but also extremely disturbing. He tells the story of Jonestown with real verve. Unfortunately, we know how that story ends: with heaps of bodies, many of them children, festering in the South American sun.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Boston, Rob. "Pat Robertson And The Rise Of The Religious Right." Church & State, Oct. 2017,
p. 19+. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A519722884 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=1ec08832. Accessed 26 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A519722884
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Heaton, Terry: THE GOSPEL OF SELF
Kirkus Reviews.
(Apr. 1, 2017): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Heaton, Terry THE GOSPEL OF SELF OR Books (Adult Nonfiction) $18.00 5, 25 ISBN: 978-1-682190-83-8
A memoir from the heyday of Christian broadcasting.Heaton (Reinventing Local Media, 2008) has endowed himself with a dual importance: first, as a critical (and regrettable) link in the formation of modern conservative media; and second, as a sage with a prophetic eye for the future of journalism. In these aspects, he overreaches. Nevertheless, the heart of his book, the story of the rise and fall of Pat Robertson and his 700 Club through the 1980s, is worthwhile reading. As a former executive producer of the 700 Club, Heaton was a daily confidant of Robertson during his period of greatest fame and success. He helped orchestrate the program's rise to a zenith of televangelism while also taking part in its metamorphosis into a vehicle for the religious right, culminating in Robertson's own run for the presidency in 1988. Throughout the book, the author makes it clear that despite having worked with good people and having done many good things, he sees himself as a direct link in a chain of events that led to everything from the popularity of Rush Limbaugh to the success of Fox News and, ultimately, to the election of Donald Trump. In hindsight, he sees their work on the 700 Club as having wrongfully mixed, or conflated, faith with politics. Nowhere is this more obvious than in a 1985 discussion in which Robertson stated that Christianity needed to form a "shadow government." Heaton realizes now the prescience of that moment: "There are thousands of evangelicals today in positions of local level leadership within the Republican Party....There is little doubt that the shadow government exists and is operating as intended." After recounting the political downfall of Robertson and his subsequent investigation by the IRS, Heaton concludes with a lengthy discussion of postmodernism, "post-Christianity," and journalism's switch from an era of objectivity to an era of transparency. Here, his own story seems out of place with such grand theorizing. Some intriguing, relevant 1980s history couched in too much self-flagellation and cultural criticism.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Heaton, Terry: THE GOSPEL OF SELF." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2017. Book Review Index
Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A487668741/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=4a067754. Accessed 26 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A487668741
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Book World: When evangelical life
troubles the soul
Elizabeth Bruenig
The Washington Post.
(July 7, 2017): News: From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Full Text:
Byline: Elizabeth Bruenig
The Gospel of Self: How Jesus Joined the GOP By Terry Heaton
Or. 209 pp. $18 paperback
---
America's conservative evangelicals - the individuals behind that Republican bloc known as the religious right - are living in strange times. After eight unhappy years under President Barack Obama (only 24 percent of white evangelicals viewed him favorably as he prepared to leave office), evangelicals can now look to a Republican president and Congress to carry out their political will. Yet it remains to be seen whether President Trump and his crisis-besieged administration will do much good for the religious right and what their future may hold.
How evangelicals became wedded to the political right is a drama in many acts that plays out on a grand stage. It takes in cosmic questions of providence and apocalypse threaded together with earthlier (though no less moving) concerns about money, power and identity. In his book "The Gospel of Self: How Jesus Joined the GOP," Terry Heaton offers a view of that vast narrative from the personal level. Instead of telling the story of the religious right from a historical or sociological standpoint, Heaton narrates it from the inside, as a producer for the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and right-hand man to televangelist and one-time presidential hopeful Pat Robertson. In many ways, the account Heaton supplies is far more disturbing than the big-picture plots.
Heaton, a prolific writer on modern mass media, recounts how he came to work for Robertson at the CBN, the contributions he made to Robertson's ambitious Christian programming and political mission, and his mentor's eventual run for president and 12-year tangle with the IRS over the funneling of ministry funds to his political campaign, an activity that caused the CBN to lose its tax exempt status for a while. Heaton was moved to become a television producer in the
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service of the Lord after an intense conversion experience in 1980. He had struggled with "depression, sex, suicide, drugs, and alcohol," but after his conversion he regained control of his life, and began to read the Bible and watch Christian television, then in its infancy. By 1981, he had taken a job with the CBN, producing stories for Robertson's "The 700 Club."
The show is a kind of news magazine comprising several different segments centered on Robertson's view of the world: Commentators unpack the proper Christian reading of daily news, special features track trends and crises in the church, those miraculously saved or healed appear or call in to tell their tales, and Robertson's sermons fill in the gaps. Though the focus is on faith, Robertson's politics are clear. When Haiti suffered a devastating earthquake in 2010, Robertson chalked it up to the nation's alleged "pact with the devil" - his provocative explanation for the success of the slave rebellion that resulted in Haitian independence. Robertson informed "700 Club" viewers that Obama was a secret Muslim intent on instituting sharia law around the world; that political assassinations are licit; that welfare programs for the poor are morally wrong; and that food stamps for hungry families lead only to fraud and dependency.
Heaton produced the show's news segments, personal-interest stories and miracle reports until 1986, working behind the scenes and growing closer to Robertson. It's easy to trace, in his narrative, the ascendancy of the religious right as a potent Republican bloc, not least by watching Robertson's ever-growing designs on the presidency through Heaton's up-close vantage.
The past several years have yielded a number of books that provide a very clear (and edifying) picture of the movement's origins. In 2013, there was "Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel," by Kate Bowler, which traced the unfolding of America's unique tradition of money-grubbing televangelists squeezing congregants for cash while living large themselves; then came"American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism," by Matthew Avery Sutton, in 2014, followed in 2015 by "One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America," by Kevin Kruse, both of which closely track evangelicals' swift romance with political conservatives in the 20th century. This year, Frances FitzGerald published "The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America," which traced today's demotic, emotive evangelical politics back to the Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th centuries.
The tragedy that emerges in "The Gospel of Self" is what Heaton's immersion in Robertson's politicized Christianity did to his own newfound faith. "Little did I realize at the time how [fighting the culture wars] dramatically weakened my/our beliefs in the capabilities of an almighty God," he writes. "The 700 Club" aired many segments on miracles, but Robertson refused to broadcast any reports of Christians asking for God's help and not receiving it. Heaton reports that Robertson told him that doing so would "cost [his] ministry millions." By then, Robertson had made miracles one of the focal points of his show - and a major draw for viewers and their donations. If he were to acknowledge, even with plenty of genuine faith, that miracles don't always come to pass, the electrified crowds might not have flocked to the ministry in such large numbers.
One day, Heaton received a letter from an Indiana father who was an avid "700 Club" fan. He tore into Heaton and Robertson for making his 9-year-old daughter's death from cancer not only painful but spiritually agonizing. She, like her father, had been a faithful viewer and had believed
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Robertson's claim that true believers receive the miracles they pray for. Worse than her painful illness, the father wrote, "was the rejection she felt from God, because He would not heal her." Heaton writes that "to this day I pray for that little girl ... and beg forgiveness for playing a role in what she went through."
Heaton's troubles mounted. He found himself lying to Robertson about the miraculous healing of his own back spasms (in reality, despite Robertson's charismatic prayers, the spasms did not relent), and about helping to direct ministry monies (illegally) to Robertson's failed 1988 presidential campaign. By the end of his time at the CBN, Heaton writes, he "started drinking heavily, something that would profoundly alter my relationship with the God I loved."
Robertson presented himself as a shepherd of souls, but in his quest for temporal power, he led his flock astray and left their faith to wither. This isn't the story one usually hears about the rise of the religious right, but for Christians, it is perhaps the more important one.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Bruenig, Elizabeth. "Book World: When evangelical life troubles the soul." Washington Post, 7
July 2017. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A497889653 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=6d1ddcc6. Accessed 26 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A497889653
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Boston, Rob. "Pat Robertson And The Rise Of The Religious Right." Church & State, Oct. 2017, p. 19+. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A519722884/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=1ec08832. Accessed 26 Mar. 2018. "Heaton, Terry: THE GOSPEL OF SELF." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2017. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A487668741/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=4a067754. Accessed 26 Mar. 2018. Bruenig, Elizabeth. "Book World: When evangelical life troubles the soul." Washington Post, 7 July 2017. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A497889653/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=6d1ddcc6. Accessed 26 Mar. 2018.

• The Washington Post
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/when-the-evangelical-life-is-trouble-for-the-soul/2017/07/07/26359dfe-4fa7-11e7-b064-828ba60fbb98_story.html?utm_term=.f78b5801635f
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  When the evangelical life is trouble for the soul

  Pat Robertson, pictured in 2003, emphasizes God’s miracles and conservative politics on his TV show “The 700 Club.” (GARY C. KNAPP/Associated Press)
  By Elizabeth Bruenig July 7, 2017

  Elizabeth Bruenig is an assistant editor for Outlook and PostEverything at the The Washington Post.

  America’s conservative evangelicals — the individuals behind that Republican bloc known as the religious right — are living in strange times. After eight unhappy years under President Barack Obama (only 24 percent of white evangelicals viewed him favorably as he prepared to leave office), evangelicals can now look to a Republican president and Congress to carry out their political will. Yet it remains to be seen whether President Trump and his crisis-besieged administration will do much good for the religious right and what their future may hold.

  How evangelicals became wedded to the political right is a drama in many acts that plays out on a grand stage. It takes in cosmic questions of providence and apocalypse threaded together with earthlier (though no less moving) concerns about money, power and identity. In his book “The Gospel of Self: How Jesus Joined the GOP,” Terry Heaton offers a view of that vast narrative from the personal level. Instead of telling the story of the religious right from a historical or sociological standpoint, Heaton narrates it from the inside, as a producer for the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and right-hand man to televangelist and one-time presidential hopeful Pat Robertson. In many ways, the account Heaton supplies is far more disturbing than the big-picture plots.

  [Standing by Donald Trump, Pat Robertson calls lewd video ‘macho talk’]
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  “The Gospel of Self,” by Terry Heaton (OR Books)

  Heaton, a prolific writer on modern mass media, recounts how he came to work for Robertson at the CBN, the contributions he made to Robertson’s ambitious Christian programming and political mission, and his mentor’s eventual run for president and 12-year tangle with the IRS over the funneling of ministry funds to his political campaign, an activity that caused the CBN to lose its tax exempt status for a while. Heaton was moved to become a television producer in the service of the Lord after an intense conversion experience in 1980. He had struggled with “depression, sex, suicide, drugs, and alcohol,” but after his conversion he regained control of his life, and began to read the Bible and watch Christian television, then in its infancy. By 1981, he had taken a job with the CBN, producing stories for Robertson’s “The 700 Club.”

  The show is a kind of news magazine comprising several different segments centered on Robertson’s view of the world: Commentators unpack the proper Christian reading of daily news, special features track trends and crises in the church, those miraculously saved or healed appear or call in to tell their tales, and Robertson’s sermons fill in the gaps. Though the focus is on faith, Robertson’s politics are clear. When Haiti suffered a devastating earthquake in 2010, Robertson chalked it up to the nation’s alleged “pact with the devil” — his provocative explanation for the success of the slave rebellion that resulted in Haitian independence. Robertson informed “700 Club” viewers that Obama was a secret Muslim intent on instituting sharia law around the world; that political assassinations are licit; that welfare programs for the poor are morally wrong; and that food stamps for hungry families lead only to fraud and dependency.

  Heaton produced the show’s news segments, personal-interest stories and miracle reports until 1986, working behind the scenes and growing closer to Robertson. It’s easy to trace, in his narrative, the ascendency of the religious right as a potent Republican bloc, not least by watching Robertson’s ever-growing designs on the presidency through Heaton’s up-close vantage.

  The past several years have yielded a number of books that provide a very clear (and edifying) picture of the movement’s origins. In 2013, there was “Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel,” by Kate Bowler, which traced the unfolding of America’s unique tradition of money-grubbing televangelists squeezing congregants for cash while living large themselves; then came “American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism,” by Matthew Avery Sutton, in 2014, followed in 2015 by “One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America,” by Kevin Kruse, both of which closely track evangelicals’ swift romance with political conservatives in the 20th century. This year, Frances FitzGerald published “The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America,” which traced today’s demotic, emotive evangelical politics back to the Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th centuries.

  [Franklin Graham: The media didn’t understand the ‘God-factor’ in Trump’s win]

  The tragedy that emerges in “The Gospel of Self” is what Heaton’s immersion in Robertson’s politicized Christianity did to his own newfound faith. “Little did I realize at the time how [fighting the culture wars] dramatically weakened my/our beliefs in the capabilities of an almighty God,” he writes. “The 700 Club” aired many segments on miracles, but Robertson refused to broadcast any reports of Christians asking for God’s help and not receiving it. Heaton reports that Robertson told him that doing so would “cost [his] ministry millions.” By then, Robertson had made miracles one of the focal points of his show — and a major draw for viewers and their donations. If he were to acknowledge , even with plenty of genuine faith, that miracles don’t always come to pass, the electrified crowds might not have flocked to the ministry in such large numbers.

  One day, Heaton received a letter from an Indiana father who was an avid “700 Club” fan. He tore into Heaton and Robertson for making his 9-year-old daughter’s death from cancer not only painful but spiritually agonizing. She, like her father, had been a faithful viewer and had believed Robertson’s claim that true believers receive the miracles they pray for. Worse than her painful illness, the father wrote, “was the rejection she felt from God, because He would not heal her.” Heaton writes that “to this day I pray for that little girl . . . and beg forgiveness for playing a role in what she went through.”

  Heaton’s troubles mounted. He found himself lying to Robertson about the miraculous healing of his own back spasms (in reality, despite Robertson’s charismatic prayers, the spasms did not relent), and about helping to direct ministry monies (illegally) to Robertson’s failed 1988 presidential campaign. By the end of his time at the CBN, Heaton writes, he “started drinking heavily, something that would profoundly alter my relationship with the God I loved.”

  Robertson presented himself as a shepherd of souls, but in his quest for temporal power, he led his flock astray and left their faith to wither. This isn’t the story one usually hears about the rise of the religious right, but for Christians, it is perhaps the more important one.
  The Gospel of Self
  How Jesus Joined the GOP

  By Terry Heaton

  Or. 209 pp. $18 paperback

• Broadcasting Cable
  https://www.broadcastingcable.com/blog/heaton-reinventing-local-media-67351
  Word count: 276

  Heaton on Reinventing Local Media

  Michael Malone
  Apr 9, 2008

  Station consultant Mike Sechrist, formerly of WKRN Nashville, says station veteran Terry Heaton’s new book is worth a look.

  Those of you who know Terry and followed his musings on where the broadcast industry is headed will recognize his theme and title: Reinventing Local Media. I found Terry on the internet about three years ago. He was a man ahead of his time predicting back then the convulsions TV is going through today.

  Heaton was the news director at several stations, including WRIC Richmond and KTLA Los Angeles, according to Wikipedia. Now with TV branding firm AR&D, Heaton pens the postmodern-focused Pomo blog. (If I’m not wearing my glasses, "Pomo" looks like something that’s definitely not safe for work.)

  By
  Michael Malone
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• Local Media Insider
  http://www.localmediainsider.com/stories/when-the-deer-all-have-guns-or-just-want-to-shoot-them,686?
  Word count: 632

  When the deer all have guns... or just want to shoot them
  Posted 2/14/12

  As we worked through this week's reports, I thought a lot about Terry Heaton, author of thepomoblog.com and book, "Reinventing Local Media."

  Heaton addresses a basic problem posed by the transition of the one-to-many-media universe into a many-to-many media universe; that is, given the ability to blog, tweet, Facebook post, contest, text and and more, some advertisers don't need our audiences. They can build their own.

  "It’s a very bad time to be in the audience hunting business," as Heaton put it at a recent AAN Online Conference, "because the deer all have guns."

  "Our old model was: We can reach people for you, Mr. Advertiser. And all of those people who follow us will see your ad. Now the advertiser has tools to bypass us. He is creating content and reaching people in the same ways that we do."

  "Our core competency of mass marketing is in permanent decay. We are always playing defense and never allowed to play offense."

  Keaton's main example is the disruptive and prescient Jerry Damson automotive in Northern Alabama.

  Damson runs six websites, 500 or more micro sites, 400 YouTube channels (and video production studio), a blog and direct mail, under the wing of VP of Marketing, Ben Dobles, a digital marketer local media companies would be lucky to hire. In other words, a local media rep's worst nightmare.

  I can imagine a sales representative asking, "What if we ran a banner ad promoting 'get a free gas card with a test drive?," only to be told, that, in fact, Damson was already running banner ads on its own site, Hondagassavings.com, on which people can compare gas mileage for various models of cars.

  Dobles even buys cheap ($150 a month) over night cable spots just to power-up his SEO.

  "He's’ smart. He's smarter than andy television station. And now one of the biggest media companies in Norther Alabama," Heaton says.

  So what's a local media company to do?

  The good news is that Damson is still a rarity. As many Jerry Damsons as there are to be found across the country, there are thousands more small businesses who just can't keep up and need companies to both train and supply services for marketing. And they need our big, fat, over-sized audiences - whether on Facebook, on-air or online.

  The statistics back this up: Borrell is showing that while overall copanies are plannign to spend 60 to 70% o promotions - and a big chunk of that on social media - but at local levels the spending is seill only 12%.

  As Heaton says, "If the deer have guns, you get into the ammunition business."

  In fact, we are already in the business. Our core competencies match what local businesses need, even if we are not yet selling them as a service.

  Heaton advises there are two new business models: a. helping people do it right and b. making content "for people formerly known as advertisers."

  To play offense, “Exploit the core competency, but strategically move your usines to the edges.”

  This week's case study how E.W. Scripps Company is helping merchants build Facebook fans - and reaping five figure revenue deals in some cases as a result - shows one way become an arms dealer in the new media universe.

  See also, six contests that could double or triple your Facebook fans, and eight ways to monetize your Facebook skills and audience. For more Heatonisms, check out his blog, it's always more than interesting.

• Truth Dig
  https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-gospel-of-self/
  Word count: 1173

  The Gospel of Self
  The Rev. Pat Robertson listens to Donald Trump, then a Republican presidential candidate, speak in Virginia Beach, Va., in February 2016. (Steve Helber / AP)

  “The Gospel of Self: How Jesus Joined the GOP”
  A book by Terry Heaton

  America’s conservative evangelicals — the individuals behind that Republican bloc known as the religious right — are living in strange times. After eight unhappy years under President Barack Obama (only 24 percent of white evangelicals viewed him favorably as he prepared to leave office), evangelicals can now look to a Republican president and Congress to carry out their political will. Yet it remains to be seen whether President Trump and his crisis-besieged administration will do much good for the religious right and what their future may hold.

  How evangelicals became wedded to the political right is a drama in many acts that plays out on a grand stage. It takes in cosmic questions of providence and apocalypse threaded together with earthlier (though no less moving) concerns about money, power and identity. In his book “The Gospel of Self: How Jesus Joined the GOP,” Terry Heaton offers a view of that vast narrative from the personal level. Instead of telling the story of the religious right from a historical or sociological standpoint, Heaton narrates it from the inside, as a producer for the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and right-hand man to televangelist and one-time presidential hopeful Pat Robertson. In many ways, the account Heaton supplies is far more disturbing than the big-picture plots.

  The Gospel of Self: How Jesus Joined the GOP
  Purchase in the Truthdig Bazaar

  Heaton, a prolific writer on modern mass media, recounts how he came to work for Robertson at the CBN, the contributions he made to Robertson’s ambitious Christian programming and political mission, and his mentor’s eventual run for president and 12-year tangle with the IRS over the funneling of ministry funds to his political campaign, an activity that caused the CBN to lose its tax exempt status for a while. Heaton was moved to become a television producer in the service of the Lord after an intense conversion experience in 1980. He had struggled with “depression, sex, suicide, drugs, and alcohol,” but after his conversion he regained control of his life, and began to read the Bible and watch Christian television, then in its infancy. By 1981 he had taken a job with the CBN, producing stories for Robertson’s “The 700 Club.”

  The show is a kind of news magazine comprising several segments centered on Robertson’s view of the world: Commentators unpack the proper Christian reading of daily news, special features track trends and crises in the church, those miraculously saved or healed appear or call in to tell their tales and Robertson’s sermons fill in the gaps. Though the focus is on faith, Robertson’s politics are clear. When Haiti suffered a devastating earthquake in 2010, Robertson chalked it up to the nation’s alleged “pact with the devil” — his provocative explanation for the success of the slave rebellion that resulted in Haitian independence. Robertson informed “700 Club” viewers that Obama was a secret Muslim intent on instituting Shariah law around the world; that political assassinations are licit; that welfare programs for the poor are morally wrong; and that food stamps for hungry families lead only to fraud and dependency.

  Heaton produced the show’s news segments, personal-interest stories and miracle reports until 1986, working behind the scenes and growing closer to Robertson. It’s easy to trace, in his narrative, the ascendancy of the religious right as a potent Republican bloc, not least by watching Robertson’s ever-growing designs on the presidency through Heaton’s up-close vantage.

  The past several years have yielded a number of books that provide a very clear (and edifying) picture of the movement’s origins. In 2013, there was “Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel,” by Kate Bowler, which traces the unfolding of America’s unique tradition of money-grubbing televangelists squeezing congregants for cash while living large themselves; then came “American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism,” by Matthew Avery Sutton in 2014, followed in 2015 by “One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America,” by Kevin Kruse, both of which closely track evangelicals’ swift romance with political conservatives in the 20th century. This year, Frances FitzGerald published “The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America,” which traces today’s demotic, emotive evangelical politics back to the Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th centuries.

  The tragedy that emerges in “The Gospel of Self” is what Heaton’s immersion in Robertson’s politicized Christianity did to his own newfound faith. “Little did I realize at the time how [fighting the culture wars] dramatically weakened my/our beliefs in the capabilities of an almighty God,” he writes. “The 700 Club” aired many segments on miracles, but Robertson refused to broadcast any reports of Christians asking for God’s help and not receiving it. Heaton reports that Robertson told him that doing so would “cost [his] ministry millions.” By then, Robertson had made miracles one of the focal points of his show — and a major draw for viewers and their donations. If he were to acknowledge, even with plenty of genuine faith, that miracles don’t always come to pass, the electrified crowds might not have flocked to the ministry in such large numbers.

  One day, Heaton received a letter from an Indiana father who was an avid “700 Club” fan. He tore into Heaton and Robertson for making his 9-year-old daughter’s death from cancer not only painful but spiritually agonizing. She, like her father, had been a faithful viewer and had believed Robertson’s claim that true believers receive the miracles they pray for. Worse than her painful illness, the father wrote, “was the rejection she felt from God, because He would not heal her.” Heaton writes that “to this day I pray for that little girl … and beg forgiveness for playing a role in what she went through.”

  Heaton’s troubles mounted. He found himself lying to Robertson about the miraculous healing of his own back spasms (in reality, despite Robertson’s charismatic prayers, the spasms did not relent), and about helping to direct ministry monies (illegally) to Robertson’s failed 1988 presidential campaign. By the end of his time at the CBN, Heaton writes, he “started drinking heavily, something that would profoundly alter my relationship with the God I loved.”

  Robertson presented himself as a shepherd of souls, but in his quest for temporal power, he led his flock astray and left their faith to wither. This isn’t the story one usually hears about the rise of the religious right, but for Christians, it is perhaps the more important one.

  Elizabeth Bruenig is an editor at The Washington Post.

  ©2017 Washington Post Book World
  Elizabeth Bruenig
  In this article:

• Patheos
  http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jimerwin/2018/01/22/gospel-self-terry-heaton/
  Word count: 1181

  The Gospel of Self by Terry Heaton
  January 22, 2018 by Jim Erwin
  2 Comments
  Gospel-of-Self-Cover
  The Gospel of Self by Terry Heaton

  The Gospel of Self by Terry Heaton is a first-hand account. Heaton was the former right-hand man of Pat Robertson and one of the key players of the Religious Right. Heaton shows how the conservative Evangelical right influenced and eventually took over the GOP.
  Insight: CBN Tactics Used Today

  His insights were extremely fascinating. Heaton notes the many of the tactics used by modern cable news agencies like Fox. He shares how they were originally developed on the Christian Broadcast Network (CBN). Many of the same people who voted Donald Trump as president in the 2016 election were already listening to CBN. Heaton notes his responsibility by stating the following:

  “All he had to do was to paint a black and white, dystopian view of America and offer himself as the solution. This is not original thinking, for all he was doing was repeating the things discussed in the back rooms of white evangelicals, and we at CBN were the ones who planted many of those thoughts.” (7)

  “Christian or otherwise, the Republican Party is now so far to the right that it’s beginning to resemble historical fascism.” (10)

  Heaton does a very good job at outlining how the theologians of the Evangelical Right (Hal Lindsey, Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and others) influenced the political thinking of the people in the Republican Party.
  Insight: Ministry Based on Selfishness

  Another insight: Ministry, and especially giving can be based upon selfishness:

  “What Pat Robertson taught me that day was that success in Christian television ministry began with tweaking the self-centered core of human nature.” (17)

  “Selfishness and self-centeredness form the most dangerous epidemic facing Western Civilization today.” (21)

  Heaton shares how he helped improve the quality of programming and graphics to Christian television.

  “Evangelicals embrace the idea that everything in life is a choice…this is what makes them great Republicans.” (43)

  Heaton shares the honest struggle of believing in prayer, but at the same time “faking” being healed (56-60). Heaton’s work at CBN bred that intolerance into Evangelical Christians (61).

  “There’s an old joke that suggests there are three people the devil doesn’t want in hell: Billy Graham because he would get everybody saved; Oral Roberts because he’d get everybody healed, and Pat Robertson because he’d raise the money for air conditioning.” (73)

  The healthy, wealthy and wise Word of Faith theology permeates Pat Robertson’s organization as well as his presidential campaign. This theology impacted politics in a way that one could not imagine. For example, Heaton makes the following profound statement:

  “We had actually redefined what it meant to be a conservative Republican, and this was no small feat. We altered the balance of power in the GOP by bringing in millions of Christians who were able to look completely past the reality that Republicans represented the wealthy first. This was an amazing accomplishment, but one that has left our culture in a really bad situation, for fundamentalist Christians were a key element of Donald Trump’s election.” (138)
  Insight: The Impact of Postmodernism on Today’s Culture

  “Television news—and other forms of journalism of the future—will steadily drift away from the “professional” standard of objectivity and back to one that regularly incorporates argument into its soul. If you study postmodernism, this conclusion is inevitable, and it will produce—I predict—a change in the culture as significant and lasting as the American Revolution. Moreover, this change will occur outside the institution of journalism and in spite of its ongoing self-examination.” (159)

  With this quote, Heaton shifts his biography to an analysis of the current postmodern culture. Entitled “CBN News, Fox News, and the Matter of Transparency,” the chapter is a good analysis of the bias that one will encounter because of postmodernism.

  “Postmoderns look around and see ruin where the elites promised prosperity. The American Dream lives on only for the few, and the resulting anti-institutional energy is fierce and unrelenting. Technology has leveled the knowledge playing field. This has thrust the masses into unfamiliar territory. Only a few can apply this knowledge. The rational command and control of modernism is under assault by people who find greater comfort in anarchy than what they view as the false promise of the shepherds.” (164)

  I love the fact that Heaton has addressed perhaps the most important difficulty in today’s media culture. No one trusts a particular news channel or aggregator. Because of this distrust, division along ideological lines will continue to increase. One current example is Fox News. As Heaton notes:

  “Fox may present a balancing factor in press coverage of the news overall, but their perspective is entirely conservative, Republican, and Christian. No attempt is made to include the liberal point-of-view—except as pejorative—and this is why they are not transparent with their bias.” (166-167)

  Another example of this shift is the fact that since the advent of the Internet, one does not have to trust immediate sources in a story.(171) Before, when one read a paper, one stopped at the footnote. When you read the footnote, you trusted that source as authoritative. Yet, since the use of hyperlinks, one could see where the footnote led. You could check the accuracy of the source. This changed the nature of trusting the author. This has implications in presenting news stories and facts. One now questions every story. There is an inherent distrust of the source.
  Insight: Postmodern and Its Effect on the Church

  Heaton ends his book with a brief introduction to postmodernism and its subsequent effect on culture, and especially the church. He proposes how postmodernism will change the church in what he calls a “post-Christian” era. Institutionalized churches like denominational churches (and even non-denominational ones) will have less impact on the local culture. In its place, the church will change from a top-down structure of order to a chaotic, participatory form of church. Heaton compares the future post-Christian church to the Alcoholic Anonymous movement. In many ways, I agree with Heaton. I have found that megachurches will survive. However, churches that serve fewer people will struggle to make it in the post-modern post-Christian era.

  For people who wonder why evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump, this book provides an answer. Postmodernism is changing the nature of the church. This book will also help the reader find some answers.

  Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR,Part 255.

• Church Times
  https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2017/16-june/books-arts/book-reviews/feeling-the-power
  Word count: 560

  The Gospel of Self by Terry Heaton
  16 June 2017

  Harriet Baber on the US religious Right

  The Gospel of Self: How Jesus joined the GOP

  Terry Heaton

  OR Books £15*

  (978-1-68219-083-8)

  *available at www.amazon.co.uk

  THE GOSPEL OF SELF is an addition to the growing body of literature by erstwhile Evangelicals describing and lamenting their former religious agendas and political preoccupations. The author, Terry Heaton, sometime executive producer of the Christian Broadcasting Network’s (CBN’s) tele­vision news magazine, The 700 Club, describes and regrets his part in de­­veloping programming that pro­moted American Evangelicals’ sup­port for the GOP — the Republican Party.

  The greater part of Heaton’s book is an account of his work at The 700 Club during the 1980s, when Pat Robertson, founder of CBN and the show’s host, campaigned for the US presidency. Heaton says little about Mr Robertson’s campaign, but has much to say about the show’s marketing campaigns, rows over set design and female guests’ make-up regime, and the office politics that resulted in his dismissal in 1988. He concludes with ruminations about the contemporary political scene, the craft of journalism, the internet, the “emerging church” movement, and post-modernism.

  Memoirs such as Heaton’s are a window into the Evangelical world, a self-contained subculture with its own media, schools, and other businesses, catering for a largely working-class clientele. Evangelical “ministries” are businesses, and “pastors” such as Mr Robertson are expected be entrepren­eurs.

  His business operations are ex­­tensive. Like President Trump, he parlayed inherited wealth into a global business empire, with media holdings in Asia, the UK, and Africa, a diamond-mining operation in Congo, and holdings in Liberian gold mines, acquired through a multi-million dollar deal with the ousted Liberian strongman Charles Taylor.

  PAEvangelical entrepreneur: Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting NetworkSince the rise of the religious Right in the 1980s, pundits have speculated about why working-class Evangelicals threw their support behind the GOP, which promotes the interests of the rich, and adopted the billionaire Donald Trump as their champion. Heaton has nothing new to say. The bulk of his book is autobiographical: a rambling account of his brief career at CBN a quarter-century ago.

  It is his picture of Mr Robertson’s “ministry” that tells the story. Mr Robertson’s followers look for strong leaders to protect and provide for them. They regard his wealth and the success of his business ventures as evidence of his power to defend them from an alien culture, dominated (they believe) by hostile liberal elites, and to pass blessings on to them.

  Commentators following the on­­going saga of President Trump’s bankruptcies and lawsuits, tax evasion, and collaboration with President Putin and Russian oli­garchs, wonder what it will take to disillusion his Evangelical supporters.

  So far nothing has, and, probably, nothing will. Supporters regard President Trump’s sharp practices as good business. They admire his transactions with Russian oligarchs as a strong man’s negotiations with strongmen, and trust President Trump to protect and provide for them.

  Dr Harriet Baber is Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Diego, in the United States.

• Salon
  https://www.salon.com/2017/05/28/jesus-big-money-and-the-gop-before-fox-news-there-was-the-700-club/
  Word count: 1788

  Jesus, big money and the GOP: Before Fox News, there was “The 700 Club”
  At “The 700 Club” I learned from Pat Robertson how to sell a “gospel of self” to the faithful
  Terry Heaton05.28.2017•9:00 AM
  Excerpted from “The Gospel of Self: How Jesus Joined the GOP” by Terry Heaton (OR Books, 2017). Reprinted with permission from OR Books.

  Before there was Fox News, there was "The 700 Club." The thousands or perhaps millions of Christians influenced by "The 700 Club" over the last four decades are good people. Their intentions are noble. They mostly wish that others would find the peace and contentment they’ve discovered for themselves. Along the way, however, the essential gospel call about feeding sheep and lambs has been overshadowed by a perceived need to not just challenge the evolution of our culture but also directly participate in what they view as its restoration. Certain Christian leaders whose motives—while presented as above reproach—have fed them Biblical mandates that seem to justify this participation. However, a deeper examination reveals that the gospel being most preached today is a form of self-centeredness: the gospel of self.

  I know this, because I helped teach it while serving as Pat Robertson’s producer and executive producer during a most critical point in the TV program’s development, the 1980s, when Pat himself decided that God had called him to run for president and that he would win. The story of how this happened is my story, and the gospel of self is the dark side of that chronicle.

  History will record that "The 700 Club" was the taproot of that which moved the Republican Party to the right and provided the political support today for a man like Donald Trump. A 2015 Harvard report concluded that right-wing media was driving the GOP, not Republican leadership, but this assumes that in order for people to behave as cultural radicals, they must be manipulated into doing so. This is a misleading interpretation of human nature and the power of personal faith. It would be absurd to suggest that the many elements of right-wing media didn’t play a role in this, but those who challenge this right turn by the GOP need to look far beyond the institutional power of media to influence. Conservative talk radio, Fox News, offline publications, and the hundreds of online observer websites would simply not exist without an audience driven by a faith-mandated conscience and thusly predisposed to their messages. We knew this at CBN in the early 1980s, and as long as we could present current events in what we called “a Biblical perspective,” people would take an interest.

  This form of Christianity blends so well with the Republican Party because both are formed around a circle with self at the center. This was the overarching albeit unwritten strategy of Pat Robertson, although there were many in key positions at CBN who either weren’t aware of this or simply refused to see it. To me, it was pretty obvious and was later proven in a memorable private discussion I had with Pat about fundraising.

  The 700 Club began as a Christian talk show for the faithful, but its evolution to a politically motivated, point-of-view news program began in bits and pieces before I arrived and accelerated afterwards. In an address to a noon prayer meeting in April of 1981, Pat Robertson offered the vision he wanted to fulfill and the Biblical justification for moving the ministry in that direction.

  And I tell you, in our world today; people are like a bunch of sheep. They’re saying, ‘What must we do? You know, what do we do with our money? What do we do with our children? What do we do with our education? What do we vote for?’ And all these—What do we do? And somehow or other God’s got to give some people with knowledge of the times to tell Israel what they ought to do. And I think we have a golden opportunity to do that, and that’s one of the things we’re trying to do on The 700 Club…

  That was Pat in 1981.

  So the vision was set and the only missing element was money. After all, CBN was a ministry. It paid no taxes as a media company, and the tax exemption was worth far more than any for-profit business model, especially in 1981. Pat Robertson was a brilliant marketer, however, and despite his professed faith in God to take care of providing resources, very little at CBN was left to chance, and that applied especially to fund-raising. Only a small part of marketing is creative or innovative; most of the blue-collar efforts involved processes and were extremely scientific.

  We knew, for example, what percentage of 700 Club members—at fifteen dollars a month – would covert to 1000 Club members—at eighty-three dollars a month—and we knew, on average, how long that conversion would take. We had the same data in terms of converting 1000 Club members to 2500 Club members, and turning those members into Founders Club members. Based on past growth, this allowed us to extrapolate a budget projection, and that’s what we used to make our plans.

  But behind it all was the mind of a fund-raising genius, a man who understood human nature like few others, and mostly a man who was unafraid to exploit that understanding in a justified means to what he felt was a righteous end. I learned how to raise money directly from Pat Robertson, and his methodology might surprise the faithful, for it is built on self-centeredness. And if the core of its ability to raise money is built on selfishness, then it must follow that the CBN message itself must do likewise. This is the secret truth behind what we intended to present as a movement of God’s spirit on the earth.

  In February 1985, as I was gaining more authority at the ministry of The 700 Club, I asked Pat if he would teach me everything he knew about raising money. We went to lunch, and I took copious notes. Here’s what he told me, according to my notes:

  We don’t necessarily have to present everything as a crisis, but it’s impossible to make a change when everybody feels good about existing circumstances. That’s the mistake Reagan has made. He got re-elected but now faces difficulty in implementing change, since he sold the country on the fact that everything is hunky-dory.

  It’s basically like John the Baptist. The axe is laid to the root of the tree and people are saying, ‘What shall we do?’

  We need to tie the spiritual with the natural (meaning current events). He told the people what to do in light of the current events. We need to do the same thing, because if you can do that, you really have something that’s worth something.

  Here’s what motivates people to give to CBN, and in this order:

  It helps me.

  It helps my family.

  It helps my community.

  It helps my nation.

  I’m fulfilling the great commission, spreading the gospel to the world.

  It’s my duty.

  I’ll get blessed if I do.

  I’m helping others who are poorer than me.

  It’s like a finely tuned orchestra. You don’t play all bass and you don’t play all treble. Together, they make a wonderful sound.

  People also like to be part of a winner. Nobody likes to lose.

  Challenges are important, because people are goal-oriented and respond to peer pressure.

  Bargains are important, like building a $13 million building for $100.

  There is also a thing of the old folks wanting to help the young, sort of to perpetuate society somehow.

  What Pat Robertson taught me that day was that success in Christian television ministry began with tweaking the self-centered core of human nature. Notice that he painted a picture of expanding circles, each moving away from the recognition of self at the center. Helping the poor is at the bottom of the list, almost as though that particular motivation is separate from the rest, and this was played out in our use of Operation Blessing to hit a particular kind of Christian giver. The rest, however, formed the core of our ministry and our fundraising.

  Armed with this kind of direction, it was easy to craft not only fund-raising but also everything else associated with The 700 Club television program. Taking over the country for God wasn’t so much positioned as a duty; it was more like “you need to do this for yourself and your family.” It’s a subtle difference in the marketing practice of positioning, but it’s a much more powerful motivator. This is core Pat Robertson, and nothing he did, said, or accomplished makes sense without this layer of understanding included in the final analysis.

  There was nothing sinister about it to us; it was a sincere and genuine desire to change the world for good, although its ultimate fruit has been chaotic, divisive, and dangerous. We felt the hand of God guided us, and I write that in all sincerity. We looked at progressive culture and saw only evil. We felt animosity against Christianity and the church. We were mocked and ridiculed in the media, especially that which was coming from Hollywood. We felt that God was giving things over to us to make things right. What we didn’t see was the trap of our motives being driven by self. After all, does God really need us to fix things that we viewed as wrong?

  Even Pat’s acclaimed manual for living, The Secret Kingdom, is a diagram for using the Bible to justify a lifestyle that is built around self, self-gain, and self-betterment based on the above expanding circle. It’s a self-help book disguised as theology. Every “law” proclaimed is designed to help individual people, families, and communities get ahead in the realm of human competition. You can make yourself healthier, wealthier, safer, happier, and more dominant in the culture simply by living within these “laws of the Kingdom.” It’s a beautiful companion to the teaching I was given about fundraising and further evidence that we were really teaching a very insidious form of selfishness, the gospel of self.

• Vox
  https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/8/26/16202436/700-club-terry-heaton-pat-robertson-trump
  Word count: 2898

  Former 700 Club producer: “I knew where the line was. But that didn’t stop us."
  Pat Robertson's former producer Terry Heaton talks The 700 Club, Trump, and turning the Bible “into a self-help manual.”
  By Tara Isabella Burton@NotoriousTIBtara.burton@vox.com Aug 26, 2017, 9:10am EDT
  Christian Broadcasting Network’s Pat Robertson has been one of Trump’s staunchest media allies Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

  In the 1980s, TV producer Terry Heaton was at the helm of one of the most influential media properties of the decade. As executive producer for the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN)’s Pat Robertson — one of the world’s most famous televangelists — Heaton spent the 1980s and early ’90s transforming the network’s flagship show, The 700 Club, into a pioneer of conservative opinion journalism.

  But decades after The 700 Club’s massive success paved the way for an alliance between the Christian right and GOP party politics, Heaton has more mixed feelings about his role in the “culture wars.” In his new book The Gospel of the Self: How Jesus Joined the GOP, Heaton reflects on his years working alongside Robertson, and how the advertising strategies he brought to CBN helped transform and politicize a generation of Christians. Heaton presents Robertson and his team as well-meaning idealists whose desire to use the power of the media to bring people to Jesus morphed into a need to hold on to power for its own sake.

  Often, Heaton writes, the desire to put on a convincing “show” for their audience meant eliding the truth in favor of a more marketable approach: casting only conventionally attractive and “successful”-looking Christians in their segments, exclusively focusing on the positive aspects of Christianity, and hinting that faith could bring temporal as well as spiritual rewards. In other words, the Bible became a “self-help manual” advertised as something to be valued because of its impact on one’s own life, what Heaton now calls “the gospel of the self.”

  I spoke with Heaton about Robertson and the future of the alliance between CBN and the GOP, and about how CBN helped bring together conservative Christianity and Republican Party politics. The interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
  Tara Isabella Burton

  You were instrumental in the development of Pat Robertson’s The 700 Club as a groundbreaking piece of conservative television. Now you’ve written a book that’s far less positive about you and your colleagues’ influence on the Christian political landscape.
  Terry Heaton

  Those of us back then really wanted to change the world, but I don’t think we ever really thought about what that would produce. When you’re a few [people] against incredible odds, it’s a neat experience. But when suddenly people take you up on what you’ve been offering, you’ve got to figure out what it is that you really want to say.

  I wrote the book because I felt I needed to apologize for my role in what we have in front of us today, although I don’t necessarily feel guilty about it. I just want to get it on the record that I participated in something that has turned out to be pretty bad.
  Tara Isabella Burton

  You came to Christian Broadcasting Network from a more traditional news background. Can you talk more about that transition?
  Terry Heaton

  I had one of those flaming, magic-from-the-sky, born-again [religious] experiences, one year before I was contacted by CBN to work for them [in 1981]. I worked five years for them the first time. I was very much a television guy, and the knowledge that I had about magazine show production, graphics, that type of skill, was broadly accepted at CBN because they didn’t really have a lot of that kind of knowledge. So we were able to create a machine that could manufacture The 700 Club. And I was always excited about creating good TV. As a new believer, of course, I was fascinated by Pat Robertson — his knowledge of the Bible, the things he’d been teaching throughout his life.

  [Plus], I’ve always believed in point-of-view journalism. I think eventually it’s going to be all we have. So to be pioneering in that era was intriguing to me. But as we got more and more political, I could see the handwriting on the wall, and so I left, went back into local television and the news business. A year later, I got a call from Pat to help him while he was running for president. And I made decisions based on the promises Pat made to me to if I returned to CBN and be his executive producer — autonomy, the power to create a program [of my own] — none of them were fulfilled.

  [The problem] was [The 700 Club] itself, getting more and more political. People from Pat’s campaign wanted me [to get involved with the political side of his campaign] all the time. I knew where the line was. But that didn’t stop us from going right up to it and even crossing over. That caused great internal conflict for me, which resulted — in the long run — in my salvation.
  Tara Isabella Burton

  What kinds of things gave you pause?
  Terry Heaton

  I didn’t have an actual single aha moment, but there were several. We were always trying to create segments that were vehicles for Pat’s teaching. In surveys, that’s what our viewers wanted more than anything else. So [for example] we had this idea to do a series featuring a guy who always got things wrong so that Pat could then come on afterward and tell people what to do right. So we developed a new segment: The conceit was a character who always did things “wrong” so Pat could come out and teach him.

  The pilot was a guy who was constantly losing money because he was trying to give his way out of debt. So he’d look at the Bible where it says “you receive a hundredfold for what you give,” and if he was a $1,000 in debt he’d give away $100 expecting to be able to pay off the debt. And at the end, he turns to the camera and says, “What am I doing wrong?” And we all thought it was brilliant. It was. But I showed it to Pat in the dressing room one day, and he got this sour look on his face and when it was finished. He said,
  "“You put that on the air and you will cost this ministry millions.”"

  Well, that didn’t go down very well with me.

  I knew that Pat’s rationale for all of this is that you don’t want to do anything on TV that will interfere with anybody’s faith. But I think you can take that to an extreme — and that’s what we did. We always showed people getting healed, overcoming the odds. The strong impression that the viewer would get from the program was that if you just followed the formula, you would be blessed!

  There was only one time we did a program about things not going right — it was a program about death. And it was one of the most powerful shows we did. Anyone who worked on it will tell you that. But Pat hated it because it wasn’t “prosperity!” and “everything’s going to work out just fine!”
  Tara Isabella Burton

  You say you wanted to change the world when you started working at CBN. What, from your perspective then, was wrong with it?
  Terry Heaton

  I think we felt — and I say this in all sincerity, because I don’t think it was insincere whatsoever — we felt that the world was going to hell and that we were afraid it would take us with it. And so we wanted to present a different view from, a news and information perspective, about what was taking place in the world, and build that around a biblical perspective: that God is alive and well and that he’s not happy with what is going on in the world.

  But we used as evidence [for God’s presence] every self-centered trick in the book. When you get into black-and-white theology, you have to be able to explain things in a very simple way. For example, if you believe that God rewards good Christians by making them prosperous, and you’re not prosperous, you have to ask yourself why. And there’s really only two answers to that question. One is that you’re doing something wrong — a.k.a. sinning — and the other is that somebody out there is taking what rightfully belongs to you and you’ve got to do something about that. And that’s a pretty easy sell to human beings — we all want what we don’t have.
  "If you exploit human nature, you can move people."

  And that’s really what we did.
  Tara Isabella Burton

  How did you accomplish that?
  Terry Heaton

  We taught the Bible as a self-help manual. And it was very easy to move people [doing that], because who doesn’t want to have a sanctified self-help deal going on? [The conceit is that] you need a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ so that he can make [your life] better. … I’ve learned since that, really, I think God wants us to be better human beings, and that’s a far cry from building up spiritual points that you can cash in for reward at the end of your life.
  Tara Isabella Burton

  What issues did you and your colleagues focus on?
  Terry Heaton

  It turns out that abortion, gays and lesbians, and birth control — they’re all about sex. Sex, more than everything else, scares people who want their children to be safe and to live in a sanctified world. I don’t want to overstate that, but it’s the truth.

  There’s a strong sense among people that they wanted to do something about it. And guiding them becomes an easy task — what we gave them was Republican Party politics. We had an explanation for all their fears — the lack of personal responsibility, big government, people trying to take from you what really belongs to you, self-responsibility, self-responsibility, self-responsibility. All those things worked very well with the type of Christianity we were preaching.
  Tara Isabella Burton

  You say “they’re” all about sex. Did you, personally, not feel that sexual morality was the be-all and end-all of Christian morality?
  Terry Heaton

  I don’t know that I had that concern. I was a TV guy! We all had a mission — to restore the USA to a godly nation. The fact that all that revolves around sex — it was convenient. To me, people who tout that all the time — they’re looking at [the biblical story of] Sodom and Gomorrah [used by some Christians as biblical proof that God punishes people for homosexuality]. But the Bible says that God didn’t destroy Sodom because of their sexual sins. He destroyed them because they didn’t take care of the poor or the afflicted.

  But that message doesn’t sell when you’re trying to whip people into a political frenzy.
  Tara Isabella Burton

  In your book, you seem deeply admiring of Robertson’s accomplishments and charisma even as you’re critical of his methods. How do you reconcile the varying elements of this man you’ve worked alongside for so many years?
  Terry Heaton

  Pat is a politician who happens to be a minister. He grew up as a Southern aristocrat in Virginia. His father was a US senator. It’s in his blood, but more than that, it’s in his environment. So the fact that he got to be a minister and was able to manipulate a substantial audience into becoming political is actually quite an accomplishment, whether you believe it’s a good accomplishment or a bad accomplishment.

  [But] he was one of the first people to contact me when my wife passed away in 2006. It was the day it happened. I don’t know how he found out. But he called me and prayed with me. And you don’t get any higher in my book than by reaching out to someone who’s suffering and praying with them. [But] I just want all the people that we served and that CBN serves today to understand the degree to which they have been pushed into the Republican Party and the Republican Party has been pushed to the right.

  People are living, breathing, and practicing lies. And I don’t think that doing something about it is going to come from anybody who’s lording it over these Christians.
  Tara Isabella Burton

  In today’s political climate, it seems like there’s an even stronger relationship than ever between CBN and the current administration. Pat Robertson’s been landing exclusive sit-down interviews with Trump, and CBN’s new shows like Faith Nation are further blurring the line between news and opinion. What do you make of that?
  Terry Heaton

  First of all, regarding Pat and his relationship with Donald Trump — I think that’s very, very scary. As smart as Pat Robertson is, and as good as he is at marketing, he is also highly susceptible to his own hype. In that way, Trump plays him like a piano. If you watch his most recent interview, some of the things that Trump says to Pat are really way out there in terms of manipulating Pat. He builds him up like a salesman would, and Pat is susceptible to that, I think. But he wouldn’t be susceptible if Trump didn’t speak the language that Pat wants.

  There is such fear on the right about the Supreme Court. I remember one show that we were taping in which Pat prayed that God would kill the Supreme Court justices. We had to stop the tape and advise him that he couldn’t say that on TV. But that’s the way he felt. Trump really sings Pat’s tune when it comes to the Supreme Court, also on the issue of religious liberty. When Trump starts talking about how Christianity is going to be “great again,” people like Pat sit up at listen. And they’ll support him whenever necessary — even if it means blowing up North Korea!

  We’re a divided people. That’s why I wonder if it’s a good thing that Donald Trump’s president — at least we’re getting it all out on the table. In my mind, that’s the only righteous reason to put a guy like Trump in the White House. We’ll go through some stuff — but I hope on the other side, it’ll be better than it is today.
  Tara Isabella Burton

  How do CBN’s new initiatives — like its web-based Facebook Live shows like Faith Nation — reflect a changing media landscape from the days when you worked there?
  Terry Heaton

  As an observer of the web and media for the past 20 years, I’ve noticed that the church hasn’t really been involved in the World Wide Web. Because in terms of media development, the church — the message of evangelicalism — has always been at the forefront [of technology]. In the early days of radio, the church was ever-present. In the early days of television, the church was very present. In the early days of satellite — two of the 10 transponders on the first satellite were owned by Christian organizations. So when the Web came along and nobody of the faith went near it, that fact caused me to have an epiphany, if you will. The reason they didn’t go to it is because the web is a three-way communication street. It’s not one-way. The network is top to bottom, but [the web] is bottom to bottom. It doesn’t need any hierarchical approval.

  And with Faith Nation, CBN is trying to turn a three-way communication medium [back] into a one-way. And for me that’s an artificial use of the web. It’s an open door for problems down the road. [The anarchic nature of the web] is a perfect vessel for the holy spirit. But it’s not the perfect vessel for a hierarchical anything.
  "I see the future of the church as horizontal, not vertical."

  The pulpit is going to have to give way to [conversations between] human beings: how they’re living life as a Christian, as a believer, whatever, and not marching in lockstep with certain beliefs, with those who would choose to manipulate the mass market.

• 
  Religion and Politics
  Word count: 3072

  This Former 700 Club Producer Wants to “Make Amends to a Whole Generation of Christians”
  By Stephanie Russell-Kraft | February 13, 2018

  (Stephanie Russell-Kraft) Terry Heaton at home in Huntsville, Alabama

  Terry Heaton is skipping church, as he does most every Sunday morning now. He is at home listening to bluegrass. Across town at Willowbrook Baptist Church, Pastor Mark McClelland’s sermon segues seamlessly from the story of John the Baptist to abortion. “People who support abortion are flat wrong,” the Huntsville, Alabama, minister booms into the microphone. He’s answered by a chorus of “amen.” It’s a familiar Sunday scene, one that plays out in likeminded churches across the country. Heaton believes it’s also part of the empire he helped build.

  Heaton worked in the 1980s as senior producer at the Christian Broadcasting Network. The right-hand man to The 700 Club’s Pat Robertson, he churned out video testimonials of miracles and calls to action for a burgeoning audience of Christians upset with the trajectory of modern U.S. culture.

  Earlier this year, Heaton, now 71 years old, published a book about his time running production at The 700 Club. It’s called The Gospel of Self: How Jesus Joined the GOP. He has been sober for just over 19 years, and he considers the memoir-turned-political exposé to be part of the 9th step of his 12-step program: making amends. Heaton feels responsible for helping create the conservative news bubble that reshaped the American religious right and ushered President Donald Trump into office.

  “We are the ones who invented Fox News,” he tells me. “And I can tell you how we did it. We did it by just assuming we had the right to be on the same level and same spectrum as anybody else in the press.” (The only problem, he adds, is that The 700 Club wasn’t producing news; it was producing propaganda.)

  Heaton has sent me to Willowbrook to “capture a little Roy Moore flavor” while I’m in town to interview him. The crowd (mostly white and affluent, if the cars in the parking lot are any indication) is friendly, and I have no visible reason to feel out of place. But when a jovial door greeter asks me where I’m from and what I do and I tell him I’m a journalist, his brow furrows. “Well,” he answers after a pause. “That’s an important job, especially if you’re telling the truth.”

  Heaton laughs when I tell him this later. He doesn’t believe he and the door-greeter agree on what truth in news is. We’re sitting in his office, which is a corner of his bedroom in the suburban house he shares with his daughter and son-in-law on the outskirts of Huntsville. He bought the house and they all moved in together, he says, so he could be closer to family. His bookshelves are filled with various texts and tchotchkes, including a set of old bibles and CBN ministry manuals. On the other side of the room are the remnants of his former life in the music business, including two guitars and a five-string banjo.

  Dressed in all black, Heaton at first glance could easily be mistaken for an aging roadie. He’s got a graying beard and long, silver hair pulled into a braided half ponytail that runs down the back of his neck. The hair gets him noticed in Huntsville, he says. “You just don’t do that around here.” Two of the family’s dogs are relegated to the living room for the duration of our interviews, but the oldest, a miniature dachshund named Brandy Fate, sits on Heaton’s lap, tucked into the black vest he’s wearing, throughout our two interviews. He calls her Boo Boo, and he says she’s his muse.

  Heaton left CBN in 1988, but for decades resisted the idea of writing anything about his time there. “I have a lot of friends and I try not to make enemies,” he says. His mind changed in 2015 on a drive home from Birmingham while listening to “The Paul Finebaum Show,” an ESPN radio program dedicated to SEC football (Alabama’s other religion). An impassioned caller came on the air to tell Paul about “the smartest man on the planet.”

  “Paul, he’s a billionaire, his name is Donald Trump,” Heaton paraphrases, mimicking the man’s thick Southern drawl. “You mark my words, he’s gonna win, and he’s gonna clean up everything that’s going on.’” Heaton says he was captivated by the purity of conviction coming from the caller, whom he assumed was “a country guy” and thus likely also “a church guy.” Heaton says, “I felt that was pretty astonishing, because if [Trump] had this guy, he was gonna have all the kinds of guys we courted on The 700 Club.”

  So he went back to his office and began to pull out old documents, journal entries, and interviews from his time at CBN. His aim was to expose the hijacking of the Christian brand, and to come to terms with his own role in it.

  HEATON WAS BORN in 1946 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and had the sort of innocent, wandering-around-alone-until-sunset childhood idealized by conservative baby boomers. In 1965, as “Vietnam was knocking,” he avoided the indiscriminate pull of the draft on a stroke of luck owing to his young music career. After receiving a draft notice, Heaton tried enlisting at a Detroit Coast Guard recruitment office, only to find the waiting list was over 500 people long. But when the recruiter recognized Heaton as one of banjo players on a local station’s regular bluegrass show, he moved him to the top of the list. Heaton was never sent to Vietnam, but he took a Coast Guard radio course that set him up for his first news job in Milwaukee when he left the service in 1970.

  It was in Wisconsin that Heaton first started abusing drugs, he says, “when things didn’t go my way.” Living next door to an owner of a local head shop, Heaton became “the media drug dealer,” spending his time taking pot, LSD, cocaine, mescaline, quaaludes and anything else he could get his hands on. “Didn’t matter if I went up or went down,” he says.

  After moving to a competing news show in Milwaukee, Heaton moved to Louisville, Kentucky, to become a host and producer of PM Magazine, a syndicated 30-minute television show with a mix of news and entertainment. It was there, following a tearful conversation with an evangelical Christian friend, that he dumped his drugs and was born-again.

  At the time, the Christian Broadcasting Network was already 20 years old. The 700 Club, which Robertson began as a telethon with the goal of getting 700 members to each contribute $10 per month to the station, turned into a daily show in 1966 and entered national syndication in 1974. By the early 1980s, its mix of news, lifestyle segments, and interviews was being broadcast in homes around the country.

  CBN tried to recruit Heaton in 1980, but it wasn’t until 1981, after budget cuts slashed his new job as a Louisville Tonight producer, that Heaton packed his bags and moved to Virginia Beach, where Pat Robertson’s soon-to-be empire was still in its fledgling phase.

  As a producer at The 700 Club, Heaton was tasked with churning out high-production-value news segments and testimonials from CBN viewers who had experienced miracles after donating money to the ministry. The show began with the news, moved on to the doings of the ministry, and ended with prayer.

  According to Heaton, part of his job was to create segments that would inspire Robertson to react as passionately as possible on-air (hot-button issues included sexual morality, abortion, taxes, and Israel). The stories had a basis in reality in the same way that reality television does. Segments were edited to elicit specific reactions from The 700 Club audience. Chris Roslan, a spokesperson for CBN, says Heaton’s job was “to create compelling segments about issues of importance to a Christian audience; these are issues that Dr. Robertson is always passionate about anyway.”

  A Gallup survey commissioned by Robertson in the early days of CBN found that Americans viewed Christians as “country hicks, bible-thumpers, polyester-wearing, overweight idiots,” according to Heaton. “And so we set about to create an image just the opposite of that,” he says.

  “That’s why we didn’t show any fat people,” he says. “In the studio show, cameramen were told to never focus on overweight people in the audience.” (Roslan says he is “not aware of any survey showing such an extreme negative view of Christians in America or any concerted efforts to dispel survey results through on-camera visuals.”)

  Former 700 Club co-host Danuta Soderman, who now goes by Danuta Pfeiffer, tells me that Robertson also forbade moles, crutches, wheelchairs, and lost teeth, because “as Pat said, ‘half-healing is half-faith.’” Roslan says this quote is “blatantly untrue, as it contradicts basic biblical teaching.” He adds, “Anyone who watches CBN programming knows that the network regularly features guests and stories of people with physical challenges.” According to Heaton and Pfeiffer, though, The 700 Club combined the most potent forces of glamorous show business with the promises of the prosperity doctrine.

  At the height of the Reagan administration, personalities like Rush Limbaugh were entering the public sphere and televangelism was a rising force. On the cusp of that change, Heaton says there was “a different energy in the air.” The real problem at CBN, according to Heaton, was the cult of personality, where “you have one guy, and then everybody else,” drawing his hands out in a horizontal line. Robertson was often joined by co-hosts Pfeiffer and Ben Kinchlow, but they weren’t equals and it was clear Robertson was running the show.

  Pfeiffer, who now operates a winery in Oregon, says she has always considered herself a “liberal feminist Democrat,” even when she worked at CBN. She tells me Trump’s candidacy and presidency remind her of Robertson, who had the same “style and arrogance” combined with a desire to eliminate things like the Departments of Energy and Education. Since taking office, Trump has made it a point to cozy up to the religious right, and CBN has been especially receptive, with the network’s chief political correspondent, David Brody, recently co-writing a spiritual biography of Trump. Robertson and Brody are among the few media personalities who have been granted one-on-one interviews with the president. In October, Robertson used a segment of The 700 Club to argue Trump should “shut down” Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, saying, “there’s no such thing as a president obstructing justice.”

  “Had Pat become president, it wouldn’t have been much different then as it is now,” Pfeiffer says. But Robertson’s 1988 presidential primary run did much to pave the way for Trump. After Robertson’s defeat, she believes that biased, conservative Christian journalism flourished.

  Heaton says he agreed with about 80 percent of the politics he was producing, enough to make him cringe at the occasional crossed line but not enough to feel like an outsider. “I led worship at CBN,” he says. “It’s not like I was there as a spy or anything. It’s just that I still had a modicum of skepticism that I had learned in my years in the news business.” He also admits it never occurred to him that someone like Donald Trump might come along and capitalize on the audience he was building.

  Nevertheless, Heaton remains proud of some of what he accomplished during his tenure at CBN. “I did fabulous work there, he says. “I created things in TV that weren’t really done before.” In fact, he worked so hard that he says he developed stomach problems and lost sight in part of his right eye as a result of stress. “I see a blotch,” he says.

  Meanwhile, Heaton’s addiction reared its head again in the form of alcoholism. At a store one day, he came across a liquor called Christian Brothers Brandy. “I thought, that’s perfect for me,” he says. “And that became my drug of choice for years until I crashed and burned.”

  HEATON ENTERED REHAB in Huntsville in 1998, a decade after leaving CBN. He left in the spring of 1988 after being removed as executive producer and declining an offer to take another job at the network. He spent the next ten years working as a news director for various TV stations in Tennessee, Hawaii, North Carolina, and eventually Alabama. He credits rehab with saving his life, and pulls his 19-year medallion from the pocket of his jeans to show me during our interview. Joining Alcoholics Anonymous also fundamentally altered his relationship with God, which he now views as life itself.

  Heaton believes his born-again experience was merely trading one addiction for another. In a way, he became addicted to God. “If you’re chasing Christianity as an addict, you’re going to do well, because the church kind of encourages that. But you will, sooner or later, hit a wall. And then you’re dealing with something that’s even harder to break, which is the rejection of God.”

  He stopped attending church, in part because he no longer valued the hierarchical structure of Christianity he had come to know. If he were to invent his own church, it would look something like AA: “Nobody’s in charge, there are elections for trusted servants every year, and they’re always different, and everybody sits in a circle and you talk about how to live life better on life’s terms.” AA is the type of place where Jesus would be, he believes.

  “In recovery, you learn to live life on life’s terms,” he says. “I’m very happy to call that God.” He adds, “Consequently I see myself as more of a spiritual being on a human journey, and my task in this life is to be more human, to be a better human.”

  For spiritual comfort, he still has bluegrass and gospel music. On Sunday mornings, when his family attends church, Heaton listens to a radio program based out of Knoxville where he knows the D.J.s. “That music really ministers to me, and that’s my weekly refreshment,” he says.

  Now that he’s retired, Heaton’s days are typically spent writing in the morning, followed by a mid-afternoon nap, and then catching up with friends, much of which he does via social media. Beyond his family, he’s not particularly rooted in Huntsville. “My tribe is online and my tribe means more to me than my community,” he says. Since his recovery, he estimates he’s written seven books, all but one of them self-published, and thousands of blog entries.

  The Gospel of Self is both a personal narrative of Heaton’s time at CBN and his attempt at explaining how he believes evangelical Christianity went off the rails. Heaton chronicles his role as producer through the heady mid ’80’s, mapping his disillusionment with Robertson’s Christianity alongside the growth in the program’s political aims. The ministry retroactively lost its tax-exempt status in 1986 and 1987 after an IRS audit found it had engaged in political campaigning in the 1988 election. Heaton devotes an entire chapter to the IRS investigation of CBN, including a significant portion of his own deposition from 1988. Another chapter examines the parallels between CBN and Fox. He concludes with a wish for a new, decentralized, and post-modern Christianity that doesn’t idolize the self.

  His daughter and son-in-law haven’t read The Gospel of Self, or anything else he’s written for that matter, but he doesn’t mind. “I really do want to have a life and they help me with that,” he tells me. Do they talk politics? Not really. Last summer, he says they put out a Trump sign on the front lawn to offset his Clinton sign (the only one in the neighborhood), but it was more playful than anything else.

  When I press him on what it means, practically speaking, that he wrote the book to make amends for his past actions, Heaton slows down. “So, this is going to sound weird, and you cannot misinterpret this, OK—but it’s for me.” He says, “Making amends isn’t about fixing broken relationships, and it’s not even about saying I’m sorry. It’s about clearing away wreckage.”

  But he acknowledges that yes, he wrote a public book, so there’s more to it. He does want Christians, specifically those who voted for Donald Trump, to read his work. His message: “I want you to know that from where I sit, you were deceived.” By laying bare the extent of his participation, he hopes to gain credibility and, at the very least, “be part of the discussion” about where evangelical Christianity is headed.

  After the book came out in March 2017, Heaton was surprised to hear from many past acquaintances who agreed with what he had to say. “I think there are a whole lot more people like myself than you may realize,” he says.

  I ask him directly if he regrets working on the show. “Oh no, I can’t go there,” he says. He’s clear-eyed about the work he did, but I sense a hint of nostalgia in his voice too.

  “I thought that changing people’s hearts was a good idea, and I still do,” he says. “But the idea that we would actually accomplish the political ideals and political views that we had, that we would actually influence the culture, seriously, to that end, didn’t really occur to me.”

  Stephanie Russell-Kraft is a Brooklyn-based freelance reporter covering the intersections of religion, culture, law and gender. She has written for The New Republic, The Atlantic, The Nation, and Religion Dispatches, among others, and is a regular contributing reporter for Bloomberg Law.

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