(Picture: Todd Bentley. Picture Supply: Baptist Press)
From the beginning of his ministry, Todd Bentley set himself aside from different evangelists throughout the Charismatic Christian world. The Canadian preacher swapped button-up shirts and slacks for t-shirts and cargo shorts, was tattooed from head to toe, had a protracted pink beard, and screamed a signature battle cry as he laid his arms on these searching for therapeutic: “BAM!”
Bentley’s Charismatic Christianity is much less a Protestant denomination than a wide-ranging, free-flowing, quickly rising motion. In 2006, Pew Analysis Heart discovered that Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians numbered roughly 23% of American Christians. By 2023, the Public Faith Analysis Institute was capable of determine that over half of American Christians who describe themselves as evangelicals are collaborating in Charismatic practices. “Impartial Charismatics are the rowdy, unregulated cousins of the Pentecostals, these Holy Spirit-filled, revivalist denominations of contemporary Christianity,” Matthew Taylor, senior scholar on the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Research in Baltimore, wrote for The Revealer. “In lieu of institutional superstructure, the entrepreneurial Impartial Charismatic management tradition that has emerged up to now few many years is collaborative and intricately networked. Impartial Charismatic leaders go by many titles—pastor, apostle, evangelist, prophet, televangelist, Messianic rabbi, worship chief, revivalist—however all of them work collectively,” he explains. Todd Bentley wasn’t required to attend seminary or obtain ordination with a view to lead a ministry as a Charismatic Christian. As a substitute, the notion that God had referred to as and chosen him as an evangelist was ample.
Within the spring of 2008, a midsize Charismatic church in Lakeland, Florida invited Bentley and his group, Recent Fireplace Ministries Canada, to carry a week-long revival service. The revival began on April 2, 2008, however stretched far previous its preliminary week to develop into what was generally known as the Florida Outpouring. Bentley live-streamed the providers, which obtained over 1 million views of their first 5 weeks. Christian satellite tv for pc channel GOD TV picked up the revival, canceling its primetime programming to broadcast providers each night time. The revival moved to Lakeland’s conference middle after which ultimately to a tent on the grounds of the native airport, the place 10,000 individuals got here every day to obtain what Bentley was providing: an encounter with God, baptism within the Holy Spirit, sightings of angels, and miracles. By the tip of Might, 140,000 individuals from over 40 international locations had come to Lakeland; by June 30, that quantity exceeded 400,000 from 100 nations.
A typical chorus from commentators and televangelists on GOD TV was that the one option to actually perceive what was occurring in Lakeland was to see it for your self. In order that summer time, after I was 14, my household flew to Lakeland to spend every week at Todd Bentley’s toes.
That summer time, I had no concept that I used to be about to expertise my first actual disillusionment with the religion during which I used to be raised as I watched Bentley meteorically rise in fame after which fall into scandal. His rehabilitation and the forgiveness provided by pastors and congregants alike throughout the Charismatic world illuminates how a lot energy a pacesetter’s declare to be chosen by God holds. On this world, the anointing of God covers a large number of sins no matter whether or not the sinner ever demonstrates precise repentance. What issues greater than repentance is a compelling story.
***
Each day for every week, my household spent hours within the Lakeland Heart’s bleachers. I snapped footage with our digital digital camera to attempt to seize photos of strange flares, vibrant circles with spectral patterns. Many others introduced cameras with them too in hopes of capturing this particular phenomenon. Todd Bentley advised us these unusual lights have been angels and I had no cause to query him (the fact, that these apparitions have been doubtless simply lens flares, didn’t appear to happen to anybody). However to my younger teenage self, if Lakeland contained miracles, why ought to it not additionally comprise angels seen solely by means of my Canon Powershot?
Pilgrims who flocked to Lakeland have been typically in quest of miracles, or at the least they hoped to witness them firsthand. Bentley claimed that angels visited him nightly, giving him direct messages from God which he would relay at his providers. He advised the crowds that God was therapeutic the whole lot from most cancers to arthritis to fibromyalgia to AIDS and inspired beneficiant donations when providing plates have been handed round. “Folks get stingy once they give, however they need a beneficiant blessing,” Bentley advised his followers. “So you concentrate on that as I sow. You concentrate on what God needs you to plant as a revival seed.”
(Crowds on the Florida Outpouring. Picture Supply: Roy Fields on Fb)
Bentley’s religion therapeutic methods have been unconventional, generally violent. He would declare that somebody within the crowd had an ailment—a tumor, a illness, an unspecified damage. He would start to hope loudly as he referred to as ahead anybody who match the outline he gave. Then, he got down to heal them. The therapeutic act was a bodily one. In a single clip of a service, Bentley knees an individual searching for therapeutic for terminal abdomen most cancers within the stomach, claiming that God advised him to assault the most cancers. In one other service, Bentley admits to kicking an aged lady within the face, choking a person, banging on a disabled lady’s legs, and knocking a person’s tooth out: “Folks simply can’t perceive why God would inform me one thing like, ‘Kick that lady within the face,’ [but] tons of have been healed.”
Others who got here to Lakeland needed to obtain a second baptism and be “slain within the Spirit.” This can be a sort of Charismatic colloquialism, a free interpretation of Isaiah 66:16: “‘It can come to cross within the final days,’ says the Lord, ‘that I’ll plead with all flesh, with the sword and hearth, and the slain of the Lord might be many.’” As John the Baptist tells his followers within the Gospel of Matthew, “After me comes one who’s extra highly effective than I… He’ll baptize you with the Holy Spirit and hearth.” Baptism by the Holy Spirit is evidenced by slaying: falling to the ground as if in a trance and talking in tongues, just like the disciples of Christ on the day of Pentecost.
At Lakeland, the sincerity of 1’s slaying and the fact of their second baptism was measured bodily—how swiftly an individual dropped to the bottom, how loudly and passionately they spoke in tongues. All week lengthy, in a faintly air-conditioned area, I watched slayings unfold. Because the worship group performed the identical songs time and again on the principle stage, Bentley prayed, screamed, and prophesied. Close to the stage, queues fashioned resulting in “intercessors,” who would administer the baptism of the Holy Spirit. An intercessor would place their arms on the pinnacle and shoulders of the subsequent particular person in line, praying for them to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. As if by clockwork, the particular person would start to point out tangible indicators of their baptism: moaning and eyes closed, they might fall backwards and begin to communicate in tongues. Volunteers stood behind every particular person to decrease them gently to the ground, catching them as they have been slain.
***
The downfall of each the Florida Outpouring and Todd Bentley got here in a fast one-two punch. On August 12, 2008, Bentley abruptly introduced by way of written assertion that he and his spouse, Shonnah Bentley, have been separating. Three days later, the board of Bentley’s Recent Fireplace Ministries launched a assertion saying that they’d realized Bentley was concerned in an “unhealthy relationship on an emotional stage with a feminine member of his workers”—a former Recent Fireplace intern and the Bentley household’s live-in nanny. Bentley disappeared from the Outpouring’s providers, and the revival fizzled out by October.
Questions began to return with drive not solely about Bentley’s private life, but in addition about his miracles. Recent Fireplace Ministries claimed that tons of of individuals had been healed and {that a} mind-boggling twenty-five individuals had been raised from the lifeless on the Florida Outpouring. A conservative Christian information journal, WORLD, tried verification: “Bentley claims tons of of individuals have been healed of the whole lot from deafness to infertility,” they reported. “WORLD made repeated requests for documentation of healings, however claims of ‘privateness points’ have been the one response.”
In 2009, WORLD launched a follow-up report saying that after making over a dozen requests for a listing of people that had been healed on the providers, Recent Fireplace Ministries gave them 13 names. One particular person, whom Bentley claimed to have healed of most cancers, was again in therapy. One other, whom Bentley claimed to have healed of migraines, stated she nonetheless suffered from the ailment. Some names on the listing couldn’t be reached. Not one therapeutic had occurred precisely the best way Bentley stated it had. And two individuals on the listing had died from the diseases they’d supposedly been healed from at Lakeland.
I bear in mind studying WORLD’s reporting on the time it was launched, making an attempt to make sense of what I assumed I had witnessed because it clashed sharply towards the obvious info. Some individuals simply didn’t perceive the workings of the Holy Spirit, my household advised me. However I used to be now not as positive as I had been in regards to the angels I assumed I had seen by means of my digital camera lens. How may an individual who claimed to imagine the identical issues I believed lie? And if different Christians nonetheless trusted in Bentley, why couldn’t I?
***
Public scandals will not be all the time sufficient to maintain humiliated preachers away from the pulpit. Todd Bentley’s redemption arc was crafted by Rick Joyner, the founding father of MorningStar Ministries and a serious participant within the Charismatic world whom Bentley thought-about his “religious father.” Below Joyner’s steerage, a committee was instituted to revive Bentley to a management place. For the Charismatic leaders, whereas questioning Bentley’s private failings was truthful recreation, casting doubt on the validity of the Florida Outpouring was akin to doubting God’s energy. Invoice Johnson, senior pastor of the Charismatic megachurch Bethel, advised Charisma that “individuals have to return to grips with the truth that it was by no means about Todd, it’s actually about God.” GOD TV co-founders Rory and Wendy Alec went a step additional: “[Todd] was constantly and unrelentingly criticized, maligned, and persecuted. The assaults [have grown] more and more violent, and the heartbreaking factor was that a lot of it got here from the church.”
Bentley moved to Fort Mill, South Carolina, to endure his “restoration” below Joyner’s watchful eye. By that point, in 2008, he had divorced his first spouse and married his former intern and nanny. “[Todd] is deeply sorry for the issues that his issues have brought on others. He’s nicely conscious that he made some errors and silly decisions,” Joyner wrote in an open letter to these following Bentley’s journey. “I’m very assured that Todd won’t solely be again in ministry, however will finally have a a lot larger influence and be strolling in much more energy than he has but walked in.” For the subsequent a number of months, Joyner and Bentley put out common video updates sharing their conversations along with their mixed ministries’ audiences.
In just below a yr’s time, Bentley had returned to the pulpit, launched his personal newly rebranded ministry, and was again to internet hosting revival rallies throughout America.
***
Bentley’s restoration lasted for practically a decade. Throughout that point, Bentley toured the world, internet hosting revival providers broadcast by GOD TV. He continued to make daring claims of God’s therapeutic energy. For example, in 2015, Bentley claimed that 500,000 Muslims attended certainly one of his crusades in Karachi, Pakistan. Of these, he stated 290,000 turned to Christ, and three individuals had been raised from the lifeless. “You’ll go, how are you aware he was lifeless?” Bentley stated of the miracles he claimed. “Did the docs come? Did you name 911? I stated, ‘We’re in Pakistan. It doesn’t work like America.’” Medical verification of those resurrections was by no means offered by Bentley or his group.
A scarcity of proof didn’t dissuade those that adopted Bentley, attended his conferences, donated to his group, and lived off his “prophecy.” His redemption was sealed—till abruptly it wasn’t.
***
Stephen Powell was Todd Bentley’s protege. He traveled and served with Bentley’s ministry and attended common providers at Rick Joyner’s megachurch. “I’ll all the time be grateful to Rick & Todd for his or her constructive affect in my life, regardless of a few of the unhealthy issues which have occurred and regrettable issues I’ve develop into conscious of extra just lately,” Powell wrote in a Fb submit on August 22, 2019. “However I’ve come to the conclusion by means of a lot fasting, prayer, and tons of of hours of counseling with smart counselors during the last a number of months, that I need to do what I’m about to do subsequent.”
In his submit, which unfold like wildfire all through the Charismatic world, Powell leveled severe allegations at Todd Bentley and by extension Rick Joyner. “Todd has a perverse sexual habit,” Powell wrote, partly blaming this on a “demonic entity” that “makes use of Todd to prey on others.” He accused Todd of sexually harassing quite a few ladies and men, “a lot of them interns and/or college students below his management care.” Powell claimed to have seen concrete proof and heard eyewitness testimony of Bentley soliciting feminine college students for nude photographs, providing to pay interns for sexual encounters, sending specific photographs of himself and his spouse to college students and interns, and interesting in sexual contact with a younger feminine assistant, all with out repercussions. Powell went on to relay the story of a male intern who Bentley solicited in 2013 and who reported that data to Rick Joyner. “Todd was nonetheless allowed to go on in ministry as if the whole lot was okay,” Powell stated. “I imagine Todd has confirmed over greater than twenty years of ministry, ethical failures, and abuse of others that he can’t be trusted with the care of God’s individuals.”
Powell approached Rick Joyner in June 2019 with a thirty-two web page report he ready on the data he had obtained concerning Bentley’s failings and misconduct. Joyner didn’t reply and shortly thereafter went on sabbatical. In his Fb submit, Powell claimed that Joyner lastly responded to him by way of electronic mail on August 19, 2019, denying the allegations Powell offered whereas concurrently claiming that if any of these occasions had certainly occurred, Bentley had already been chastised and corrected—no want for anybody to express regret.
***
One other committee consisting of pastors representing main Charismatic church buildings fashioned to analyze the allegations introduced towards Bentley. “Primarily based on our cautious evaluation of quite a few first-hand stories, a few of them relationship again to 2004, we state our theological opinion and may say with one voice that, indisputably, Todd will not be certified to serve in management or ministry right this moment,” the committee concluded. The committee’s chief advised Faith Information Service that whereas Bentley had initially agreed to cooperate with the investigation, the committee later obtained a stop and desist letter from his lawyer.
Bentley denounced the panel as a “witch trial,” evaluating the investigation to the hearings over Supreme Court docket Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s sexual assault accusation and the impeachment of President Trump. “I’m not right here to faux that I haven’t struggled,” Bentley continued. “I’m simply right here to say a lot of what’s being [said] on the market now could be previous, a few of it six, seven, ten, fifteen years. And I’m really right here to say, the place’s the facility of the cross for me now?”
***
After a brief step again, Bentley reemerged as soon as extra with a rebranded ministry. “The unwavering flame of God’s calling on Todd Bentley’s life and the essence of our ministry stays unchanged,” his web site states. He’s scheduled to evangelise at revival providers within the U.S. and Canada by means of 2025. Like every good influencer, he sells digital programs and gives one-on-one mentoring. In between prophetic missives shared on his numerous social media platforms, Bentley additionally hawks beard care merchandise.
Whereas his attain was initially extra constricted after the panel’s choice, it’s important to notice that as a result of Charismatic Christianity will not be a proper denomination, the panel had no actual authority to take away Bentley from ministry altogether—all they may do was advise others throughout the Charismatic world that they believed Bentley to be unfit for management.
But in December 2024, Bentley was invited to return to Rick Joyner’s MorningStar Ministries to talk at their Imaginative and prescient Convention and pray for anybody in attendance in quest of therapeutic. “We love this man, haven’t seen sufficient of him these days, he sort of disappeared,” Joyner stated to introduce Bentley, as if with the wave of a hand, any trace of unsavory habits could possibly be washed away. Joyner carries weight within the Charismatic world—simply as he was capable of provide redemption to Bentley after his first scandal, he stays capable of solicit forgiveness on Bentley’s behalf even when Bentley himself by no means asks for it. The slate is cleaned, proof of repentance pointless.
This can be a function, not a bug, of Charismatic Christianity. It’s exactly due to this motion’s emphasis on God’s calling on particular person believers —coupled with a purposeful lack of construction and measures to really maintain anybody accountable—that somebody like Bentley is ready to return time and again to the stage, drawing an viewers prepared to forgive.
Charismatic Christianity tells its members a narrative about themselves. They’re chosen by God, set aside from different believers by advantage of their baptism by the Holy Spirit. They’ve been chosen to obtain particular revelation about their lives and futures. They could be misunderstood by different Christians, however such misunderstanding is simply additional proof that God is talking to them in a voice solely they will hear. It’s hardly an accident that Charismatic Christians have been a few of the first and stay a few of the most vocal proponents of President Donald Trump, to whom forgiveness for any variety of sins has been prolonged any variety of instances. The tradition created by the Charismatic world permits it to proceed to flourish and draw crowds as long as these leaders proceed to evangelise the narrative that their followers wish to hear.
Deeply ingrained in Charismatic Christianity is the notion that God has chosen particular individuals for his functions. So long as somebody like Bentley continues to assert to train God’s energy and obtain divine revelation, he’s certified to steer. Bentley can carry out miracles, draw crowds, communicate prophecy, and impart revelation that he insists comes straight from above. This man is chosen by God, in any case. If God has forgiven him, why can’t the remainder of us fall in line?
“We’re spiritually hungry—which generally is a good factor,” J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma wrote straight after Todd Bentley’s departure from the Florida Outpouring. “However generally hungry individuals will eat something.”
Elena Trueba is a author primarily based in Southern California and holds a Grasp’s in Theological Research from Harvard Divinity Faculty. You will discover extra of her writings on faith and politics on her Substack, Unholy Alliances.
(Picture: Todd Bentley. Picture Supply: Baptist Press)
From the beginning of his ministry, Todd Bentley set himself aside from different evangelists throughout the Charismatic Christian world. The Canadian preacher swapped button-up shirts and slacks for t-shirts and cargo shorts, was tattooed from head to toe, had a protracted pink beard, and screamed a signature battle cry as he laid his arms on these searching for therapeutic: “BAM!”
Bentley’s Charismatic Christianity is much less a Protestant denomination than a wide-ranging, free-flowing, quickly rising motion. In 2006, Pew Analysis Heart discovered that Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians numbered roughly 23% of American Christians. By 2023, the Public Faith Analysis Institute was capable of determine that over half of American Christians who describe themselves as evangelicals are collaborating in Charismatic practices. “Impartial Charismatics are the rowdy, unregulated cousins of the Pentecostals, these Holy Spirit-filled, revivalist denominations of contemporary Christianity,” Matthew Taylor, senior scholar on the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Research in Baltimore, wrote for The Revealer. “In lieu of institutional superstructure, the entrepreneurial Impartial Charismatic management tradition that has emerged up to now few many years is collaborative and intricately networked. Impartial Charismatic leaders go by many titles—pastor, apostle, evangelist, prophet, televangelist, Messianic rabbi, worship chief, revivalist—however all of them work collectively,” he explains. Todd Bentley wasn’t required to attend seminary or obtain ordination with a view to lead a ministry as a Charismatic Christian. As a substitute, the notion that God had referred to as and chosen him as an evangelist was ample.
Within the spring of 2008, a midsize Charismatic church in Lakeland, Florida invited Bentley and his group, Recent Fireplace Ministries Canada, to carry a week-long revival service. The revival began on April 2, 2008, however stretched far previous its preliminary week to develop into what was generally known as the Florida Outpouring. Bentley live-streamed the providers, which obtained over 1 million views of their first 5 weeks. Christian satellite tv for pc channel GOD TV picked up the revival, canceling its primetime programming to broadcast providers each night time. The revival moved to Lakeland’s conference middle after which ultimately to a tent on the grounds of the native airport, the place 10,000 individuals got here every day to obtain what Bentley was providing: an encounter with God, baptism within the Holy Spirit, sightings of angels, and miracles. By the tip of Might, 140,000 individuals from over 40 international locations had come to Lakeland; by June 30, that quantity exceeded 400,000 from 100 nations.
A typical chorus from commentators and televangelists on GOD TV was that the one option to actually perceive what was occurring in Lakeland was to see it for your self. In order that summer time, after I was 14, my household flew to Lakeland to spend every week at Todd Bentley’s toes.
That summer time, I had no concept that I used to be about to expertise my first actual disillusionment with the religion during which I used to be raised as I watched Bentley meteorically rise in fame after which fall into scandal. His rehabilitation and the forgiveness provided by pastors and congregants alike throughout the Charismatic world illuminates how a lot energy a pacesetter’s declare to be chosen by God holds. On this world, the anointing of God covers a large number of sins no matter whether or not the sinner ever demonstrates precise repentance. What issues greater than repentance is a compelling story.
***
Each day for every week, my household spent hours within the Lakeland Heart’s bleachers. I snapped footage with our digital digital camera to attempt to seize photos of strange flares, vibrant circles with spectral patterns. Many others introduced cameras with them too in hopes of capturing this particular phenomenon. Todd Bentley advised us these unusual lights have been angels and I had no cause to query him (the fact, that these apparitions have been doubtless simply lens flares, didn’t appear to happen to anybody). However to my younger teenage self, if Lakeland contained miracles, why ought to it not additionally comprise angels seen solely by means of my Canon Powershot?
Pilgrims who flocked to Lakeland have been typically in quest of miracles, or at the least they hoped to witness them firsthand. Bentley claimed that angels visited him nightly, giving him direct messages from God which he would relay at his providers. He advised the crowds that God was therapeutic the whole lot from most cancers to arthritis to fibromyalgia to AIDS and inspired beneficiant donations when providing plates have been handed round. “Folks get stingy once they give, however they need a beneficiant blessing,” Bentley advised his followers. “So you concentrate on that as I sow. You concentrate on what God needs you to plant as a revival seed.”
(Crowds on the Florida Outpouring. Picture Supply: Roy Fields on Fb)
Bentley’s religion therapeutic methods have been unconventional, generally violent. He would declare that somebody within the crowd had an ailment—a tumor, a illness, an unspecified damage. He would start to hope loudly as he referred to as ahead anybody who match the outline he gave. Then, he got down to heal them. The therapeutic act was a bodily one. In a single clip of a service, Bentley knees an individual searching for therapeutic for terminal abdomen most cancers within the stomach, claiming that God advised him to assault the most cancers. In one other service, Bentley admits to kicking an aged lady within the face, choking a person, banging on a disabled lady’s legs, and knocking a person’s tooth out: “Folks simply can’t perceive why God would inform me one thing like, ‘Kick that lady within the face,’ [but] tons of have been healed.”
Others who got here to Lakeland needed to obtain a second baptism and be “slain within the Spirit.” This can be a sort of Charismatic colloquialism, a free interpretation of Isaiah 66:16: “‘It can come to cross within the final days,’ says the Lord, ‘that I’ll plead with all flesh, with the sword and hearth, and the slain of the Lord might be many.’” As John the Baptist tells his followers within the Gospel of Matthew, “After me comes one who’s extra highly effective than I… He’ll baptize you with the Holy Spirit and hearth.” Baptism by the Holy Spirit is evidenced by slaying: falling to the ground as if in a trance and talking in tongues, just like the disciples of Christ on the day of Pentecost.
At Lakeland, the sincerity of 1’s slaying and the fact of their second baptism was measured bodily—how swiftly an individual dropped to the bottom, how loudly and passionately they spoke in tongues. All week lengthy, in a faintly air-conditioned area, I watched slayings unfold. Because the worship group performed the identical songs time and again on the principle stage, Bentley prayed, screamed, and prophesied. Close to the stage, queues fashioned resulting in “intercessors,” who would administer the baptism of the Holy Spirit. An intercessor would place their arms on the pinnacle and shoulders of the subsequent particular person in line, praying for them to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. As if by clockwork, the particular person would start to point out tangible indicators of their baptism: moaning and eyes closed, they might fall backwards and begin to communicate in tongues. Volunteers stood behind every particular person to decrease them gently to the ground, catching them as they have been slain.
***
The downfall of each the Florida Outpouring and Todd Bentley got here in a fast one-two punch. On August 12, 2008, Bentley abruptly introduced by way of written assertion that he and his spouse, Shonnah Bentley, have been separating. Three days later, the board of Bentley’s Recent Fireplace Ministries launched a assertion saying that they’d realized Bentley was concerned in an “unhealthy relationship on an emotional stage with a feminine member of his workers”—a former Recent Fireplace intern and the Bentley household’s live-in nanny. Bentley disappeared from the Outpouring’s providers, and the revival fizzled out by October.
Questions began to return with drive not solely about Bentley’s private life, but in addition about his miracles. Recent Fireplace Ministries claimed that tons of of individuals had been healed and {that a} mind-boggling twenty-five individuals had been raised from the lifeless on the Florida Outpouring. A conservative Christian information journal, WORLD, tried verification: “Bentley claims tons of of individuals have been healed of the whole lot from deafness to infertility,” they reported. “WORLD made repeated requests for documentation of healings, however claims of ‘privateness points’ have been the one response.”
In 2009, WORLD launched a follow-up report saying that after making over a dozen requests for a listing of people that had been healed on the providers, Recent Fireplace Ministries gave them 13 names. One particular person, whom Bentley claimed to have healed of most cancers, was again in therapy. One other, whom Bentley claimed to have healed of migraines, stated she nonetheless suffered from the ailment. Some names on the listing couldn’t be reached. Not one therapeutic had occurred precisely the best way Bentley stated it had. And two individuals on the listing had died from the diseases they’d supposedly been healed from at Lakeland.
I bear in mind studying WORLD’s reporting on the time it was launched, making an attempt to make sense of what I assumed I had witnessed because it clashed sharply towards the obvious info. Some individuals simply didn’t perceive the workings of the Holy Spirit, my household advised me. However I used to be now not as positive as I had been in regards to the angels I assumed I had seen by means of my digital camera lens. How may an individual who claimed to imagine the identical issues I believed lie? And if different Christians nonetheless trusted in Bentley, why couldn’t I?
***
Public scandals will not be all the time sufficient to maintain humiliated preachers away from the pulpit. Todd Bentley’s redemption arc was crafted by Rick Joyner, the founding father of MorningStar Ministries and a serious participant within the Charismatic world whom Bentley thought-about his “religious father.” Below Joyner’s steerage, a committee was instituted to revive Bentley to a management place. For the Charismatic leaders, whereas questioning Bentley’s private failings was truthful recreation, casting doubt on the validity of the Florida Outpouring was akin to doubting God’s energy. Invoice Johnson, senior pastor of the Charismatic megachurch Bethel, advised Charisma that “individuals have to return to grips with the truth that it was by no means about Todd, it’s actually about God.” GOD TV co-founders Rory and Wendy Alec went a step additional: “[Todd] was constantly and unrelentingly criticized, maligned, and persecuted. The assaults [have grown] more and more violent, and the heartbreaking factor was that a lot of it got here from the church.”
Bentley moved to Fort Mill, South Carolina, to endure his “restoration” below Joyner’s watchful eye. By that point, in 2008, he had divorced his first spouse and married his former intern and nanny. “[Todd] is deeply sorry for the issues that his issues have brought on others. He’s nicely conscious that he made some errors and silly decisions,” Joyner wrote in an open letter to these following Bentley’s journey. “I’m very assured that Todd won’t solely be again in ministry, however will finally have a a lot larger influence and be strolling in much more energy than he has but walked in.” For the subsequent a number of months, Joyner and Bentley put out common video updates sharing their conversations along with their mixed ministries’ audiences.
In just below a yr’s time, Bentley had returned to the pulpit, launched his personal newly rebranded ministry, and was again to internet hosting revival rallies throughout America.
***
Bentley’s restoration lasted for practically a decade. Throughout that point, Bentley toured the world, internet hosting revival providers broadcast by GOD TV. He continued to make daring claims of God’s therapeutic energy. For example, in 2015, Bentley claimed that 500,000 Muslims attended certainly one of his crusades in Karachi, Pakistan. Of these, he stated 290,000 turned to Christ, and three individuals had been raised from the lifeless. “You’ll go, how are you aware he was lifeless?” Bentley stated of the miracles he claimed. “Did the docs come? Did you name 911? I stated, ‘We’re in Pakistan. It doesn’t work like America.’” Medical verification of those resurrections was by no means offered by Bentley or his group.
A scarcity of proof didn’t dissuade those that adopted Bentley, attended his conferences, donated to his group, and lived off his “prophecy.” His redemption was sealed—till abruptly it wasn’t.
***
Stephen Powell was Todd Bentley’s protege. He traveled and served with Bentley’s ministry and attended common providers at Rick Joyner’s megachurch. “I’ll all the time be grateful to Rick & Todd for his or her constructive affect in my life, regardless of a few of the unhealthy issues which have occurred and regrettable issues I’ve develop into conscious of extra just lately,” Powell wrote in a Fb submit on August 22, 2019. “However I’ve come to the conclusion by means of a lot fasting, prayer, and tons of of hours of counseling with smart counselors during the last a number of months, that I need to do what I’m about to do subsequent.”
In his submit, which unfold like wildfire all through the Charismatic world, Powell leveled severe allegations at Todd Bentley and by extension Rick Joyner. “Todd has a perverse sexual habit,” Powell wrote, partly blaming this on a “demonic entity” that “makes use of Todd to prey on others.” He accused Todd of sexually harassing quite a few ladies and men, “a lot of them interns and/or college students below his management care.” Powell claimed to have seen concrete proof and heard eyewitness testimony of Bentley soliciting feminine college students for nude photographs, providing to pay interns for sexual encounters, sending specific photographs of himself and his spouse to college students and interns, and interesting in sexual contact with a younger feminine assistant, all with out repercussions. Powell went on to relay the story of a male intern who Bentley solicited in 2013 and who reported that data to Rick Joyner. “Todd was nonetheless allowed to go on in ministry as if the whole lot was okay,” Powell stated. “I imagine Todd has confirmed over greater than twenty years of ministry, ethical failures, and abuse of others that he can’t be trusted with the care of God’s individuals.”
Powell approached Rick Joyner in June 2019 with a thirty-two web page report he ready on the data he had obtained concerning Bentley’s failings and misconduct. Joyner didn’t reply and shortly thereafter went on sabbatical. In his Fb submit, Powell claimed that Joyner lastly responded to him by way of electronic mail on August 19, 2019, denying the allegations Powell offered whereas concurrently claiming that if any of these occasions had certainly occurred, Bentley had already been chastised and corrected—no want for anybody to express regret.
***
One other committee consisting of pastors representing main Charismatic church buildings fashioned to analyze the allegations introduced towards Bentley. “Primarily based on our cautious evaluation of quite a few first-hand stories, a few of them relationship again to 2004, we state our theological opinion and may say with one voice that, indisputably, Todd will not be certified to serve in management or ministry right this moment,” the committee concluded. The committee’s chief advised Faith Information Service that whereas Bentley had initially agreed to cooperate with the investigation, the committee later obtained a stop and desist letter from his lawyer.
Bentley denounced the panel as a “witch trial,” evaluating the investigation to the hearings over Supreme Court docket Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s sexual assault accusation and the impeachment of President Trump. “I’m not right here to faux that I haven’t struggled,” Bentley continued. “I’m simply right here to say a lot of what’s being [said] on the market now could be previous, a few of it six, seven, ten, fifteen years. And I’m really right here to say, the place’s the facility of the cross for me now?”
***
After a brief step again, Bentley reemerged as soon as extra with a rebranded ministry. “The unwavering flame of God’s calling on Todd Bentley’s life and the essence of our ministry stays unchanged,” his web site states. He’s scheduled to evangelise at revival providers within the U.S. and Canada by means of 2025. Like every good influencer, he sells digital programs and gives one-on-one mentoring. In between prophetic missives shared on his numerous social media platforms, Bentley additionally hawks beard care merchandise.
Whereas his attain was initially extra constricted after the panel’s choice, it’s important to notice that as a result of Charismatic Christianity will not be a proper denomination, the panel had no actual authority to take away Bentley from ministry altogether—all they may do was advise others throughout the Charismatic world that they believed Bentley to be unfit for management.
But in December 2024, Bentley was invited to return to Rick Joyner’s MorningStar Ministries to talk at their Imaginative and prescient Convention and pray for anybody in attendance in quest of therapeutic. “We love this man, haven’t seen sufficient of him these days, he sort of disappeared,” Joyner stated to introduce Bentley, as if with the wave of a hand, any trace of unsavory habits could possibly be washed away. Joyner carries weight within the Charismatic world—simply as he was capable of provide redemption to Bentley after his first scandal, he stays capable of solicit forgiveness on Bentley’s behalf even when Bentley himself by no means asks for it. The slate is cleaned, proof of repentance pointless.
This can be a function, not a bug, of Charismatic Christianity. It’s exactly due to this motion’s emphasis on God’s calling on particular person believers —coupled with a purposeful lack of construction and measures to really maintain anybody accountable—that somebody like Bentley is ready to return time and again to the stage, drawing an viewers prepared to forgive.
Charismatic Christianity tells its members a narrative about themselves. They’re chosen by God, set aside from different believers by advantage of their baptism by the Holy Spirit. They’ve been chosen to obtain particular revelation about their lives and futures. They could be misunderstood by different Christians, however such misunderstanding is simply additional proof that God is talking to them in a voice solely they will hear. It’s hardly an accident that Charismatic Christians have been a few of the first and stay a few of the most vocal proponents of President Donald Trump, to whom forgiveness for any variety of sins has been prolonged any variety of instances. The tradition created by the Charismatic world permits it to proceed to flourish and draw crowds as long as these leaders proceed to evangelise the narrative that their followers wish to hear.
Deeply ingrained in Charismatic Christianity is the notion that God has chosen particular individuals for his functions. So long as somebody like Bentley continues to assert to train God’s energy and obtain divine revelation, he’s certified to steer. Bentley can carry out miracles, draw crowds, communicate prophecy, and impart revelation that he insists comes straight from above. This man is chosen by God, in any case. If God has forgiven him, why can’t the remainder of us fall in line?
“We’re spiritually hungry—which generally is a good factor,” J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma wrote straight after Todd Bentley’s departure from the Florida Outpouring. “However generally hungry individuals will eat something.”
Elena Trueba is a author primarily based in Southern California and holds a Grasp’s in Theological Research from Harvard Divinity Faculty. You will discover extra of her writings on faith and politics on her Substack, Unholy Alliances.
