Benny Hinn

From Vero - Wikipedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Template:Short description Template:Pp-blp Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox religious biography

Toufik Benedictus "Benny" Hinn (born 3 December 1952) is an Israeli-born American-Canadian televangelist, best known for his regular "Miracle Crusades"—revival meeting or faith healing summits that are usually held in stadiums in major cities, which are later broadcast worldwide on his television program, This Is Your Day.<ref name=tsunami>Template:Cite news</ref>

Biography

Hinn was born in Jaffa, in 1952, in the then-newly established state of Israel<ref name="FifthEstate" /> to parents born in Palestine who had Greek, Palestinian, and Armenian heritage.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He was raised within the Eastern Orthodox tradition and baptized by the patriarch of Jerusalem.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Soon after the 1967 Arab–Israeli War ("The Six-Day War"), Hinn's family emigrated to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1968 where he attended Georges Vanier Secondary School.<ref name="Randall Herbert Balmer 2004, p. 336">Template:Cite book</ref> He did not graduate. In his books, Hinn states falsely that his father was the mayor of Jaffa at the time of his birth and that he was socially isolated as a child and had a stutter, and he was a first-class student.<ref name="GoodMorningHolySpirit2">Template:Cite book</ref>

In 1972, he claimed to become a born-again Christian.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Hinn has written that on 21 December 1973, he traveled by charter bus from Toronto to Pittsburgh to attend a "miracle service" conducted by evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman.<ref name="Randall Herbert Balmer 2004, p. 336"/> Although he never met her personally, he often attended her "healing services" and has often cited her as an influence in his life.<ref name="GoodMorningHolySpirit2" /> In 1974, he was invited to speak about his spiritual experience at Trinity Pentecostal Church in Oshawa and claimed to have been cured of his stuttering.<ref name="Randall Herbert Balmer 2004, p. 336"/>

Ministry

On moving to the United States, Hinn traveled to Orlando, Florida, where he founded the Orlando Christian Center in 1983.<ref name=kurian>Template:Cite book</ref> Eventually, he began claiming that God was using him as a conduit for healings, and began holding healing services in his church. These new "Miracle Crusades" were soon held at large stadiums and auditoriums across the United States and the world, the first nationally televised service being held in Flint, Michigan, in 1989. In 1990, he also launched a new daily talk show called This Is Your Day, which to this day airs clips of supposed miracles from Hinn's Miracle Crusades.<ref name=kurian/> The program premiered on the Trinity Broadcasting Network of Paul Crouch, who would become one of Hinn's most outspoken defenders and allies. Hinn's ministry began to rapidly grow from there, winning praise as well as criticism from fellow Christian leaders. In 1999, he stepped down as pastor of the Orlando Christian Center, moving his ministry's administrative headquarters to Grapevine, Texas, a suburb of Fort Worth, while hosting This Is Your Day from a television studio in Orange County, California, where he now lives with his family. His former church was renamed Faith World Church under the leadership of Clint Brown, who merged his Orlando church with Hinn's.

Benny Hinn is the author of a number of Christian books. As of 2013, his television series This Is Your Day was among the world's most-watched Christian programs, airing on various Christian television networks, including the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), Daystar Television Network, Grace TV, and The God Channel.<ref name="VCU">Template:Cite web</ref> However, TBN dropped Hinn's program in 2016, and Daystar stopped airing it in 2017.<ref name=hinntv>Template:Cite news</ref> As of April 2025, Hinn's website lists Kenneth Copeland's Victory Channel as the only network broadcasting This Is Your Day, with a single weekly airing.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Benny Hinn ministering at Jesus Image Church in Orlando, Florida (2025).

Hinn conducts regular "Miracle Crusades"—revival meeting / faith healing events held in sports stadiums in major cities throughout the world.<ref name="VCU"/> Hinn claims to have spoken to one billion people through his crusades, including memorable crusades with attendance of 7.3 million people (in three services) in India, the largest healing service in recorded history.<ref name="Benny Hinn Ministries">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Rediff">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Streaming Faith">Template:Cite web</ref> In February 2024, Hinn held a Healing the Nation Crusade at Nyayo National Stadium in Nairobi, Kenya, attended by an estimated 500,000 people, including Kenyan President William Ruto and First Lady Rachel Ruto.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Evander Holyfield, who was diagnosed with a non-compliant left ventricle, has credited his healing to Benny Hinn, stating that through God working through Hinn, he was healed as he had "a warm feeling" go through his chest as Hinn touched him.<ref name="Jet">Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref name="Holyfield">Template:Cite book</ref>

Hinn has maintained a recurring presence at Jesus Image, a charismatic ministry based in Orlando, Florida, founded by his son-in-law Michael Koulianos. Hinn has preached at numerous events and Sunday services hosted by the ministry, including an evening service that was live streamed on June 22, 2025.<ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref> He is also listed as a teaching author on the Jesus Image website, underscoring both his ongoing prominence and the theological alignment between the two ministries.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Theology and practices

Hinn’s theology places strong emphasis on the anointing, which he claims is a divine empowerment capable of tangibly affecting bodies and being ministered through touch, gestures, or breath. Contemporary reporting has documented how this is expressed at his services: he has been observed blowing on attendees, rubbing or flicking his suit jacket toward the crowd, and making sweeping arm gestures, after which people fall or stagger, phenomena he attributes to the Holy Spirit’s power.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Hinn cites healing evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman as a formative influence, linking his understanding of the Holy Spirit’s power and ministry style to her meetings and writings.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Benny Hinn preaching at Jesus Image Church in 2025. Several attendees are seen lying on the floor after falling during a practice commonly described as being “slain in the Spirit.”

Slain in the Spirit

A recurring feature of Hinn’s events is the phenomenon commonly called slaying in the Spirit, in which participants fall backward, often into the arms of attendants (“catchers”), after prayer or physical contact on stage.<ref name="FifthEstate" /> A 1987 report described a civil suit after an attendee was allegedly knocked into a bystander during a service where Hinn “was striking people on the forehead, claiming they were ‘slain of the spirit.’"<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Scholars of religion and culture have analyzed such charismatic manifestations in broader Pentecostal/charismatic contexts, variously interpreting them through lenses of embodiment, suggestion, ritual, and trance rather than exclusively supernatural causation.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Investigative writer Joe Nickell reported from a Hinn crusade that the responses resembled hypnotic suggestion and role-expectation, a view he contrasted with participants’ supernatural interpretations.<ref name=":0" />

Faith healing

Hinn frequently frames disease-curing miracles as central to his ministry. He names specific conditions—such as cancer, blindness, spinal ailments, and emotional afflictions—as being healed through prayer, touch, or decree at his crusades. In his Buffalo, New York crusade, for example, he named ailments by back, leg, cancer, and claimed they were being healed in the moment.<ref name=":0" />  Critics argue that such claims lack independent medical verification and rely heavily on performative, psychosocial, or suggestive elements rather than measurable physiological change. Joe Nickell, attending a Hinn event, reported that the pattern of responses aligned with expectation and suggestion: people “behave just as if ‘hypnotized’” rather than undergoing demonstrable healing.<ref name=":0" />

Missions

Benny Hinn Ministries claims to support 60 mission organizations across the world and several orphanages around the world, and claims to house and feed over 100,000 children a year and support 45,000 children daily because of his donors.<ref>Template:YouTube.</ref><ref>Template:YouTube.</ref>

Benny Hinn Ministries donated $100,000 for relief supplies for Hurricane Katrina victims in 2005, and $250,000 to the tsunami relief effort in 2007.<ref name=tsunami/>

Criticism and controversy

In March 1993 Inside Edition reported on Hinn's $685,000 Orlando home and Mercedes-Benz, despite him having previously claimed a "modest lifestyle". An employee of Inside Edition also faked a healing from cerebral palsy which was shown on Hinn's regular broadcast.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

A controversial aspect of Hinn's ministry is his teaching on, and demonstration of, a phenomenon he dubs "The Anointing"—the power purportedly given by God and transmitted through Hinn to carry out supernatural acts. At his Miracle Crusades, he has allegedly healed attendees of blindness, deafness, cancer, AIDS,<ref name="ApologeticIndex">Template:Cite web</ref> and severe physical injuries. However, investigative reports by the Los Angeles Times, NBC's Dateline, CBC's The Fifth Estate, and the Nine Network's 60 Minutes have called these claims into question.<ref name="Heretic">Template:Cite magazine</ref>

Hinn has also caused controversy for theological remarks and claims he has made during TV appearances. In 1999, he appeared on the Trinity Broadcasting Network claiming that God had given him a vision predicting the resurrection of thousands of dead people after watching the network—laying out a scenario of people placing their dead loved ones' hands on TV screens tuned into the station—and suggesting that TBN would be "an extension of Heaven to Earth".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In July 2024, the Trinity Foundation expressed skepticism about Hinn's actual net worth, which various websites have alleged to be $60 million, noting the large drop in ratings for his TV viewership.<ref name=hinntv />

A Question of Miracles

In April 2001, HBO aired a documentary entitled A Question of Miracles that focused on Hinn and a well-documented fellow Word-of-Faith German minister based in Africa, Reinhard Bonnke.<ref>Template:IMDb title</ref> Both Hinn and Bonnke offered full access to their events to the documentary crew, and the documentary team followed seven cases of reputed miracle healings from Hinn's crusade over the next year. The film's director, Antony Thomas, told CNN's Kyra Phillips that they did not find any cases where people were actually healed by Hinn.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Thomas said in a New York Times interview that "If I had seen miracles [from Hinn's ministry], I would have been happy to trumpet it ... but in retrospect, I think they do more damage to Christianity than the most committed atheist."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

"Do You Believe in Miracles"

In November 2004, the CBC Television show The Fifth Estate did a special titled "Do You Believe in Miracles" on the apparent transgressions committed by Hinn's ministry.<ref name="FifthEstate">Template:Cite news</ref>

With the aid of hidden cameras and crusade witnesses, the producers of the show demonstrated Hinn's apparent misappropriation of funds, his fabrication of the truth, and the way in which his staff chose crusade audience members to come on stage to proclaim their miracle healings.<ref name="FifthEstate"/> In particular, the investigation highlighted the fact that the most desperate miracle seekers who attend a Hinn crusade—the quadriplegics, the brain-damaged, virtually anyone with a visibly obvious physical condition—are never allowed on stage; those who attempt to be in the line of possible healings are intercepted and directed to return to their seats.

At one Canadian service, hidden cameras showed a mother who was carrying her muscular dystrophy-afflicted daughter, Grace, being stopped by two screeners when they attempted to get into the line for a possible blessing from Hinn. The screeners asked the mother if Grace had been healed, and when the mother replied in the negative, they were told to return to their seats; the pair got out of line, but Grace, wanting "Pastor Benny to pray for [her]", asked her mother to support her as she tried to walk as a show of "her faith in action", according to the mother. After several unsuccessful attempts at walking, the pair left the arena in tears, both mother and daughter visibly upset at being turned aside and crying as they explained to the undercover reporters that all Grace had wanted was for Hinn to pray for her, but the staffers rushed them out of the line when they found out Grace had not been healed.<ref name="FifthEstate" /> A week later at a service in Toronto, Baptist evangelist Justin Peters who wrote his Masters in Divinity thesis on Hinn<ref name="JustinPetersThesis">Template:Cite news</ref> and has attended numerous Hinn crusades since 2000 as part of his research for his thesis and for a seminar he developed about the Word of Faith movement entitled A Call for Discernment,<ref name="ACallForDiscernment">Template:Cite web</ref> also demonstrated to the hidden cameras that "people who look like me"—Peters has cerebral palsy, walks with arm-crutches, and is obviously and visibly disabled—"are never allowed on stage ... it's always somebody who has some disability or disease that cannot be readily seen." Like Grace and her mother, Peters was quickly intercepted as he came out of the wheelchair section (there is one at every crusade, situated at the back of the audience far away from the stage and never filmed for Hinn's TV show) in an attempt to join the line of those waiting to go onstage, and was told to take a seat.<ref name="FifthEstate" />

Ministry Watch issues "Donor Alert"

In March 2005, Ministry Watch issued a Donor Alert against the ministry citing a lack of financial transparency among other possible problems.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Benny Hinn Ministries is not a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Senate investigation

Critics accuse Hinn of using the ministry's Gulfstream G4SP jet for personal vacations funded by tax-free donations.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:YouTube</ref>

Template:Main In 2007, United States Senator Chuck Grassley announced an investigation of Hinn's ministry by the United States Senate Committee on Finance. In a letter to BHM,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Grassley asked for the ministry to divulge financial information<ref name=Lohr>Template:Cite news</ref> to the Senate Committee on Finance to determine if Hinn made any personal profit from financial donations, and requested that Hinn's ministry make the information available. The investigation also scrutinized five other televangelists: Paula White, Kenneth Copeland, Eddie L. Long, Joyce Meyer, and Creflo Dollar.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=Lohr/> In December 2007, Hinn said he would not respond to the inquiry until 2008.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The ministry subsequently responded to the inquiry, and Grassley said that "... Benny Hinn [has] engaged in open and honest dialogue with committee staff. They have not only provided responses to every question but, in the spirit of true cooperation, also have provided information over and above what was requested."<ref> Template:Cite press release</ref>

The investigation concluded in 2011 with no penalties or findings of wrongdoing. The final report raised questions about personal use of church-owned luxury goods and a lack of financial oversight on the ministries' boards, which are often populated with family and friends of the televangelist. Hinn's group reported to the committee that it complied with tax regulations and had made changes in compensation and governance procedures.<ref name="msnbc1">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name='2011-01-07 CBN'>Template:Cite news</ref>

Prosperity theology

In 2017, pastor Costi Hinn, a nephew of Hinn, came forward with a testimony of his time spent in Hinn's ministry and what made him leave.<ref name="christianity-today-costi">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref> In the testimony, Costi Hinn described the expensive cars and lavish houses that he and his family members owned, and the luxury that surrounded their travel. Costi Hinn criticized the prosperity gospel and teachings of his uncle, writing among other things that healings only seemed to work in the crusades, where music created an atmosphere, and that many of their prophecies contradicted the Bible.<ref name="christianity-today-costi" /> He has since written a book on the topic titled God, Greed, and the (Prosperity) Gospel.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In the book, Costi Hinn calls the prosperity gospel "damning and abusive", exploitative of the poor and vulnerable, and "arguably the most hateful and abusive kind of false teaching plaguing the church today".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In September 2019, he said that Benny Hinn no longer believed in prosperity theology and decided to stop teaching it.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Personal life

Hinn married Suzanne Harthern on 4 August 1979.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The couple have four children.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> She filed divorce papers in California's Orange County Superior Court on 1 February 2010, citing "irreconcilable differences".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In July 2010, Hinn and fellow televangelist Paula White were photographed leaving a hotel in Rome holding hands.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Both Hinn and White denied allegations in the National Enquirer that the two were engaged in an affair.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Hinn was sued in February 2011 by the Christian publishing house Strang Communications, which claimed that a relationship with White did occur and that Hinn had violated the morality clause of his contract with the company.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In May 2012, Hinn announced that he and Suzanne had begun reconciliation during the Christmas season of 2011,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> stating that the split had been caused by her addiction to prescription drugs and antidepressants and citing his busy schedule and lack of time for his wife and children.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Benny and Suzanne remarried on 3 March 2013, at the Holy Land Experience theme park, in a traditional ceremony lasting over two hours and attended by approximately 1,000 well-wishers, including many visiting Christian leaders. Jack Hayford referred to the remarriage as "a miracle of God's grace".<ref name="OS wedding">Template:Cite news</ref> However, in July 2024, Suzanne would once again file for divorce, this time in the Hillsborough County Court in Tampa, Florida.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=hinntv />

Published works

See also

References

Template:Reflist

Template:Commons category Template:Wikiquote

Template:Authority control

Retrieved from "https://wiki.sarg.dev/index.php?title=Benny_Hinn&oldid=111814"