I think Schuller taught "Prosperity Gospel" whereby one must live just so, and contribute lots in order to please God; this is not eternal security. His Church was a cult of personality, that failed when he could no longer control it. Interesting that the Catholic Church ended up picking up his pieces.
I don’t think Schuller taught the Prosperity Gospel. If he did, I never heard it, and I used to watch him when I was ill. Furthermore, he was also friends with Archbishop Fulton Sheen, the pious Roman Catholic televangelist, who I wish the Roman Catholics would beatify, and the two of them collaborated on multiple occasions.
Rather, my understanding is the reason why the Crystal Cathedral went bankrupt occurred towards the end of his life (indeed, I lived nearby at the time and was something of a witness to these events), and resulted from excessive expenditure on their annual Nativity production, which was a lavish production featuring flying angels and other special effects, beautiful hymns, dance routines, and live animals, including three magnificent camels, the largest and most impressive of which was a white dromedary of which was ridden on by Rev. Schuller himself if I recall (or else by a rather dapper Dutch-looking gentleman who looked a lot like Schuller), on which the Three Magi made their appearance, with the hymn “We three Kings…” This show was quite beautiful, but it had lost its novelty factor, and it cost a fortune to stage, for reasons that should be obvious, and it was due to that, and other excesses of expenditure, that the church went bankrupt. The situation was not helped by his retirement, although on the other hand, he was not replaced by someone who disagreed with many of his views and who was also grossly immoral, but by his own son, who is a decent enough man, who was well-liked.
And indeed while the congregation did have to sell the Crystal Cathedral to the RCC, who made it an actual Cathedral, which was rather good, since technically having a presbyterian polity, the RCA and its more conservative offshoots like the CRC do not have cathedrals per se, they were able to buy a decent church. And furthermore, their cemetary remains intact at the Crystal Cathedral site and is being maintained by the Roman Catholics. The whole sale actually was done in a manner very friendly to the Crystal Cathedral community and in a manner that reflected the historically good relations that Rev. Schuller had with the Roman Catholics.
Now that being said, it is quite possible he preached something along the lines of the Prosperity Gospel and I didn’t notice it, or alternately in his preaching encouraged donations to support his ministry in a manner that you and I would regard as rather too aggressive, but which is actually unfortunately fairly common in large swathes of Protestantism. For example, most Charismatic and Pentecostal churches, even those which do not embrace the Prosperity Gospel or the whole Word of Faith concept like Joel Osteen, are nonetheless rather too aggressive in encouraging people to donate. I recall some cringeworthy moments with Pat Robertson, who I liked and supported for his work in advocating for traditional conservative family values, but whose charismatic approach to the ministry I am obviously not a fan of.
But there is a clear distinction between clergy in Protestant and Restorationist churches who are too aggressive in soliciting donations (I think it is inappropriate to even mention financial contributions in the context of a sermon or homily, except in a limited way when the appointed scripture lesson in the lectionary directly relates to the importance of almsgiving, and in those cases, it should be stressed how there are forms of almsgiving which do not require giving money, but rather providing other forms of material assistance to the poor and the suffering). I also, for that matter, am among those who opposes passing collection plates during the main Eucharistic liturgy, and I am also opposed to placing such plates, which contain coins and currency, on the Holy Table of the Altar as a means of blessing them - I think this is grossly inappropriate as the Altar or Holy Table should be reserved for functions related to what Lutherans would call the ministry of Word and Sacrament (specifically, I like the Orthodox approach of keeping the Evangelion, or Gospel book, on the altar, along with the Gifts to be consecrated, and also a tabernacle for the reservation of the consecrated Eucharist to allow for the efficient communion of the sick and the celebration of the pre-sanctified liturgy, and certain other material, for example, in Western churches, it is traditional to have a Lutheran Altar Book or cards containing the words of parts of the service on the Holy Table, which is in some uses equipped with gradines, which also feature prominently in Syriac Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic altars (while the Copts and Ethiopians and Eastern Orthodox use a flat, square altar table, and the Anglicans use an altar table which is flat).
I also believe altars should contain the relics of martyrs as per the canons of the early church, but unfortunately most Protestant churches aren’t doing this, and implementation of such a measure would be a slow going because while there have been many Protestant martyrs, there has not been as much of an effort to collect their relics, and in some cases, for example, St. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the most famous Lutheran martyr of the 20th century, the Nazis destroyed any possible relics of his remains by cremating him, although possessions of a saint also constitute relics, and it would be very meet, for example, to incorporate a BIble he owned, or a fragment of it, into an altar of a Lutheran church, I think.
But even in the absence of that, I will say that a disproportionate number of the world’s most beautiful altars are the work of Evangelical Catholic Lutherans and High Church Anglo Catholics, even if some of them are now under the control of liberal churches of the Porvoo Communion such as the Church of Sweden, the Church of Norway, the Evangelical Church of Germany and the Church of England (although there are conservative factions within the C of E that retain substantial power, influence and autonomy, whereas the left wing domination of the continental Lutheran churches in Western Europe is nearly complete - it is only in Eastern Europe where one will find Lutheran churches that are members of the same group of confessional churches as the LCMS, as well as the less liberal members of the LWF such as the Lutheran Church of Finland, which is still extremely liberal, merely less liberal than its counterparts in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, etc). However, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Latvia, which was subjected to massive abuse following voting with a 77% majority to adhere to Confessional Lutheranism regarding ordinations, gives one room to hope, and it has also been growing since the end of communism. Likewise, the tiny Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lithuania is also very traditional (Lithuania has always been a majority Catholic country with a substantial Orthodox minority, divided between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Polish Orthodox Church).
Unfortunately the Estonian Lutheran Church is much more liberal, and is not a part of the International Lutheran Council like the LCMS and LCC. I don’t think the Estonian church ever escaped the destructive influence that happened with many churches behind the Iron Curtain, and for this reason, Estonia, histoircally a majority Lutheran country, is now majority Atheist, with one of the lowest rates of church attendance in Europe, and the Estonian Orthodox, who are themselves divided by a schism caused by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, outnumber the Lutherans two to one. So my first priority as far as Estonia is concerned is to see the Orthodox reunited around the more traditional elements (the group that associated itself with the EP is, along with the Church of Finland, one of only two Eastern Orthodox churches to use the Gregorian calendar, and lacks the excuse the Finns have, in that the adoption of the Gregorian calendar was really forced on them by the government of Finland which wanted the convenience of having all of the holidays synchronized, which is the sort of idea that sounds good on paper, until one realizes the logistical advantages of not doing it that way, for example, in Jerusalem, on those years when Pascha is the same on both the Julian and the Gregorian calendar, the already overcrowded situation on the Via de la Rosa, and at the Holy Sepulchre and other pilgrimage sites becomes twice as bad, since you now have Catholics and Protestants vying to use the space at the same time as the Orthodox. The Armenians make things much easier for Christmas, since they are the only ancient church to still celebrate Christmas and the Baptism of Christ as one feast, on January 6th, and in Jerusalem, all Orthodox churches use the Julian calendar, which results in the Armenians, who are as numerous as the Greeks, and more numerous than the Latins, celebrating the Nativity of our Lord on January 18th, which means that unlike with Pascha and Holy Week, there is much less of a problem with overcrowding for Christmas (also, the Syriac Orthodox and Coptic Orthodox have their own small chapels in the Holy Sepulchre, so for those Christians who are celebrating the Nativity on December 25th on the Julian Calendar, they are doing it in different parts of the Basillica).
But there are new confessional Lutheran churches in Norway, Belgium and elsewhere, which are.
*This happened at Coral Ridge (the successor chosen by the ruling elders of the church stopped the various programs of public advocacy that had attracted so many people to Coral Ridge, and he also introduced contemporary praise and worship music, and cut back on the excellent classical music program established by Dr. James Kennedy, memory eternal, and then when he felt politically threatened by Dr. Kennedy’s daughter, he uncanonically excommunicated her, and fired most of the people associated with classical music, in violation of the rules of the local presbytery, resulting in the formation of a temporary church of Dr. Kennedy’s supporters in exile, that met at a local high school, while the two sides fought each other within the PCA, with Tchividian, who was probably selected because he was a son-in-law of Billy Graham who happened to posess the right qualifications, but who completely failed to continue any of the programs such as the televangelism for which the church was known, being found to have violated the PCA’s equivalent of canon law (they don’t call them as such; I can’t remember what they do call them, and I also no longer care, since I am tired of Protestant denominations renaming things for no valid reason
