fbpx
×

Log into your account

We have changed software providers for our subscription database. Old login credentials will no longer work. Please click the "Register" link below to create a new account. If you do not know your new account number you can contact [email protected]
Televangelist Robert H. Schuller dies
Compiled by Seth Brown, BR Content Editor
April 02, 2015
2 MIN READ TIME

Televangelist Robert H. Schuller dies

Televangelist Robert H. Schuller dies
Compiled by Seth Brown, BR Content Editor
April 02, 2015

Televangelist and founder of Crystal Cathedral Ministries, Robert H. Schuller, died April 2, according to an Associated Press report. Schuller was 88 years old.

Doctors diagnosed Schuller in 2013 with esophageal cancer. He stopped taking recommended chemotherapy or radiation treatments after his wife, Arvella Schuller, died in February 2014, according to The Washington Post.

Schuller4-2-15.jpg

Robert H. Schuller

Family members told Orange County Register that he spent his final days at a nursing home in Artesia, Calif.

Donna Schuller, his daughter-in-law, also said that Easter week was a suitable time for his passing. “He always did everything in a grand fashion,” she told the Register.

Schuller founded Crystal Cathedral Ministries in 1955 and began the television program “Hour of Power” in 1970, which airs internationally and attracted over 15 million viewers at its peak, according to the Register.

A controversial figure, Schuller preached the power of “possibility thinking” and authored books such as, “Positive Prayers for Power-Filled People” and “Self-Love.”

The congregation, affiliated with the Reformed Church in America, sold its famous Crystal Cathedral, recorded as the largest glass building in the world, to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange in 2011, two years after filing for bankruptcy.

Family troubles preceded Crystal Cathedral’s financial difficulties, according a timeline compiled by the Register. A series of leadership transitions began in 1976 that included Schuller’s son, Robert A. Schuller; son-in-law, Jim Coleman; daughter, Sheila Schuller Coleman; Bill Bennett; and grandson, Bobby Schuller, who currently serves as the lead pastor of the renamed church, Shepherd’s Grove.