The Rev. Robert H. Schuller speaks at Hope College in 1997.GARDEN GROVE, Calif. -- More revelations surfaced this week about the end of ties between televangelist the Rev. Robert H. Schuller, a 1947 graduate of Hope College, and the massive ministry he built and led for decades from the Crystal Cathedral.
On Monday Schuller said he and his wife, Arvella, no longer will be active participants in the Crystal Cathedral, the Los Angeles Times reported.
He also commended his daughter’s Sunday announcement that she was leaving the Crystal Cathedral and starting her own church, called Hope Center of Christ. But he added he and his wife were not moving to the new ministry with daughter Carol Schuller Coleman.
“How we express ourselves in worship remains up in the air,” Schuller said in a statement.
Schuller has often visited West Michigan, including a speech at Calvin College a year ago. He also is a graduate of Western Theological Seminary in Holland, which like Hope is affiliated with the Reformed Church in America.
On Saturday Robert Schuller announced “with great sadness” that they had resigned from the cathedral's board of directors.
"The Schuller family's departure from Crystal Cathedral Ministries ends a stunning decline in fortune for the church's founder, who was one of the most successful preachers in the world, but who has watched in recent years as the church slid toward financial ruin," The New York Times reported.
NPR's report cited Jonathan Walton, assistant professor at Harvard Divinity School, who explained that when Schuller opened his doors in 1955, America was in a postwar boom, economically and spiritually.
"This is definitely the end of an era," he told NPR. ""Robert Schuller's early preaching caught the spiritual strivings and desires of a postwar generation that wanted to have more, wanted to do more, and they wanted to be more."
The Schullers' resignation "was the latest upheaval for the huge, financially struggling church, which sold its iconic home to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange last month to emerge from federal bankruptcy protection," The Associated Press reported.
The family said Robert and Arvella were stepping down because they and the board could not reach a deal for housing benefits and fees for using her father’s writings and sermons as part of the bankruptcy proceedings, AP said.
“We cannot continue to serve on the board in what has become an adversarial and negative atmosphere, especially since it now seems that it will not be ending anytime soon,” Arvella Schuller said in a statement.
The church collected millions in donations through its broadcasts, but a series of financial setbacks led to its filing for bankruptcy in October 2010 and the forced sale of the 40-acre campus.
Turmoil in the ministry included the firings of Dr. Schuller’s daughter Gretchen Penner and two sons-in-law in the past week, AP reported.
Pastor Sheila from Crystal Cathedral Ministries.
A full biography of Robert Schuller is available on the Crystal Cathedral website, and includes the following history of his early years:
"Robert Harold Schuller was born in Alton, Iowa, on Sept. 16, 1926. From the age of 4, young Schuller knew that he wanted to be a minister. In 1950, after completing a Bachelor of Arts degree at Hope College and a Master of Divinity at Western Theological Seminary, he fulfilled his dream when he was ordained by the Reformed Church in America, the oldest Protestant denomination in the United States.
After ordination, Dr. Schuller pastored the Ivanhoe Reformed Church in Chicago for five years. During his ministry there, the congregation grew from 38 to more than 400."