Charlotte Magazine / Charlotte Magazine March 2008 / Leap of Faith

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Leap of Faith

More than a decade after helping lead one of the largest religious revivals in this country's history—a revival that news reports deemed a hoax and a scam—Michael Brown has brought his brand of faith to Concord. And he sees revival in Charlotte's future

Written by Mike Giglio
Photographs by Carrie Campbell (unless noted)

Religions spring up like strip malls in America, a modern playground of the gods. Rival prophets call out from every corner; truth and myth blur together against a backdrop of freedom and faith.

Stop for a moment and stare. Religion runs deep in the national psyche, interwoven with the country’s destiny as the shining city upon the hill. Personal and protected, it must be addressed with care. Only in small parts can one approach the sublime.

A vehicle speeds down Interstate 77 one warm October evening. In the rearview mirror there is Charlotte, sprawling city of banks and churches.

Dr. Michael Brown rests his elbows in his lap, knees brushing against the wheel of a tan Buick LeSabre. The fifty-two-year-old bear of a minister wears a modest black suit and thin glasses. A thick mustache complements the stately white in his otherwise gray hair, but it is an imposing, authoritative chin that lends the man an unmistakable air of gravitas. This much he was born with.

When Brown smiles, as he does often on the drive to Columbia, South Carolina, he becomes strangely endearing. His eyes flicker as his jawbone moves forward and up. He grins at another displaced New Yorker's complaints about pizza in Charlotte. He produces a disarming, nervy chortle when confronted with disbelief during his tales of dangerous exploits in faraway lands, all in the name of spreading the Word. Brown's version of God, and what God has done through him, brings an undeniable flash of fascination to his eyes. His voice trembles slightly, excitedly, as a remarkable brand of American religion unfolds. The final chapters, it soon becomes clear, have yet to be written.

Brown's pulpit now is FIRE, the nondenominational ministry school and church he founded in Concord almost five years ago. Every Sunday morning, its lively services fill the basketball courts of the Concord YMCA.

Tonight he will deliver the keynote address at a convention of messianic Jews (consider them evangelical Christians dedicated to converting their spiritual forebears). He doesn't know what to expect, having never visited the church in Columbia nor met any of its members. His staff did not thoroughly vet the appearance beforehand. This, he says, is very rare.

 

He seems eager for the attention, and an e-mail conversation forwarded earlier by his public relations manager has given him away. Toward the bottom, in an earlier, private message, Brown had written: "Let us see if the Lord opens up this door with the Charlotte Magazine." He mentions receiving a sample issue in the mail a few days earlier as if it were God's own doing.

Brown attributes much to God. For instance, on an annual trip to India, he once closed his eyes, placed his hand on a blind child, imagined his hand as the hand of Jesus, and delivered sight. Years ago, on a beach in New York, he cured a man's cold. His wife has been freed from a degenerative back condition. But faith healing does not constitute Brown's primary message—only, perhaps, some of his most extreme assertions.

He wants religious revival for Charlotte. Not the tame, scheduled events held now by churches throughout the Bible Belt. The real kind, the Great Awakening kind. Think "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," the spider dangling over the flame. The masses tremble in fear, or love, are immersed in water, go out and spread the Word.

Brown led such a revival once, one of four men behind one of the biggest religious events in this country's history, its head theologian and president of its ministry school. The Brownsville Revival—which took place in Pensacola, Florida, at the end of the millennium, leading up to what could have been the end of the world—drew a cumulative audience of two million. Many now serve in missions overseas, or in churches in America, or have, at the very least, given their lives to God.

Critics called it a hoax. The local newspaper painted it as a great big scam. Brown venomously denounced them all. Now, he smiles, calm and reassuring. Can a man's religion really be disproved?

 

We arrive in Columbia late, because Brown's GPS system didn't recognize the small road that leads to the church, which looks more like a faded old house—paint peeling, old shutters, and in a bad neighborhood, too. Two men in suits watch over the cars clustered out front. Brown had regaled me with stories about preaching in front of megachurches in places like South Korea and India during the drive. Now he is embarrassed. He mentions again how he accepted the invitation on a whim in the middle of a very busy week, and he assures me under his breath that we will be out of here as soon as possible. Then he puts on his star preacher face, glowing eyes and a knowing smile, and starts shaking hands like a seasoned politician.

We are herded up to the second floor, where the two sections of about fifteen old wooden pews are not even filled to capacity. A giant foam menorah stands in front of the pews. Pieces of red cloth rise up from its branches to give the impression of real flames. There is a crucifix on the wall behind it, and a rainbow, and a cardboard replica of the Ten Commandments. To start the service, an old woman wearing a yarmulke picks up a large, snaking ram's horn. It sounds like she is strangling a duck.

The first few speakers give long, dull sermons. Then it is time for silly dances. Women and children dressed in red gowns leave their seats to perform a choreographed show up front. After that, some of the men shuffle awkwardly around in a circle while the rest of us clap to a one-count.

Brown is introduced, about thirty minutes later than scheduled, as an "author and visionary." He promises everyone that his speech will still end on time, then launches into a tirade about "microwave ministries." He chastises the audience and wonders how people can rid the world of sin when it exists in their own lives. For the first time all night, a resounding "Amen" rises up.

Brown faces the pews, hunched forward, slightly menacing. His left arm pushes down on the podium, as if to drive it into the carpet. He pans the room deliberately with his jaw. Then he begins to pace, three steps away from the podium, three steps back.

"Going to a building and getting together doesn't touch the world!" he says. "Audiences don't scare the devil!"

The audience leans forward as Brown decries the "powers that come against us." Sin, Islam, and homosexuality pose a mounting threat. So do problems within Christianity. Sex scandals and corruption have embarrassed the church. Regular Christians don't live what they preach.

"Do you think Americans don't see our hypocrisy? They don't see the real thing. They're laughing at us!"

The semicircle Brown has been making around the podium grows wider and wider. He stops, starts, speeds up, slows down.

"The real Jesus will set them free," he shouts, and punches the air.

Then the lights flicker. Brown promises it is not a sign from the Lord.

"Are you sure?" wonders a man near the front.

Brown prepares the congregation for revival. True believers must not be afraid to suffer persecution and death, which came even to the Son of God. He tells a story, one that had come up in the car, of leading a gathering in India that was interrupted by local Hindus wielding razor blades. Brown stood his ground and prayed out loud, and the situation eventually ended in peace.

"You can have controversy without revival, but you can't have revival without controversy," he says.

He pounds the podium with his fist.

"When you're asleep, and somebody turns the lights on, do you thank them? If you're called to be a light, what better place to be than in the darkness?"

A world that has overslept needs to be shaken awake. This will be met with resistance, as revivals always are. The Gospel is a threat to the world system. It's a threat to the religious system. Its proponents will be called troublemakers and bigots. They will be ridiculed and doubted.

"Let the accusations come!" Brown declares. "At least we're doing something."

Brown recounts the following story in his sermons. Parts of it appear in his books. It's posted on his ministry's Web site in printer-friendly format. It's one of the first things he tells me that evening in the car.

He grew up on Long Island, raised in a happy Jewish home. His father worked as the senior lawyer in the New York Supreme Court. At the age of eight in 1963, he learned to play the drums. He idolized the rock gods of the 1960s such as Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin and started a band soon after his bar mitzvah in 1968. Not much later, he began smoking pot. Then he tried hash.

None of the drugs, he says from the driver's seat, affected him much. He moved to LSD, speed, and finally heroin, and was called the Drug Bear for his amazing tolerance. His grades and lifestyle sank to new lows. Brown recounts these stories, such as breaking into a doctor's office to steal more drugs, like an old frat boy remembering his days as the heaviest drinker on campus. Traces remain of whatever red-blooded pride drove him to achieve such notoriety.

The Jesus People Movement was under way in America in the early 1970s. The counterculture of the 1960s had sparked a counterrevolution. People rushed to church. Religion crept back into politics. Secularists found themselves entrenched in battles they had once thought won. Many former hippies and druggies became Jesus freaks instead. New denominations sprang up across the country.

One night in September 1971, at a concert in New York, someone pulled out a bag of mescaline. Brown ingested enough for thirty people. His friends took him outside and put him on a public bus headed for his house. He began to hallucinate and got off too early. Soon, he believed that he was burning in hell, and began screaming as much. A family friend witnessed this and alerted Brown's parents. When they came with the car to find him, he jumped in front of it, resolved to die and not realizing who was inside. Any driver not searching for his drug-crazed son would have hit him. But his father screeched to a stop.