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CNN Live Today

An Interview With Bishop T.D. Jakes

Aired August 04, 2005 - 10:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: We're coming up on the half hour. Actually we're actually there. I'm Daryn Kagan. Here's what's happening now in the news.
Another videotaped warning from Osama Bin Laden's top lieutenant Ayman Al Zawahiri warns of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. and Britain. Al Zawahiri also blamed the London transit attacks on the policies of Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, and said more destruction will come. His warning comes exactly four weeks after the deadly London attacks. The city today has increased police presence. Despite the similarities between the July 7th attacks, which killed more than 50 people, and the failed attacks on July the 21st. Investigators say there is no hard evidence linking those two events.

Another U.S. Marine has died in Iraq, brining the number of U.S. troops killed this week to 27. The military says the Marine died yesterday in Ramadi during combat operations.

Also, three U.S. soldiers were killed yesterday by a bomb in Baghdad. And in and around Kirkuk, five Iraqi police officers were killed today in two separate incidents.

And here in the U.S., Martha Stewart's attorney says she will remain confined to her Bedford, New York home until August 31st. That is three weeks longer than originally sentenced. No explanation was offered. The probation office in office in New York would neither confirm nor deny that extension.

An old voice is turning up its volume all across America. From festivals, like Megafest, to Billy Graham's rallies and the Promise Keepers, Christians are making themselves heard.

And in today's "Your Spirit" segment, corporate America is listening.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GERRI WILLIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's one of the fastest growing music movements out there, jamming with Jesus. Big corporations are hoping to capitalize on the high-volume audience. General Motors has tapped into the market in a big way. For the past three years, the company sponsored the Christian rock band Third Day. They've already sold five million albums in the U.S., and the audience is growing. GM offered Christian rock bands a free sample of Third Day's music to test drive a new Chevy.

TIM HUDGINS, CHEVROLET MARKETING MANAGER: Dealers tell you they saw people coming in asking for the CD. We had some sweepstakes as a piece of there where we gave a car away later on in the program, and they just watched the traffic and give us good anecdotal feedback.

WILLIS (on camera): According to the Gospel Music Association, sales of gospel music of all genres reached 750 million last year. Now that represents about six percent of all music sales.

(voice-over): The relationship between corporate America and Christians isn't a new one. Even so, it took Hollywood's Mel Gibson to show many corporate marketers just how lucrative the audience could be. "The Passion of the Christ" brought in $370 million at the domestic box office, not to mention DVD and merchandise sales as well.

DAVID MARTIN, INTERBRAND: "Passion of the Christ" was really a gate opener, if you will, in that we have a major star committing his own money, and telling the world that this is something that is not in the closet. It's a mainstream thing.

WILLIS: A success Coca-Cola has already discovered. The company has sponsored evangelic evangelical festivals, like Megafest, since the late 1990s, and is currently the top sponsor for this year's event. Coke says, "Events like Megafest allow Coca-Cola to connect with people who have gathered for fun and fellowship, as we do with people every day."

Marketing experts warn, however, that aligning with this particular group can be tricky. They say Christian consumers immediately sense when a marketer is simply adopting their language as a way into their pockets. Christian groups, they say, are best reached by community programs that appeal to their values. A hard sell doesn't typically work, and subtlety is not necessarily the long suit of many advertisers.

Gerri Willis, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: Let's focus on this year's Megafest. It's getting under way right here in Atlanta. Tens of thousands, over 100,000 people expected to gather for this four-day festival. It is billed as a total Christian experience. With me today, the man behind the gathering. He's described by "The New York Times" as America's greatest preacher, Bishop T.D. Jakes.

Bishop, good morning. Good to see you again.

BISHOP T.D. JAKES, POTTER'S HOUSE: It's a pleasure to be with you.

KAGAN: Let's pick up where Gerri Willis' package and her story was talking about, the business side of this. And what do you say to the cynical that look at churches as large as yours, festivals as big as this, the money it brings in, and they say, this is really just a big business with some slick marketing?

JAKES: Well, you know, it's funny, it does bring in a lot of money, but the reality is, the reason we need sponsors is that it doesn't cover the budget. We're not a for-profit organization. And when you take on a task like this, we don't have the infrastructure to be able to afford it. Even with the minimal registration, it in no way covers the budget. I like think of corporate sponsors as having the machine to get the message over. We have the message, but they have the machine.

KAGAN: But you are a man who understands business. You have Potter's House, this huge church out of Texas. You have music, theater, books. You are a multimedia conglomeration all by yourself. How do you not get -- the message get lost in all that?

JAKES: You know, I do understand business. I grew up in a house of entrepreneurs. I own several companies myself, but there's a difference between what do you and who you are. When it comes to my faith, it embrace whose I am, but business is what I do. And I think that there's a great appreciation, a cross pollination, because if we are going to affect people who do business, we have to do business with them. And as a Christian, I love to do that, because my faith bleeds over in how a handle business. Ethics are appropriate in business.

KAGAN: Let's talk about your message. You are big on personal responsibility. You are not big on victimhood.

JAKES: That's right. I think I'm about empowerment. I'm about, you can do it, in spite of adversity. All of us have been through trauma. Everybody's got a sad story. Wake up in the morning, you can cry all day long if you want to, or you can get up out of the bed and do something about your situation, and that's the kind of person I am, and that's what my message reflects, empowerment to everyone.

KAGAN: And some of your specific audiences, one, to women. That's kind of your founding base.

JAKES: The woman audience, yes. And then also I have a similar message to men, one that is including empowerment, and more recently, Daryn, we've started focused on young people. We've seen a huge connection happen with young people. Last year at Megafest, thousands and thousands of young people came, and it proved in my mind that if we build it, they will come. So this year, we're focusing on them even more, and they're responding with amazing emotional healing, dealing with their issues. We're doing some college fairs, so that they can focus on higher levels of education, the kinds of things that Coca-Cola agrees are very, very important to our community.

KAGAN: You're focusing even on a community that can't come, because they're in prison.

JAKES: That's right.

KAGAN: What is your message to prisoners, to people who have not done and made good choices with their lives?

JAKES: That you can start your life over again, that life is not over, that you can pick yourself up. I believe that we can be a conduit to reduce the rate of recidivism in this country. We've not done a very good job of rehabilitating inmates. We've not done a very job of incarcerating them. We spend billions of dollars incarcerating them. It's turned into a big business, turned over to the private sector. And I think we need to go out of the business of presenting, go into the business of rehabilitation.

KAGAN: And what about the business of blaming others for things that have happened to you, whether it's a societal situation or an individual situation?

JAKES: Well, you know, I think it's important that you identify what did happen, but you can't stay in the past, or live in the past or you become a prisoner to the past. You don't have to be bars to be in jail, just be bound in your mind. And no matter who did what, you can not allow them to hold you hostage the rest of your life, and blaming them and using them as an excuse not to get up, leaves you a prisoner to your past.

KAGAN: We saw Billy Graham basically say goodbye in June, in New York. Your name is always on a list of people who might succeed him as the leading preacher in America? Do you take that as a complement, I would imagine?

JAKES: Well, I think it's meant as a complement. In reality, as people differ who's going to be the next one, I always smile because we didn't pick the first one. God chooses who he will. And I live that business up to him. And we're not running for office like presidents. I never set out to be the next Billy Graham; I just want to be the best T.D. Jakes I can be.

KAGAN: Well, it looks like you're doing a pretty good job.

JAKES: Thank you.

KAGAN: Bishop T.D. Jakes, thank you, and good luck with this year's Megafest. Thanks for making time. Appreciate that.

An amazing story just ahead. The mother now has passed away. Her daughter, though, her tiny baby daughter, alive and well. Some are calling baby Susan a little miracle. That story of love, loss and life just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

KAGAN: After months of pain and prayer, the story of a brain- dead mother came to a bittersweet end this week. An update the condition of her newborn daughter, coming up next on CNN LIVE TODAY.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

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Not all debt is bad. In fact, it's almost impossible to live debt-free. This article gives you three examples of debt that is OK. How long will it take you to become debt-free? Crunch the numbers with this calculator and find out.

Finally, test your knowledge with this online quiz. For example, what's the worst kind of debt you can have? Is it mortgage, credit cards, school loan or car loan? Log on for the answer.

Control your debt at CNNmoney.com/101. From the dot-com newsdesk, I'm Veronica De La Cruz.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: Let's look at some stories making news coast-to-coast.

One minute he is humming the theme from "Jaws," the next, he has a 700-pound shark on line. Tourist Greg Hirst of California hooked the big predator about 15 miles off of Boca Raton, Florida. Hirst says he plans to have his 12-foot trophy stuffed and mounted.

To Tulsa, Oklahoma. One teenager is in critical condition after he and three other boys became trapped in the powerful current below a dam on the Arkansas River. Officials call it a "drowning machine." The critically injured boy was dragged underwater for about five minutes before his friends managed to pull him to the surface.

And in Davenport, Iowa, a 31-year-old man somehow slipped under the safety bar, while riding the ferris wheel at the Mississippi Valley Fair. Oh my goodness. He lost his grip and began tumbling down the spokes. The carnival workers scrambled to the rescue before he fell too far. Fortunately, the man is OK with just a few cuts and bruises.

Susan Anne Catherine Torres is one of a kind. Doctors say they know of no other documented case of a healthy infant being born to a brain-dead woman with terminal cancer.

Our senior medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta has more on this medical milestone.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): 26- year-old Susan was kept alive just long enough to produce a miracle: a baby. Small, to be sure, just one pound, thirteen ounces, but so far, healthy. DR. DONNA TILDEN-ARCHER, VIRGINIA HOSPITAL CENTER: At the moment she was born, she was very vigorous, and crying, and, in very good condition for a baby of her gestational age.

GUPTA: Still, it doesn't get any harder than this.

JUSTIN TORRES, FAMILY SPOKESPERSON: We are overjoyed at the birth of baby Susan, and deeply grieved at the loss of her mother.

GUPTA: It wasn't supposed to be this way. At age 17, Susan had a small dot, a melanoma it turned out, on her arm. She had it removed, but it returned. It spread to her brain, bled. And put her into an irreversible coma. And she was pregnant.

JASON TORRES, FATHER: While we were there, the doctors came in and told me that she had no brain function at that time. And that normally they would have done nothing at that point and just -- you know, let her slip away.

GUPTA: He decided to save his child's life. So, as the cancer grew throughout his wife's body, a baby grew as well.

J. TORRES: If you have a chance to save your child's life, you're going to do it. And, I know for a fact that Susan would do whatever she need to do just to give her child the chance.

GUPTA: Doctors wanted to keep Susan Torres on life support until the baby reached 32 weeks. But she was delivered by cesarean four weeks earlier when her mother's condition deteriorated.

So at 28 weeks, and just under two pounds, the numbers are very much on baby Susan's side. She has a better than 80 percent chance of survival, although she does have a higher likelihood of cerebral palsy, problems with vision and developmental delay.

TILDEN-ARCHER: As far as long-term outcome, we really have to monitor from day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, and just see how -- what happens.

GUPTA: But for today, Jason says good-bye to Susan, his wife, while he welcomes Susan, his daughter.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: On Capitol Hill, some lawmakers are investigating whether baseball's Rafael Palmeiro lied to Congress with his now infamous denial of steroid use. Earlier in the week the slugger was suspended for using the banned performance-enhancing drug, and that has some fans crying foul, and CNN's Jeanne Moos taking some swings of her own.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When you hear a guy say this...

RAFAEL PALMEIRO, BALTIMORE ORIOLES: I have never used steroids. Period.

MOOS: And then less than five months later...

PALMEIRO: I have never intentionally used steroids. Never, ever. Period.

MOOS: There is one word that sticks out like it's on steroids.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Intentionally? How do you not take steroids intentionally?

MOOS (on camera): But he says he never intentionally took steroids.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, come on, please.

MOOS (voice-over): When Baltimore Orioles first baseman Rafael Palmeiro tested positive for steroids, well, it hit some folks invoking a certain some lunch meat.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, that's a crock of bologna.

MOOS: Or even worse than bologna.

(on camera): He said he never intentionally used steroids now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (EXPLETIVE DELETED)

MOOS: The other performance enhancing drug he's known for was Viagra. He used to advertise it.

PALMEIRO: My doctor says it's right for me.

JAY LENO, THE TONIGHT SHOW: So, he's on steroids and Viagra. You know what that means? He doesn't even need a bat anymore. He doesn't even need the bat.

MOOS: One sports columnist asked, what's next, the Twinkie defense?

Though that wasn't the only tongue in cheek theory about how someone could unintentionally take steroids.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Maybe someone sneaked in his kitchen and put it in his Cheerios.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. I believe him.

MOOS (on camera): Do you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sure.

MOOS: What are you thinking? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I didn't intentionally have chocolate chip cookies for breakfast this morning and I'm a diabetic.

MOOS: Can you figure out a way that you can unintentionally take them?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE; He could have fallen on Mark McGuire's needle when they were working out together in the gym.

MOOS (voice-over): Palmeiro implies he might have taken steroids by taking legal supplements that must have been contaminated or mislabeled.

JIM BEATTIE, EXEC VP BALTIMORE ORIOLES: What it says is in there. It's not in there. And some of the things that doesn't say are in there, are in there.

MOOS: But the "New York Times," quote an anonymous baseball source says the steroid found in Palmeiro's test isn't the type you find in supplements.

There is one other matter -- the finger point.

PALMEIRIO: I have never used steroids. Period.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It didn't seem to hurt Bill Clinton to shake that finger.

WILLIAM CLINTON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

MOOS: Body language experts say liars often make exaggerated use of over emphatic signals of frankness. And the author of the "Science of Influence" thinks Palmeiro's finger pointing before Congress seemed rehearsed. Both Palmeiro and Bill Clinton are lefties.

Author Kevin Hogan says when a lefty uses his right hand to point while denying, it almost guarantees he's lying. Lefty Palmeiro used his left.

But when it comes to steroid use, it depends on what your definition of intentional is.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We should try steroids, hey Herman?

MOOS: You look like you do.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, thanks. It's pizza. And I'll tell Congress that. Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(WEATHER REPORT)

KAGAN: When tracking terrorists overlaps with constitutional rights, how much can our own government spy on us? More than you might think. Some people are outraged.

Plus the miracle of science finally created a "snuppy," not a puppy, a snuppy. We're going to tell what you that is and what makes this snuppy special, as the second hour of CNN LIVE TODAY begins right now.

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