Word: bakkers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...pure chance, the Bakker scandal -- involving sex, greed and ministerial rivalries -- has coincided with a controversy swirling about another televangelist. The Rev. Oral Roberts, operator of a TV ministry, university and medical center in Tulsa, had broadcast that God would "call Oral Roberts home" unless by March 31 believers came up with $4.5 million for missionary work. Many Christians, including some Roberts followers, were scandalized by what they perceived to be implicit spiritual blackmail. The Bakker-Roberts furor raised questions about the future of TV evangelism, a fast-growing, klieg-lighted mode of Christian proselytizing -- and fund raising. Counting radio...
...Bakker, a Pentecostal preacher with bases in Charlotte, N.C., and Fort Mill, S.C., appeared on his TV network to explain why he had relinquished the reins of his $129 million-a-year PTL (for Praise the Lord or People That Love) empire. It was not because he had confessed to one afternoon of sin in 1980 with Jessica Hahn, a comely New York secretary who was then 21, he insisted. Instead, flanked by his forgiving wife Tammy Faye, Bakker said he had resigned to stop a "diabolical plot" for a rival evangelist's takeover of his church, which includes...
...quickly developed that the rival was the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, a fiery preacher from Baton Rouge, La., with a substantial U.S. television audience. Swaggart denied any interest in "stealing" PTL and said the Bakker scandal was a "cancer that needed to be excised from the body of Christ." Swaggart did admit, however, that he had passed along rumors about Bakker's illicit behavior to officials of the Assemblies of God, the Pentecostal denomination in which both are clergy. Swaggart says yet more scandals are brewing. "I believe they will come out. But they won't come from...
...threatening deadline, despite a surprise stay of execution -- a gift of $1.3 million from Jerry Collins, a short, gruff dog-track owner from Sarasota, Fla. ("It's very seldom I ever go to church," said the philanthropic Collins. "I help them all.") Roberts, feeling perkier after the donation, proclaimed Bakker a "prophet of God," who had been victimized by an "unholy trio of forces," presumably referring to Swaggart, the Assemblies of God and the press. Their attack, said Roberts, was "unlike any in the history of the world to come against the body of Christ...
...Leaders of the 2.1 million-member Assemblies of God emerged from a caucus at Springfield, Mo., headquarters to pronounce that there had been no takeover plot and no blackmail, but an apparent "moral failure," which Bakker had covered up. The church investigation is continuing...