Word: bakkers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...undoing. The sense of aloneness is born of a mistrust of underlings, which can approach Howard Hughes' isolationism. The adventure-seeking behavior can be insider trader Dennis Levine plotting to dupe SEC regulators with offshore bank accounts. Pete Rose, Gary Hart, Imelda Marcos, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken: they all seem to have committed self-destructive acts that follow on the heels of enormous success. I have never met or treated any of them, but they do fit a prototype that I've derived from both research and clinical case studies...
...late '80s brought agonizing disillusionment. One after another, some of the country's most prominent Protestant televangelists revealed themselves as pious pretenders, driven by lust or avarice or unsaintly ego. Perhaps most distressing was the ammunition the scandals gave to the skeptical and scornful. While erstwhile believers in Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart and Marvin Gorman winced at the exposes of dalliance and the unconvincing protestations of repentance, countless other Americans were laughing...
Beyond the whispering campaign, Gorman's attorneys hint at coercion. They suggest his programs were dropped from the satellite owned by James Bakker, of PTL teleministry notoriety, as a quid pro quo for Swaggart's business on the same system, and for the Louisiana preacher's silence about PTL hush money to Bakker paramour Jessica Hahn. If that was the deal, it didn't last: within a year Swaggart became one of Bakker's denouncers and helped bring about his resignation and PTL's financial collapse...
Even Tammy Faye Bakker, the wife of defrocked televangelist Jim Bakker, has moved the vestiges of their New Covenant Ministries to a warehouse on the outskirts of Orlando; Tupperware salespeople once used the place to hold inspirational meetings. Standing in a sanctuary with pink walls, a pink rug and large brass giraffes around the altar, she reveals that Disney World holds the secret of her intended comeback. "The spiritual person and the person who wants to have fun, it's the same thing," says Bakker, who helped her husband build Heritage USA, the giant Christian theme park in Fort Mill...
...cult the country has ever seen. No cult extracts more money from its members." Agrees Vicki Aznaran, who was one of Scientology's six key leaders until she bolted from the church in 1987: "This is a criminal organization, day in and day out. It makes Jim and Tammy [Bakker] look like kindergarten...