Word: bakkers
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...tended to be exuberant, physical and generally more theologically adventurous than its evangelical cousins. And despite thousands of pastors and churches that pursue their joyous vision without taint, scandal has dogged some of its most prominent figures. Among the best-known were the late 1980s downfalls of televangelists Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart: Bakker, who was undone by charges of fraud, and Swaggart who was caught with a prostitute, had preached a "theology of prosperity" suggesting that there would be divine rewards in this world for those who donated to the ministry...
...Pentecostals tend to be forgiving of their preachers' lapses - both Bakker and Swaggart are back in the ministry, for example - because of a theological distinction between Pentecostalism and more austere forms of conservative Christianity. Says the University of Rochester's Butler: "Calvinism is [God's] grace, one time. This is grace after grace after grace. You can mess up a thousand times...
...Before televangelism got so complicated--before Jim Bakker had sex with a church clerk and Jerry Falwell entered politics--there was Rex Humbard, a wide-eyed guitar-playing, TV-loving revival preacher from Little Rock, Ark. In the early '50s, the self-described "electronic evangelist," who helped eulogize fan Elvis Presley, began to develop a following with TV broadcasts that for a time reached more parts of the globe than any other religious show and claimed 20 million viewers. Among the hallmarks of his 5,400-seat, marble-and-glass Cathedral of Tomorrow, a onetime movie theater near Akron, Ohio...
...caricature--the garish, bejeweled wife of wealthy televangelist Jim Bakker and the co-host of the Jim and Tammy Show. Yet by the '90s, as her husband was disgraced by his marital infidelities and served a prison sentence for defrauding followers, Tammy Faye Messner began to look more spiritual. She stuck with Bakker as their multimillion-dollar PTL (Praise the Lord) empire crumbled, finally divorcing him in 1992. She promoted her faith, made fun of herself on Roseanne and other sitcoms and supported gay rights. ("We're all just people made of the same old dirt," she said.) After learning...
...Staff writer Nathan C. Strauss can be reached at strauss@fas.harvard.edu. CORRECTION: The article gave the wrong class year for Trevor J. Bakker. He is in the Class...