Word: evangelistic
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...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 not only the cable network but a glitzy theme park, Heritage...
Bakker's fall from this sugarplum land of his own creation began on a warm December day in 1980 at a hotel in Clearwater Beach, Fla. At the time, Jim and Tammy, although sunny on camera, were going through a chilly time offstage. According to some accounts, Evangelist John Wesley Fletcher arranged for Bakker to meet young Jessica Hahn, a secretary for the Full Gospel Tabernacle, a Pentecostal church in Massapequa, N.Y. According to Bakker's official statement in resigning as head of PTL, the brief encounter was a setup: "I was wickedly manipulated by treacherous former friends and then...
Enter Norman Roy Grutman, a New York City lawyer who, incredibly, had represented Penthouse magazine against Falwell when the evangelist sued to prevent distribution of an issue containing an interview with him. In an additional twist, Grutman had also once been Falwell's lawyer in a libel case against Hustler. Now working for Bakker, Grutman declared that an unnamed evangelist had mounted an unfriendly "takeover" bid for PTL and threatened that if this preacher did not back off, "we're going to be compelled to show that there is smellier laundry in his hamper than the laundry he thought...
...revelations capped a series of aggressive reports on Bakker by the Observer that caused the evangelist to cry persecution. The paper ran a 1979 story alleging the diversion of TV contributions for PTL overseas work into U.S. projects. The result was an FCC investigation, which was halted when Bakker sold off a TV station in Canton, Ohio. The Justice Department later found no grounds for prosecuting PTL. A subsequent story said FCC testimony had accused Bakker and his wife of funneling donations into such perks as a houseboat, a mink coat and a sports car. The Bakkers denied the accusation...
...suit, advancing claims they had first raised in the earlier case. His ruling last week prompted hosannas from the religious right. "Humanism will no longer be guaranteed a preferred position in American education," exulted Robert Skolrood, executive director of the National Legal Foundation, a group established by the television evangelist Pat Robertson that helped represent the plaintiff parents and teachers. "Humanism and its hidden agenda are now out of the closet...