Word: preacher
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Indio, Calif., two weeks ago for a traffic violation and found to be in the company of Rosemary Garcia, an admitted streetwalker. That latest foray prompted Swaggart to resign from his Baton Rouge-based ministry last Tuesday to seek "professional counseling and medical care." But the next day the preacher reversed the decision, explaining to his congregation that God told him to return to the pulpit. Swaggart announced to supporters that "the Lord told me it's flat none of your business" and that he didn't have to apologize for his conduct...
Swaggart's organization has been in decline since rival preacher Marvin Gorman circulated photos of Swaggart visiting a prostitute in a New Orleans motel three years ago. The scandal forced Swaggart to resign from the Assemblies of God, the nation's largest Pentecostal denomination, and nearly 200 television stations dropped his weekly program. The ministry took another hit last month when a jury in New Orleans found that Swaggart and others had defamed Gorman with allegations of adulterous behavior and ordered the group to pay $10 million in damages...
...Harkin is the preacher of traditional liberal psalms: a massive public-works scheme, increased spending for education and health, lower taxes for the working class and higher levies on the affluent. He promises "a bold plan for a new economic structure." But many Americans long ago lost faith in such primordial liberalism. Nathan Landow, Maryland party chairman and a major campaign fund raiser, concedes that Harkin's record could turn off wealthy contributors, not to mention moderate voters. "But Tom has a fiery way about him that will catch on," Landow says. "Maybe this time we need the messenger...
...superchurch clergy, astride their self-contained empires, are often completely independent of effective oversight from denominations or locally elected boards. Lyle Schaller of the Yokefellow Institute in Richmond, Ind., who counsels congregations, notes that a superchurch is guaranteed future trouble if it is built largely around a single star preacher, who will be leaving someday...
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...