Word: swaggart
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...word on high is that freedom of religion does not necessarily mean freedom from taxes. So learned the Jimmy Swaggart Ministries last week when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that states may require religious groups to pay sales tax on the merchandise they sell. The decision upholds previous rulings that forced the Swaggart organization to pay the State of California $183,000 in back taxes and interest on nearly $2 million worth of pamphlets, tapes, records and other items sold to residents between...
Most Prurient Preachers. Holy Hypocrisy! America's first televangelist Jim Bakker paid some $265,000 to cover up a sexual misadventure. Later he was convicted of misspending millions of followers' dollars. Rival preacher Jimmy Swaggart called the Bakker scandal a cancer. That was before Swaggart was photographed visiting a prostitute named Debra Murphree. According to Murphree, he was "kind of perverted . . . I wouldn't want him around my children...
Rifkin's performance, which he delivers on average 90 times a year, is a mixture of Jimmy Swaggart, Phil Donahue and Werner Erhard. Twenty years of teaching, preaching and raising consciences -- some would call it rabble- rousing -- have refined this show to the point that it has a slick, thoroughly professional sheen. Rifkin moves through an audience as if it were his private party, talking, interviewing, questioning and, occasionally but ever so kindly, embarrassing. He will perform for 30 minutes or eight hours, depending on the contract. His basic sermon is an attack on "the Boys," as he calls Francis...
Strange, though, are the ways of fate and fame. The movie shows Lewis' bravado being directed at his cousin, revivalist Jimmy Swaggart, who is portrayed at more or less regular intervals denouncing rock 'n' roll as the "devil's music" and praying for the redemption of Jerry Lee's blighted soul. But the real-life Swaggart has since been brought low by the revelation of particularly tacky sexual practices. Lewis' music, manner and morality now seem almost innocent in comparison with what has followed him up the charts and into the hearts of adolescents during the past three decades. Even...
Skeptics were obliged to note that the conspicuously misnamed organization had long since begun to run out of gas. Moreover, thanks to the gaudy peccadilloes of televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart, TV preachers today provoke almost as much disfavor as liberals...