Word: swaggart
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...services from his own 22,000-member Baptist church in Lynchburg, Va., and operates Liberty University, a 7,500-student institution, and a 1.5 million-subscriber cable system, the Liberty Broadcasting Network. Annual proceeds from Falwell's ministry amount to about $84 million. In Baton Rouge, La., Pentecostal Jimmy Swaggart, 52, has his 4,300-member local church, plus daily and weekly TV shows; he stage-manages elaborate preaching tours in the U.S.and overseas and leads a Bible college. Proceeds from the ministry: some $142 million...
...confessed that he had paid $265,000 in hush money to cover up an afternoon of adultery in 1980 with Jessica Hahn, a 21-year-old church secretary from Long Island, N.Y. At Bakker's request, Falwell became PTL's new head, amid rumors that another TV evangelist, Jimmy Swaggart of Baton Rouge, La., was conspiring to wrest control...
...Nightline appearances, Bakker offered a new interpretation of the key events that led to Falwell's takeover of PTL. Bakker's version: in the crucial meeting at a Palm Springs hotel on March 17, Falwell precipitated Bakker's resignation with the threat that Swaggart was plotting a "hostile takeover" of PTL. Said Bakker: "I did not choose Jerry Falwell to take my ministry." Bakker noted that Falwell said he would be a "caretaker" to prevent the takeover while Richard Dortch, one of several Bakker aides who were later to be sacked by Falwell for mismanagement, would remain in charge. Subsequently...
...that Jerry Falwell stole PTL is like accusing someone of stealing the Titanic just after it hit the iceberg." As Falwell told it, Bakker "misled me and lied to me in the meeting in Palm Springs." The Lynchburg televangelist insisted that he did not threaten Bakker with the Swaggart takeover rumor. Rather, Bakker asked him to take over PTL, saying, "You're the only preacher I trust right...
...scandal seems to have had a fallout effect on some other televangelists. Falwell admits that proceeds at various enterprises in Lynchburg were down $2 million in April; Jimmy Swaggart reports a $1.5 million decline for that month. The Rev. Robert Schuller of Garden Grove, Calif., whose popular Hour of Power is carried by 172 TV stations, shows a 3% dip in donations so far in 1987, but he does not consider that necessarily a result of the PTL scandal. The televangelist with the most to lose is the one with the biggest video operation, Republican Presidential Candidate Pat Robertson...