Word: preacher
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...folk faith, is usually as plain and decent as a clapboard chapel, but on occasion it can turn as raucous and disorderly as a frontier camp meeting. Over the past two weeks sweet order has fled, seemingly overwhelmed by hot words and rackety confusion. Perhaps not since famed Pentecostalist Preacher Aimee Semple McPherson was accused of faking her own kidnaping in the Roaring Twenties has the nation witnessed a spectacle to compare with the lurid adultery-and-hush-money scandal that has forced a husband-and-wife team of televangelists, Jim and Tammy Bakker, to abandon their multimillion-dollar spiritual...
...Bakker, a Pentecostal preacher with bases in Charlotte, N.C., and Fort Mill, S.C., appeared on his TV network to explain why he had relinquished the reins of his $129 million-a-year PTL (for Praise the Lord or People That Love) empire. It was not 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...
...roller-coaster ride," the Rev. Jim Bakker has often remarked. Through tumultuous financial ups and downs, the boyish-looking 47- year-old preacher has become a powerful czar of Christian entertainment. His enterprises encompass the PTL (for Praise the Lord or People That Love) network, carried by cable TV to 13.5 million homes; a daily television talk show, broadcast on 178 stations; and the 2,300-acre Heritage USA at Fort Mill, S.C., America's splashiest Gospel-theme amusement park, which was visited by more than 6 million people last year. His projects, which also include a lavish hotel...
...treacherous former friends" who had "conspired to betray me into a sexual encounter." Following that involvement, Bakker said, he had "succumbed to blackmail" to protect his family and organization. After the news broke, Bakker resigned as head of PTL, handing control of his troubled operation to fellow TV Preacher Jerry Falwell...
...based in Springfield, Mo.; he remains on the clergy rolls pending the church's own investigation of the scandal. Dortch has also resigned as an Assemblies minister because the PTL congregation has become independent of the Assemblies. Meeting with Falwell in California last week, Bakker pleaded with the Virginia preacher to assume the chairmanship of PTL's board. Falwell, who is already fully preoccupied with politics, pastoring and his own struggling cable-TV network, said he was not eager to take the PTL helm but felt pressed to do so. Bakker's current problems, said Falwell, might create a "backwash...