My department chair warned me against writing the book. He said it would be professional suicide. I was an assistant professor at Columbia University in the mid-1980s, just a couple of years out of graduate school. As I was completing revisions on my dissertation, preparing it for publication, the televangelist scandals broke. It was great fun, I confess. Jim Bakker, founder of the PTL network (for â??Praise the Lordâ? or, as the wags said, â??Pass the Lootâ?), had a sexual tryst with â?? you canâ??t make this up â?? a church secretary from Long Island and then used contributions from the faithful to cover up the affair. Jimmy Swaggart, another televangelist, who had criticized Bakker as a â??pretty boy preacher,â? was visiting Louisiana motel rooms for voyeuristic liaisons with a prostitute. And Oral Roberts declared that God had, in effect, taken him hostage and would â??call me homeâ? unless Godâ??s people ponied up several million dollars.
Americans were transfixed by these glimpses into the world of evangelicalism. Time and Newsweek did cover stories, and Ted Koppelâ??s interview of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker on Nightline attracted the programâ??s largest audience ever. But as the scandals wore on, I became increasingly impatient with the tone of the media coverage. The media seemed to assume that all evangelicals in America were either gullible or the moral equivalent of Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart â?? or both.
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