Preacher scandal: Been there, done that
Posted November 4, 2006
I grew up in the Assemblies of God -- and watched my denomination's two most famous preachers implode spectacularly in the late 1980s.
Jim Bakker melted down first -- in 1987 -- and a lot of my friends weren't sorry to see him go. Pentecostal churches had two main camps at that point. One focused on getting ready for the hereafter -- stressing hellfire and brimstone, salvation, sanctification, and the second-coming of Christ. The other emphasized the here and now -- God wants you to be healthy and wealthy, good looking and well-coifed.
Bakker belonged to the latter group. The South Carolina Pentecostal acted more like a talk-show-host than a revival preacher. He lived in a mansion, his dogs dwelled in air-conditioned dog houses. He built water slides and theme parks with the Lord's money. A relative who lived in the Carolinas swore up and down she'd seen Bakker sipping wine in a highbrow restaurant -- a sure sign of depravity. After Bakker was caught paying hush money to cover up his adultery, Swaggart called Bakker "a cancer on the body of Christ." A lot of old-time Pentecostals nodded in agreement.
Swaggart also lived in a mansion, drove luxury cars and wore a Rolex -- but he was slightly more circumspect about his riches. Like Bakker, Swaggart had been blessed with the ability to cry at the drop of a hat -- when raising money or when begging forgiveness for misdeeds.
But the Baton Rouge, Louisiana evangelist stressed soul-winning. While Bakker built vacation timeshares, Swaggart constructed a Bible college. While Bakker hob-nobbed with celebrities (guests on his show included the Flying Wallendas highwire act and pornographer Larry Flynt), Swaggart traveled across the Third World, packing stadiums with potential converts to Pentecostal Christianity.
Bakker's hypocrisy was exposed in 1987. Swaggart's cavorting with a bargain-basement New Orleans hooker came to light a year later. Both men, ultimately, were defrocked. Both men remain in the ministry today, although they no longer have Assemblies of God credentials.
Swaggart's fall had the biggest impact. His television audience was bigger and he was giving millions of dollars to support missionaries and orphanages around the world. But the Pentecostal movement recovered and kept moving forward.
Haggard's humiliation is probably the biggest embarrassment to the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement since the late 1980s, but it's impact won't be quite the same.
Haggard doesn't have a huge national television audience. He doesn't pack stadiums around the country. He doesn't oversee a $150 million annual budget like Swaggart and Bakker did. His name recognition, I'm guessing, is lower than Swaggart's was. So the number of Americans feeling personally betrayed will be smaller this time. The pain within the evangelical community may not be as intense.
But Haggard was bigger than Swaggart and Bakker in one key way. Haggard was a Washington insider, with stronger ties to the White House. He was the elected leader and spokesman for the nation's entire evangelical movement. Time Magazine had named him one of the top 25 most influential evangelicals in the country. Haggard was also a moderate voice, urging evangelicals to take on such issues as global warming. Now, his influence has evaporated.
My guess is that Haggard won't follow in the footsteps of Swaggart or Bakker from this point on. Unlike Swaggart, he won't fight to hold onto his megachurch building. He won't continue to preach fiery, sweaty, tear-soaked sermons in front of now-deserted pews. Despite committing at least one crime (buying drugs), he probably won't be sent off to prison as Bakker was. Odds are, he won't move his ministry to Branson, Missouri (as Bakker did).
Supporters will say that God forgives and that Haggard should be forgiven, too. But history shows it's a lot easier for people to forgive than to forget. Once hypocrisy is exposed on a national stage, megapreachers never recover their former glory.