The news about the resurrection of Jim Bakker led me to search for some video of the televangelist's halcyon days, and I discovered a fantastic YouTube compilation of the greatest hits of televangelism, circa the Reagan era: the Bakkers' Heritage USA fraud; Jerry Falwell's attempts to save Heritage USA from collapse, his charges of Jim's homosexuality, and his notorious fully-clothed free fall down the Heritage USA water slide; Jessica Hahn with her big '80s hair, accusing Jim of having sex with her and then paying her hush money; and Oral Roberts' plea for money for his university lest God take him home early. Here's Notable Evangelical Moments (Part I):
Back in the late 1980s, Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart were universally ridiculed for sexual and financial improprieties. Many thought that Bakker's fraud, his alleged homosexuality, his affair with Hahn, and Swaggart's propensity for hookers, would spell the end of televangelism for profit. But today we see popular televangelists threatening to declare holy war on congressional investigators, major presidential candidates using televangelists for fundraisers, and a credulous following believing that God's anointed ones are entitled to great riches and that questioning them is satanic. The only popular figure who can't be forgiven is Ted Haggard , because the ultimate sin is not stealing other people's money or cheating on your wife, but being gay. So when people shout with glee that the religious right is dead because no one listens to James Dobson anymore, or Falwell is dead, or because the political elites can't get it together to endorse the same candidate, I just have to laugh (or cry). The continuing vibrancy of televangelism is just one bit of evidence of it, but the fundamental belief that anyone spreading Christ's word -- even if in a most un-Christian way -- is entitled to a free ride is a very big part of what continues to fuel its engine. God's messengers are entitled to forgiveness and redemption. Except, of course, if they're gay. --Sarah Posner
