SCANDALS IN EDEN, Selected Tales Of Religious Misbehavior, part 1

We're going to look at a class of people with an unbroken history of doing absolutely anything they want, and getting away with it.

Of all the seven deadly sins, avarice and greed are the hands down favorites of the priestly classes. Robbing the flock, in fact, is as much of a religious tradition as burning incense. In the medieval church, the popes trimmed their pillows with gold and ermine. One cardinal required 10 stables for his horses and 51 houses for his entourage. A wealthy sinner could buy dispensation to receive stolen goods, marry a cousin or sister, legitimize children, or (my personal favorite) divide a corpse so it could be buried in two different places. One Franciscan monk made his fortune selling pieces of the burning bush that spoke to Moses.

The reformist, splinter groups were generally worse. In 1534, when a group of radical Anabaptists took over the German town of Muenster, they stripped all the Catholics and Lutherans of their money, property and clothing, and sent them into exile during a blinding snowstorm. During a famine, they snatched up all the available food and strolled through town munching on snacks while everybody else slowly starved to death. Anyone who complained was beheaded, and the rest of the townsfolk were forced to look on, singing hymns.

In other words, we're going to look at a class of people with an unbroken history of doing absolutely anything they want, and getting away with it.

Their other great excess is sex. There's nothing wrong with sex, and it's certainly preferable to hustling people's life savings, but religious people are very excitable about it. They find it so repellant that they have appropriated the word "Moral" to describe someone who doesn't partake of it. In fact, the only reason that society thinks that sex is wrong is through the mouthings of the very men who get caught doing it. And, even though the names change and the trysting spots vary, they keep on doing it, almost as a class. A holy roller might even be described as a man who can't keep his lip or his fly buttoned.

BILLY JAMES HARGIS
Like country music, evangelism produces a lot of limited living legends. They can get rich, found dynasties, get whole towns named after them, but in New York they'd still wait an hour and a half for a table in a 3 star restaurant. They almost need a murder trial to get really famous, and even then I tend to get my Billy Rays mixed up with my Jimmy Bobs. Not only do all their names sound alike, they all preach the same Babylonian political agenda and they all talk like guys you'd meet in the army stockade. The FBI might even keep a "Holy Roller Profile", the same way they do with serial killers. And if they do, Billy James Hargis fits it like a designer condom.

Billy James Hargis, now in his 70's, built a career howling against the usual things that irritate the umbrageous right; sex, permissiveness, drugs, communism. A flat faced Oklahoman with the porcine eyes of a prison guard, he went from nowhere to top billing on 140 tv and 500 radio stations. He founded a Christian college and a newspaper which attained a circulation of 200,000. He got rich, of course, but as the bible tells us, money isn't everything.

In the mid-seventies, two students from his Bible College testified that the Reverend had officiated at their wedding ceremony, gone along on the honeymoon, and took his turn with the bride. And then with the groom. Then it came out that Hargis had been bringing college choir boys to his farm. Exhorting them with the biblical passage about David's friendship with Jonathan, and threatening them with blacklisting if they talked, Billy took them into his bed and did his devilish business with them. (The name of the choir was the "All American Kids.")

Confronted with these accusations, Hargis admitted it all, blaming it on "Genes and chromosomes." That confused his critics for a moment. Billy James had never been the kind of guy to trot in scientific arguments, so he stepped things up. He withdrew his confession and bounded back to the college. He claimed that the Lord had forgiven him, and, just in case He hadn't, held on to the mailing lists. He blamed his barnyard buggery on "Liberal subversion" and "The forces of Satan out to silence anti-communism." Before you laugh, bear in mind that this sort of Christian logic has elected more than a few American politicians.

The youngsters that he'd coaxed into his bed weren't laughing. By the standards of urban America they didn't do anything wrong, but out there, in their barren little world, they are scarred for life. Unlike Billy James, who has been "Forgiven" by the legions of potato heads and dimwits he's been suckering for so long. He is currently sitting around his farm in the Ozarks, brooding, scheming, plotting his comeback. He is still raving against permissiveness, too.

In 1110, a mad mystic named Tanchelm, convinced that he was the Messenger Of The Lord, made his followers drink his bathwater. It was supposed to have holy properties and they lined up for it, paying for the privilege. As with Billy James and his moral righteousness, some people will swallow anything.