SCANDALS IN EDEN, A Quick Romp through Gospelgate, part 3

Even when they held a wedding for Tammy Faye's dogs (who wore matching gold collars) and gave them an air conditioned doghouse - the Bakkers still managed to coax something like a billion dollars out of a nation too stingy to pay for school lunches.

A QUICK ROMP THROUGH GOSPELGATE No discussion of religious scandals would be complete without at least a quick look at Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and all of the other lovable characters of the Gospelgate Holy Wars. You could say the same about a discussion of humanity, for that matter. Gospelgate may be the definitive example of the believer's eternal need to be suckered. Even when the characters started getting really weird - when they held a wedding for Tammy Faye's dogs (who wore matching gold collars) and gave them an air conditioned doghouse; or when Jim put on black lace underpants and tried to seduce his male executives - the Bakkers still managed to coax something like a billion dollars out of a nation too stingy to pay for school lunches. As the bible tells us, "The tabernacles of the robbers prosper..."(Old Testament, Job, vii, 6)

JESSICA HAHN'S FIRST RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Jessica Hahn, first bimbo in a bimbo-rich year, did not, as many people think, get the Word from Jim Bakker. Indeed, she hardly got any word from him at all, beyond things like "Roll over, Honey." Her first brush with true religion came at 15 when she encountered the Reverend Gene Profeta. Rev. Profeta was a big, flamboyant fellow, and when it came to squeezing money out of his faithful flock, he was a veritable one-man olive press. Presiding over a congregation that rarely exceeded 2000 members, he managed to extract a private plane, several oversize cars and a mink coat. He also earned the nickname "Pistol Packing Preacher", reputedly carrying a couple of six-guns. Jessica joined his church and eventually attracted the attention of John Wesley Fletcher, an alcoholic faith healer who worked as one of Jim Bakker's thugs. He was the one who introduced Jessica to her fateful "blind date" in the Miami hotel room.

When Jessica told her story and became notorious, she also seemed to have discovered a facility for whistle blowing. She then testified against old Two Gun Profeta in his own grand jury indictment for fraud, an aspect of American Evangelism that seems to be as unavoidable as Bible College.

JIMMY MACK
Jimmy Swaggart seems to have been the most visibly neurotic player in the Gospelgate melodrama. Jimmy had deep, dark problems; threatening, frightening, and downright creepy. Of all the mental disorders swirling around the Holy Wars, Jimmy's seem to have been the most sincere.

Jimmy Swaggart was a throwback to the fire and brimstone school of preaching. The kind who warned you that God was an angry, fire-spitting hanging judge; the kind who delighted in describing the torments of Hell, right down to the last gouged-out eyeball. He was also the doppleganger of his cousin Jerry Lee Lewis, playing gospel-based piano and cavorting around onstage. One of them took the wrong road, and for almost 3 decades everybody thought that it was Jerry Lee.

Jimmy's angle was sex-bashing. He raved and snarled against sex with such a vicious hatred that you might have thought that it was Louis Farrakkhan talking about mini-skirts. To hear Jimmy tell it, a stiff dick was worse than a cancerous liver. Sex became his cash crop, a subject so potent that he ended up making eleven million dollars a month dissing it. And when he wrote his sermons, all he had to do was follow the first rule of scriveners everywhere. Write about what you know.

But there was business in the real world too. Jimmy, a nasty infighter and dangerous enemy, had virtually ruined a rival evangelist named Marvin Gorman, getting him to admit to an "Immoral Act" of adultery in 1986. Marvin was defrocked, went bankrupt, and is now limited to preaching in desanctified churches. He also, apparently, vowed revenge. When Marvin got a tip that Jimmy was fooling around himself, he didn't hesitate to strike back.

And not just fooling around, that's for regular guys like you and me and Marvin Gorman. Jimmy was going well beyond that. In fact, Jimmy was riding to Hell on a pair of rollerblades. He was laying with a paid harlot, one Debbie Murphree, and paying other whores to stand around and watch. He wanted Murphree's 9 year old daughter to do the same thing. He once asked her to jump out of the car, stark naked, so he could enjoy the shocked expressions on people's faces. This wasn't just sin, this was the kind of stuff people use to get out of the army.

Some photos of Jimmy, a motel room and a prostitute were taken and sent to the church elders, and all signs pointed to Marv. Jimmy had to go crawling before his congregation and beg forgiveness, while Marvin carefully refrained from cackling in public. In fact, desanctified but unable to keep his mouth shut, Marvin proclaimed that he would "pray" for Jimmy's soul. Gospel guys do this a lot. It's an all purpose retort, and it can be a great euphemism for "Get even with" or "Laugh at" or even "Fuck over". And it's hard to picture Marvin Gorman kneeling in prayer, beseeching the Lord to smile upon the man who sent him to the Christian equivalent of a Siberian Power station. More likely, he was rolling on the floor, laughing hysterically, thanking the Lord for smiting his enemies.

Nor did he stop there. He brought his lawyers into it, and the result of that was a $10 million slander suit which Jimmy has been ordered to pay. After that, Jimmy got busted again, riding with a hooker heading through a concentration of trick motels that Indio, California calls "Love Street". It was the kind of a one-two punch that would have sent another man into a different kind of work.

Jimmy, however, like a South Bronx crack dealer, doesn't know any different kind of work. The minute he got out on bail he was back fighting for his turf. He reported that he fell asleep with the bible, asking the Lord what to do. "When I awoke", he reported, "The Holy Spirit was rolling all over me." He also said that he would "Pray" for Marvin Gorman. We can only hope that Marvin keeps his desanctified intruder alarms in good repair.

These days, Jimmy is also preaching in an independent, desanctified church. Jimmy and Marv, in their titanic struggle, dragged each other from Carnegie Hall to a shopping mall in Kansas. People still come to hear him, but you could say the same about Fabian, and the word is that Jimmy's days in the main ring are over. Grass is growing through the entrance of his bible school, and the folks that used to stand in line after a sermon to hug him and stuff fifty dollar bills into his pockets have taken their affection to other saintly fellows. As the bible tells us, and should have told them, "Let not oil of sinners make fat my head." (New testament, Apocalypse, 1)

CONCLUSION
There may have been some laughts in this story, but Religious hustlers aren't really funny. Quite apart from their merciless milking of simpleminded folk who can ill afford it, they are embarked upon a campaign of mind manipulation unseen since Dr. Goebbells. Their aim is to turn the United States, and then the world, into a Christian planet, with a new world order dreamed up by guys like Billy James Hargis.

Every time one of them falls, 90 replacements pop up like gophers. Each one of them is well-scrubbed, solemn and ambitious, with the principles of a Hollywood starlet. They are the spiritual advisors of America's right wing. Over the years they have outlawed adultery, alcohol, most of the enjoyable drugs, pornography and abortion, and now they have their beady little eyes on art itself. We have only a handful of weapons against them, and exposing their sexual peccadillos is practically the only one that still works.

And after that, I think that we should - ah - pray for them.