TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/072291/0722106.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.9 KB | 134 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 28

FEUDS

God and Money Part 9


In court, two besmirched evangelists battle over assets that
evaporated in scandals of the '80s

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III -- Reported by Richard Woodbury/New
Orleans


    For millions of committed Christians, the late '80s
brought agonizing disillusionment. One after another, some of
the country's most prominent Protestant televangelists revealed
themselves as pious pretenders, driven by lust or avarice or
unsaintly ego. Perhaps most distressing was the ammunition the
scandals gave to the skeptical and scornful. While erstwhile
believers in Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart and Marvin Gorman winced
at the exposes of dalliance and the unconvincing protestations
of repentance, countless other Americans were laughing.

    Now, just when it seemed the humiliating high jinks were
safely in the past, they're back. In New Orleans last week, jury
selection began in a $90 million defamation suit filed by Gorman
against Swaggart and his allies, which gives promise of even
more bizarre allegations -- including infidelities by the dozen
and demonic possession straight out of The Exorcist. The
proceedings will also offer further dispiriting evidence that
leading televangelists saw preaching as a business rather than
a calling. Out of their own mouths, it seems, will come harsher
accusations than anything in Elmer Gantry.

    Gorman, former pastor of a 5,000-member First Assembly of
God Church in New Orleans and TV preacher on 57 stations, led
off the roundelay of forced sexual confessions. In July 1986,
his fellow minister Swaggart summoned him to a makeshift
tribunal at Swaggart's First Assembly headquarters in Baton
Rouge, La., where Gorman was confronted with charges of adultery
and pressured into resigning his ministry immediately. Gorman
closed the circle two years later when he unveiled surveillance
photos of Swaggart emerging from a motel room with a prostitute.
That led in short order to Swaggart's ouster and the gradual
dissipation of his far larger teleministry. But wrecking his
nemesis -- while offering ostensibly sympathetic prayers for him
-- did not satisfy Gorman. Now he is suing for wealth he
believes would have been his were it not for Swaggart's
vendetta, which Gorman says was motivated by business rivalry
rather than morality. As proof, he argues that the drumbeat of
rumor from Swaggart only intensified after Gorman quit their
shared faith.

    Among the charges Gorman says the Swaggart camp falsely
spread:

    -- that Gorman had more than 100 adulterous affairs over
decades (he admits to two, only one involving sexual
intercourse);

    -- that he had "multiple immoral incidents . . . with
women who came to him for counseling";

    -- that he sired illegitimate children;

    -- that he stole church funds;

    -- that he had Mafia connections;

    -- that he emanated an "evil spirit," which entered a
woman and spoke in Gorman's voice as it was exorcised by
Assembly of God preacher Tom Miller.

    Beyond the whispering campaign, Gorman's attorneys hint at
coercion. They suggest his programs were dropped from the
satellite owned by James Bakker, of PTL teleministry notoriety,
as a quid pro quo for Swaggart's business on the same system,
and for the Louisiana preacher's silence about PTL hush money
to Bakker paramour Jessica Hahn. If that was the deal, it didn't
last: within a year Swaggart became one of Bakker's denouncers
and helped bring about his resignation and PTL's financial
collapse.

    Swaggart's basic defense, his lawyers say, is that any
charges he made were factual. Says attorney Phillip Wittmann:
"It's a very simple case to defend."

    Gorman may exaggerate the threat he posed to Swaggart,
whose operations were grossing $140 million a year before his
fall. But he was beyond question a fast-rising figure. More
important, Gorman was lining up wider distribution via two
Louisiana TV stations and a satellite uplink -- a purchase that
was scheduled to occur the day he quit the church. Gorman
contends he could have brought the plan off but for Swaggart's
accusations. Instead his TV ministry went bankrupt in 1987, and
he left the airwaves. His new church, the Metropolitan Christian
Centre in suburban Metairie, La., has 450 congregants, and
Gorman returned to the airwaves this month on a New Orleans UHF
station. But his dream of a Texas-to-Alabama regional network
has been dashed, and his debt exceeds $5 million.

    Even if Gorman wins, Swaggart Ministries may not prove
that much more of a prize. Once the most widely viewed of all
televangelists, Swaggart has lost four-fifths of his weekly
audience, plummeting from 2.2 million viewers to fewer than
400,000. Enrollment at his Bible college is down by two-thirds,
to 450, and several floors of a classroom building have been
leased out. An intended 12-story dormitory, half a block from
his showcase Family Worship Center, stands abandoned in
mid-construction, its windows void of glass, tall weeds crowding
its rusted entryway. Swaggart can still draw the faithful: a
couple of weeks ago, 1,200 people attended a three-hour Sunday
service, at which he sang, preached and pleaded for money. But
Swaggart attorney and co-defendant William Treeby concedes,
"We're suffering." Jeffrey Hadden, a University of Virginia
scholar of televangelists, says Swaggart has stayed relatively
debt-free. "Otherwise," Hadden explains, "he wouldn't have made
it. But he doesn't have $5 million in change lying around."

    The pivotal effort in any civil suit is to enlist the
sympathy of jurors, to make them want to help. One prospective
juror was excused last week when she said, in response to
questioning, that she would have trouble being objective because
"the sin of hypocrisy is worse than adultery." By that standard,
both sides in this trial might be in trouble.