PTL

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Religion-beat crash: RNS wades into intersectional fight between LGBTQ clout and race

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Religion-beat crash: RNS wades into intersectional fight between LGBTQ clout and race

The journalism nightmare begins with an email, a text or, in the old days, a telephone call or a photocopy of a document in the mail.

Sources may or may not demand to remain anonymous. They want your newsroom to dive into a controversy that — in most cases — involves money, sex, power and what violations of religious law, criminal laws or both.

The source has tons of information on one side of a conflict that has two sides, or more. There is no way to write the story without multiple voices speaking — but only one side will talk. Nine times out of 10, there are legitimate issues of confidentiality, often legalities linked to counseling or medical care.

The reporter describes all of this to an editor. It’s clear this story will require untold hours of research (money, in newsroom terms) and, if the story ever pans out, the result will be long and complicated. The editor’s eyes glaze over. The question: Why is this story worth the time, money and effort?

I got one of those calls, long ago, about the sex life and financial times of PTL’s Jim Bakker. Eventually Charlotte Observer editors passed, pulling me off that lead. I left and, years later, a great reporter (see the essential Charles E. Shepard book) pulled the evolving threads together for a Pulitzer.

I cannot imagine how many emails and calls Robert Downen and Houston Chronicle reporters fielded before being allowed to dig into years of sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention. I’m waiting for the book.

All of this is a long introduction to the challenges that, I suspect, loom over this double-decker Religion News Service headline:

Why the largest US Lutheran denomination apologized to a Latino congregation

It’s been a ‘perfect storm’ of charismatic personalities and a heightened awareness of racism, all brewing in one of the country’s whitest denominations

But the story doesn’t open with issues linked to race.

What we see in this unbelievably complicated story is a head-on collision between key elements of postmodern theories about “intersectionality.” Think race, sex, gender, economics and the demographic realities facing the declining world of oldline liberal Protestantism.


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Steamy Jerry Falwell Jr., story will get lots of ink: But what happens now at Liberty University?

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Steamy Jerry Falwell Jr., story will get lots of ink: But what happens now at Liberty University?

It will not surprise readers that this week’s “Crossroads” podcast is about the Jerry Falwell Jr., scandal at Liberty University (click here to tune that in). However, I hope that this podcast focuses on a different angle of the crisis than what most news consumers are seeing in print and on television.

From my perspective, there are two important stories unfolding here — not one scandal. How journalists cover these stories will, in large part, be based on whether they only care about Falwell the celebrity (and Donald Trump, of course), as opposed to what went wrong at Liberty University and what the school could become in the future.

So what happens next? What happens with the scandals surrounding Falwell and his wife Becki? This is where I see so many parallels to the Jim and Tammy Bakker PTL scandal in the 1980s. All week long I’ve been having flashbacks to the many telephone calls I received at The Charlotte News (RIP) from alleged insiders wanting to share dirt about the Bakker’s financial and sexual misadventures.

As it turned out, one anonymous caller was telling the truth, or a small part of it. That caller was the bisexual Rev. John Wesley Fletcher, who was doing his best to crash the Bakker empire. Fletcher was telling part of the truth about Jim Bakker, while conveniently editing out his own sins in that torrid melodrama.

What did I learn from the PTL scandal that is relevant here?

The accusers on both siders were hiding crucial information, while sharing some information that was accurate. I think that’s true with the Falwell scandal, as well. Meanwhile, it helps to remember that Falwell is a lawyer, not a minister. I suspect that he knows most of the evidence that accuser Giancarlo Granda has in hand. So reporters need to watch carefully: Do either of these men actually want a day in court? Who wants to testify under oath and endure the rigors of the legal discover process?

The other crucial question, of course, is this: What did leaders of the Liberty board of trustees know and when did they know it?

This is a stunningly complex set of stories. It’s interesting that, in the mainstream coverage, the Washington Post pointed to almost all of the crucial issues on Monday night in an understated and solid early story.

By the way, please note that the Post has religion-beat pros and a higher-education specialist working on this mega-story. Attention managers of other elite newsrooms: Go thou and do likewise.

Here are two crucial passages, in terms of tone and content:


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Jim Bakker plus real estate plus the apocalypse plus zero new reporting equals WHAT?

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Jim Bakker likes to build things.

In the old days be built really big things and news consumers with a long attention span will remember how that turned out. Click here for a recent news update.

Today he's building smaller things -- like Ozark cabins for the post-apocalyptic age. Buyers will need lots of Bakker approved religious-home furnishings, of course.

As you would imagine, there are people who want to write about that. The question is whether, in a social-media and Internet journalism age, WRITING about this topic actually requires journalists at a major newspaper in the Midwest to do any new REPORTING, other than with an Internet search engine.

Here's the Kansas City Star headline: "Televangelist Jim Bakker calls his Missouri cabins the safest spot for the Apocalypse." Read this story and count the online and streaming info sources. I'll start you off with the overture:

Televangelist Jim Bakker suggests that if you want to survive the end of days, the best thing you could do is buy one of his cabins in Missouri's Ozark Mountains. And while you're at it, be sure to pick up six 28-ounce "Extreme Survival Warfare" water bottles for $150.

Bakker, 78, made comments promoting his Morningside church community alongside his co-host and wife, Lori, on an episode of "The Jim Bakker Show," which aired Tuesday. The show is filmed there, near Branson.

Then there's a short flashback to the PTL Club days in Charlotte, with no attribution necessary. That's followed by a temptress Jessica Hahn update, care of reporting by The Charlotte Observer a few months ago. Then a bit more history, with no attribution.

Then we're back to information gained by watching the new Bakker show from Branson.

But wait. Read this next part carefully.


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Lessons from the past: Who is building a super-ministry in ruins of Jim Bakker's dream?

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As a former religion-beat guy in Charlotte, and a veteran of the Jim Bakker and PTL wars of the 1980s (click here for my flashback), I was -- of course -- very interested in The Charlotte Observer's lengthy update on the status of the old Heritage USA.

Here's the totally logical headline on this solid -- but narrow -- feature: "Jim Bakker’s theme park was like a Christian Disneyland. Here’s what happened to it." What's missing? Hold that thought.

As the story notes, Heritage USA was supposed to grow into a kind of Disneyland for charismatic Christians, but things fell apart before the 2,300-acre complex reached the roller coaster ride through heaven and hell stage of development. For those in need of a refresher on why there is this:

Construction had already begun by then on two other mega-projects: A sand castle with a 10-story turret that would house the world’s largest Wendy’s restaurant, and a high-rise hotel to be called Heritage Grand Towers. When finished, reported the Heritage Herald, a weekly newspaper for tourists and those living on the PTL property, the tower’s “elegantly furnished” 500 rooms would include 100 honeymoon suites “for couples who come to Heritage USA to renew their marriages.”
Two months later, Bakker suddenly resigned amid financial and sexual scandal. His plans were scrapped, the ongoing construction halted. Today, three decades after Bakker’s dreams gave way to a nightmarish spell of bankruptcy, lawsuits and prison, many of the magnets that once drew people to Heritage USA are long gone.

The architectural corpse that gets the most attention in this piece -- fittingly enough -- is Bakker's never-finished, never-occupied 21-story tower. It continues its slow decay, while the current owners dream of expanded ministries that sound eerily familiar.

This is the crucial part of the story that I hope Observer editors return to, in depth, in the future. Why? Well, I am biased because this is the part of the story that I kept writing newsroom memos about in the early 1980s, trying to convince editors that there was a national-level story at the foundation of the Bakker scandals.


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