Plucking the Eagle's Wings

Spiritual Wickedness in High Places

network employee to acquire negative information. The barrage persisted for many years and, between 1987 and 1988, the worst storm in the history of Christian television hit. Three Major Ministries from 1987-1988 In the late 1980s, there were three prominent television ministers who reached into millions of American homes. Pat Robertson hosted the daily 700 Club from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Jim Bakker appeared daily, reaching over 15 million homes, and Jimmy Swaggart was considered to be America's most watched television evangelist. In 1988, reports came out about Jim Bakker's one-time affair in 1980. Jim often spoke about his personal struggles and his and Tammy's marital problems from PTL's beginning. Information also surfaced in February 1988 about Jimmy Swaggart's moral failure. The news literally exploded on the media front, and all this happened about the same time that Pat Robertson made a bid for the presidency. In 1988, beltway insiders never considered Robertson to be a serious contender until he organized a successful grass roots movement in Iowa. Pat's organization also showed strength in the straw polls, and some politicians worried that a television preacher might rally enough support to win the Republican nomination. Robertson's father had been a U.S. Senator and Robertson had attended Yale. His expertise in economics was appealing. Soon an arsenal of media assaults began flying like warheads as reporters hunted for dirt on Robertson. The personal attacks against Robertson failed, but the moral failures of the other two ministers helped to take the air out of the Robertson campaign. Bakker's and Swaggart's failures fueled cynicism among the general public and discouraged Christians. The media enjoyed roasting ministries in general and television evangelists in particular. This turbulence impacted over one hundred Christian television stations that were unable to meet their financial obligations and eventually sold their stations over the next ten years. Moral failure obviously led to the Bakker and Swaggart scandals. However, why did Bakker's seven-year-old, one-time affair come to light in 1988? While in Florida that year, I heard many suggest that the timing of the Bakker fiasco had political implications, intended to hurt Robertson's political possibilities. People on the left worried that liberal agendas would be neutralized if television ministers gained too many

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