‘Dirty’ Rival Linked to Bakker Case

A rival evangelist playing “mean and dirty” was responsible for the revelation that TV evangelist Jim Bakker had a sexual encounter with a church secretary in 1980, Bakker’s lawyer said Saturday.

“There is not a person in America who would not recognize him,” New York attorney Norman Roy Grutman said of the alleged rival evangelist whom the lawyer would not identify.

Grutman said the evangelist is a prominent head of a national religious organization and is spreading exaggerated stories about Bakker as part of a plot to take over his ministry.

“That incident was being exploited and magnified in the hands of his rival,” Grutman said of Bakker’s sexual encounter and payment later of hush money.

Grutman warned that a “religious civil war” would ignite if the evangelist did not desist in his assault on Bakker’s character.

“If he wants to play mean and dirty, he better be prepared to get hurt,” Grutman said. “People with glass churches shouldn’t throw stones. I’ve got some things on him. I’d hate to have to bring them out.”

A CBS radio newscaster Saturday added this observation to the reference to “glass churches”: “The most famous glass church in the country is Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral in California.”

On Saturday night, the Rev. Robert Schuller of the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove denied he was the evangelist referred to by Grutman. Schuller said he had “no information or knowledge of this situation beyond what he has heard or read in the news.”

Grutman told The Times that Schuller was not the evangelist he referred to in his earlier statements. “I did not mean to suggest” that Schuller was involved, Grutman said.

Bakker stepped down Thursday as head of the $129-million PTL television ministry.