Schuller Backs Bakker, Deplores His Treatment

The Rev. Robert Schuller on Wednesday offered moral support to fellow preacher Jim Bakker, saying it was “almost cruel” for others to have made public his sexual liaison with a church secretary while he was already saddled with family problems.

Speaking to reporters at the Anaheim Marriott Hotel, where he addressed a meeting of the National Assn. of Executives, Schuller said: “Jim Bakker has not said he was faultless. He has admitted to the fact that what he did was wrong, wrong, wrong. And what he did was wrong, wrong, wrong.”

Schuller, who has not been directly involved in the uproar that has emerged over Bakker’s involvement with a New York woman and subsequent decision to hand over his ministry to evangelist Jerry Falwell, spoke to reporters because he had been inundated with requests to speak to the media. Schuller knows many of the principals and said he had spoken recently to Bakker.

Schuller made reference Wednesday to the attacks against Bakker. Television evangelist Jimmy Swaggart has acknowledged that he warned officials of the Assemblies of God about Bakker’s encounter and urged the church to distance itself from Bakker’s work.

Schuller said: “What I think is tragic is the world knew that (Bakker’s) wife Tammy was in the Betty Ford clinic trying to be healed from a drug addiction. Now for a man to live with his wife in that kind of a moment (and) to be hit with a judgment from others, I think is really almost cruel.

Questions Timing

“I see no reason why, if a judgment was necessary, why in kindness and compassion it could not have at least been delayed until such a time as Tammy was well and Jim could think the thing through clearly and not be under the stress of the family problems.”

Bakker’s resignation last week from his South Carolina-based ministry has prompted an uproar among evangelists and their followers. When he resigned, Bakker described a brief sexual affair seven years ago and said he was being blackmailed and was quitting to prevent a “diabolical plot” to take over the PTL (Praise the Lord) ministries.

Schuller said he called Bakker on Sunday to find out “what the score was” regarding Bakker and Jessica Hahn, the church secretary with whom Bakker admitted being involved.

“What he told me privately I couldn’t quote because it’s language that wouldn’t probably be in the best taste even though it would be very funny,” Schuller said.

He then elaborated on the conversation, adding: “What he said to me was the whole thing was such a crazy idea, that the 15 minutes I spent in the room with this girl, I was so scared I couldn’t have done it anyway.”

Bakker and Hahn apparently met in a Clearwater Beach, Fla., hotel room in 1980.

Last week Bakker’s attorney, Roy Grutman, said “people in glass churches shouldn’t throw stones . . . ,” and some people assumed that he was referring to Schuller, pastor of the Crystal Cathedral with its 10,000 glass panes in Garden Grove. When asked by The Times about his comment, Grutman said it was just a phrase and was not aimed at Schuller. Grutman was later to charge that evangelist Jimmy Swaggart was behind the plot to oust his client,

Predicts an Impact

Schuller, whose “Hour of Power” television program is seen by an estimated 3 million people every Sunday, said the publicity surrounding his colleagues will ultimately have an impact on all television preachers.

“There’s got to be because . . . frankly, it’s embarrassing to me,” Schuller said. “Whatever profession you are in . . . if suddenly a lot of stellar performers in your profession made the headlines in a negative frame of light, you’d probably be embarrassed to admit . . . I’m a television preacher.”

Asked if this is an inevitable result of TV religion becoming big business, with ministers waging war on one another in order to capture their audiences, Schuller said: “I suppose you can never avoid the possibility of human ambition or ego or greed coming into the picture. Ministers are not perfect people.”

Times staff writer Mark I. Pinsky and the Associated Press contributed to this report.