Flap Will Not Doom Evangelicalism : Strength Is in Movement’s Vision, Not Its Personalities

For well over a decade Jim and Tammy Bakker have exhibited their spiritual and moral vulnerabilities with embarrassing and often histrionic candor on prime-time television.

For many, even within evangelicalism, such exhibitions have tested the limits of plausibility. For others they have been a mark of sainthood. Yet, whether saints or charlatans, the Bakkers’ public credibility has been perhaps permanently undermined as a consequence of recent exposes.

Many liberals are gloating. For those whose image of evangelical Protestant preachers has never gone beyond Sinclair Lewis’ “Elmer Gantry,” Christmas has come early. The facade of hyper-piety has been at long last stripped away, exposing the self-aggrandizing and opportunistic nature of these leaders and their ministries. Pleased to see their critical assumptions about “these people” verified, many observers now fully expect widespread disillusionment to set in: Television ratings will plummet, phoned-in prayer requests will dwindle, contributions will dry up and the banks that hold the mortgages for the Heritage U.S.A. theme park will be talking foreclosure. Many hold an even grander view of apocalypse: The Bakker scandal, they say, may even signal the downfall of the broader evangelical movement.

They are wrong. Though many evangelicals hold strong affection for and loyalty to particular preachers, it is not these bonds that define the movement. These personalities may provide a rallying point, a celebrity to identify with, but their appeal lies in the values that they proclaim and the way of life that they promote. It is these values and this way of life that provide the cohesion and vitality for the movement.

Evangelicals, in all their diversity, are simply people who strive to maintain a biblical theism as the core of their individual and collective lives. Though enculturated in various ways and to varying degrees, this theism nevertheless has generated--and is buttressed by--a vast network of social institutions: churches, Sunday schools, small group fellowships and Bible studies, independent Christian schools (up to 18,000 of them), Bible colleges, liberal-arts colleges and seminaries (more than 500 in all), magazines and newspapers (more than 400), a major publishing industry (with up to 80 publishing houses accounting for a $1-billion-a-year book business), a gospel music industry, radio stations and TV programs and networks.

The evangelical television ministry is certainly a visible tiller of this subculture, but it is anything but central. The strength of the movement, then, is found not in its leadership but in a particular vision of reality and the expansive set of institutions that sustain the vision. Even before his own flirtation with conservative Protestantism, Bob Dylan talked of “road maps for the soul.” The “maps” that evangelicalism offers provide clear moral coordinates by which well over 40 million Americans navigate their lives.

Another reason to suppose that the Bakkers’ problems will have little effect on the broader phenomena is that they’re not the first to suffer public disgrace. Robert Pearsall Smith, one of the popular leaders of Victorian perfectionism, had to be retired after stories of sexual scandal. More recently a similar fate befell Billy James Hargis of the anti-communist crusade. Anita Bryant’s divorce prompted her disappearance from moral advocacy as well. Other cases could be mentioned, but none of these scandals ever substantially undermined the vitality of the larger movement.

This is not to suggest that evangelicals hold an extraordinary tolerance for public hypocrisy. The vast majority simply interpret these events as proof that even these leaders are vulnerable to the weakness in us all. All the same, evangelicals could learn a lesson from their Roman Catholic counterparts on this point. Catholics have the good sense to wait until people are long dead before elevating them to sainthood.

There is at least one likely consequence of the Bakkers’ fall from public grace. It is the soiling of the image of evangelicalism. Not that this image was unsullied before--after all, theologically conservative Protestantism was long a bastion of racist and anti-Semitic sentiment.

But this scandal will solidify existing cultural stereotypes, confirming what many already “knew” to be true.

The greatest temptation here is to unfairly assume that the anti-intellectualism, superficial piety and hypocrisy that might be imputed to the Bakkers are characteristic of all conservative Protestants.

Such characterizations not only contribute to an incivility in public discourse but also are intellectually shallow and inaccurate. Evangelicalism, and all its complexity, will remain a significant component of American cultural life for a long time. Its vitality is not fundamentally challenged by the unfolding televangelistic soap opera. Those musing otherwise will likely find themselves greatly disappointed.