Swaggart Calls for Bakker Associate to Quit His PTL Ministry

Television evangelist Jimmy Swaggart called Friday for Jim Bakker’s right-hand man to resign from the troubled PTL ministry because he was allegedly involved in a payment scheme to cover up Bakker’s 1980 extramarital sexual encounter with a church secretary.

“I have intimate knowledge that Richard Dortch was involved in the cover-up. . . . I’ve seen the documents. It’s impossible for him to continue as I see it,” Swaggart said during a press conference at the Los Angeles Sports Arena.

Later, Swaggart opened a three-day evangelistic crusade Friday night that nearly filled the 15,000-seat arena with a singing, clapping, hugging crowd.

Dortch, who replaced Bakker as host of the popular PTL television program, also faces accusations of a conflict of interest. He is involved in investigating the financial settlement that he reportedly helped arrange for the woman, Jessica Hahn, after her representatives confronted PTL officials with details of the dalliance.

Member of New Board

As a member of the new board chaired by Falwell, Dortch will help determine how the $265,000 settlement for Hahn was arranged.

Bakker, admitting last week that he had engaged in a single sexual encounter with Hahn at a Florida motel, turned over control of his $129-million-a-year South Carolina ministry to fundamentalist television preacher Jerry Falwell, who also heads the Liberty Foundation.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Assemblies of God denomination, of which Bakker, Dortch and Swaggart are all ministers, said Friday that Dortch had tendered his resignation last week, without explanation.

Terry Terrell said officials at the church’s Springfield, Mo., headquarters had not yet acted on Dortch’s letter of resignation. The denomination is also following a formal disciplinary process that could lead to the revocation of Bakker’s ordination as one of the Assemblies’ 30,000 Pentecostal ministers in the United States.

Neither Dortch nor his press aide was available for comment Friday.

Takeover Plot Denied

As he had done earlier this week, Swaggart adamantly denied accusations by Bakker’s attorney and others that he had masterminded a plot to take over Bakker’s religious empire. But Swaggart accused Bakker, one of the nation’s most powerful television ministers, of not yet repenting for his sexual transgression because he was not accepting the blame for it.

Swaggart said he was convinced that Hahn “by and large was telling the truth” in a deposition she gave complaining about her encounter with Bakker in 1980.

“When someone repents, and I cite a Biblical example, David never blamed it on Bathsheba,” Swaggart said during the news conference. “He never blamed it on a hot, sultry night. He just said, ‘Lord, it is my fault. I have sinned . . . I alone have done this thing. No excuses. No cop-out.’

“Jim Bakker, as I see it, has not done that yet.”

According to Bakker’s version of the incident, he confessed the infidelity to a Christian psychologist and to his wife, Tammy Faye, soon after it happened. Bakker has insisted that the tryst was set up by “treacherous former friends” who then set out to blackmail him.

No Animosity

Swaggart said that despite differences with both Falwell and Bakker, he holds no animosity toward them or any of the other television evangelists, who have been thrown into an uproar over the PTL scandal and its aftermath.

“If Jim Bakker truly repented and walked straight I would do anything and everything within my power to be of service and help him. . . . He most definitely could be welcomed back” to his ministry, the Louisiana-based evangelist said.

But at the same time, Swaggart said that a decision to restore Bakker to the PTL ministry would have to be made by Falwell.

Meanwhile, on Friday morning’s “PTL Show”--hastily renamed from “The Jim and Tammy Show”--host Dortch twice asked followers to send contributions for PTL’s television costs.

“Our television bills are going to be paid,” he said. “We want our network affiliates to know they’re going to be paid.” PTL is also continuing to pay Bakker’s salary.

‘Give Us the Extra’

Later in the show, Dortch said: “I can never remember anyone in this church asking you to give the ultimate. We believe your tithes belong in your local church. We are just asking you to give us the extra.

Swaggart, during the Los Angeles press conference, insisted that he, Falwell and Bakker had not been competing for the same money from television viewers. And he said that the fact that Falwell, with the acquisition of PTL, had doubled his financial base, “doesn’t affect me at all.”

While he conceded that the swirling uproar over the television preachers was “the work of Satan,” Swaggart defended his role in bringing Bakker’s alleged misdeeds to the attention of church authorities.

The situation was “a cancer” that needed to be cut out of the church, Swaggart said.

“I put my ministry on the line. . . . I went public as I felt I had to do in no uncertain terms. I don’t know what my audience will do; I don’t know how it will affect my money . . . my image. . . . But if the whole church turns against me I still got to preach what I believe is the truth.”

Lashes at ‘Hypocrites’

Lashing out at “hypocrites” and “false prophets” as he preached at the Sports Arena Friday night, Swaggart asked to be saved “from pompadoured pretty-boys with their hair done and their nails done who call themselves preachers,” suggesting that “millions are deceived” and “duped” by such people.

A sampling of people in the audience indicated they held divided opinions about the PTL affair and its impact on television evangelism.

Mark Sell, 20, a student at Whittier College, said the reports “in no way destroyed my faith in the spread of the gospel by means of television.”

Cynthia Robert, a Downey housewife, was suspicious: “A lot of these evangelists know a lot more than they are saying,” she said. “People may feel because of this you can’t trust anyone--that everyone’s crooked.”

She added that she had watched the PTL show for a couple of years, and, “I do believe that Jim Bakker is guilty. But I think most Christian people have forgiven him.”

A Baptist minister visiting with his wife from Buffalo, N.Y., said criticism of television preachers “was a long time in coming. It’s an opportunity for accountability that can only lead to credibility,” said James W. Andrews.

“I don’t believe that the gospel needs to be presented in a glamorous manner,” he added, referring to the PTL Club. “I have never been able to identify with emotionalism and an intimidating appeal for money.”

Times staff writer Peter H. King also contributed to this story.