It’s Unanimous: The Big News Is Sin

Holy congruity! This week Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report each plastered their covers and insides with the colorful characters and sinful details of the scandals currently rocking the $2-billion TV preacher business.

Newsweek pretty much sums up what the “Holy Wars” are all about on its cover: “Money, Sex and Power.” (In case anyone’s been out of the country, recent revelations of TV evangelist Jim Bakker’s 1980 fling with Jessica Hahn and the subsequent payment of hush money to her dethroned him as head of the $129-million PTL (“Praise the Lord”) TV ministry. Bakker has accused fiery Jimmy Swaggart of trying to take over the PTL’s TV network and amusement park.)

The three magazines concur on all the basic facts of the scandals. Newsweek, whose cover contains a most unflattering portrait of Jim Bakker and his wife Tammy, reaches a nobody-really-knows-what’s-next conclusion. Time concludes that the misdeeds of a few star preachers won’t weaken the 50-million-people-strong evangelical movement.

U.S. News takes the strongest stand. Its nine pages include results of its own investigation into the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s fund-raising and fund-spending habits and a feature on a middle-class, college-educated couple who both speak in tongues. In his back-page editorial, U.S. News editor David Gergen acknowledges that the scandals deserve the full-scale coverage they’ve gotten. But he argues that the evangelical movement--which he says has often been unfairly stereotyped as “backward, rural and unsophisticated” by the Establishment--is “a vital part of the spiritual life of the nation” that still “demands respect and understanding.”

The Yuppie Child

Yuppies are into owning kids now too. And Child--which calls itself “the new magazine for stylish parents” that “celebrates children and the family”--is obviously designed for them.

Put out by the same people who publish superfashionable Taxi magazine, Child is a glossied-out, gorgeous homage to beautiful people, their beautiful children and wanton conspicuous consumption. Yet there’s more to Child than fancy fashion spreads, ads with 3-year-olds modeling the latest tot’s ware from Esprit and articles about how 10-year-olds are wheeling and dealing in the stock market.

Regular departments provide dozens of helpfully specific reviews of children’s books, interactive videos and computer software for children. April’s long special report covers just about every aspect of school testing, from why and how kids are tested to problems about the accuracy, reliability and fairness of standardized tests and the rights of parents to gain access to both exams and scores. There’s useful advice on organizing imaginative birthday parties for 21 4-year-olds. A round-up of back-yard play sets. And, though they’re of dubious value to the under-incomed or three-child family, two articles recount the joys and the horrors of traveling to Europe with children.

The Hutterites

Washington, an exceptionally handsome bimonthly regional magazine, features a beautifully photographed and nicely written essay on one of the state’s colonies of Hutterites, an Amish-like religious group who cling tightly to values and traditions that have changed little since the Protestant Reformation.

Members of the devout, German-speaking Anabaptist sect dress in an old-fashioned style (though two youngsters are pictured wearing running shoes), don’t smoke and drink moderately. They’re hard-working, thrifty and strict pacifists. Unlike their equally photogenic cousins, the Amish, however, the Hutterites accept modern technology and live communally in about 270 virtually self-sufficient farm colonies in western Canada and the northwestern United States.

In the 1870s about 800 Hutterites fleeing religious persecution and seeking large tracts of good farm land migrated en masse from the Ukraine to North America (the Russians earlier had invited them to come from Switzerland to pioneer the Ukraine wilderness). Their German tongue and pacifism brought them a lot of trouble from the U.S. government during World War I, but nowadays they are left alone. As Paul Gross Sr., the 77-year-old elder and spiritual leader of his 40-person colony says simply, “We seek peace and the freedom to live as we believe God wants us to live.” It’s nice to see they’re able to do it.

Bits and Pieces

Among the wealth of interesting data about the rich in Fortune’s “What It Takes to Be Rich in America”: There are now more than 1.3 million U.S. millionaires (more than six times the number 20 years ago) and 70,000 households that can claim $10 million or more in assets. . . . New York magazine explains why Orion Pictures, which is riding high on the box-office success of such movies as “Platoon” and “Radio Days,” is so beloved by film makers like Oliver Stone and Woody Allen. . . . Spy magazine of New York is proving that it can sustain its ultra-clever level of satirical lunacy. The current issue includes a map of President Reagan’s near-naked body and a consumer guide to help inside traders and other white-collar crime perpetrators choose the right prison. . . .