Great Opportunity, Great Risk Seen for Falwell as PTL Leader

Fundamentalist Jerry Falwell faces both unparalleled opportunities and enormous risks by taking command of the scandal-scarred PTL kingdom created by charismatic evangelist Jim Bakker, religious analysts say.

At the moment, they see Falwell wearing a hero’s medal for coming to the rescue of a fallen brother in evangelism.

But they say Falwell’s reputation and ministry could sink like a rock if he makes the wrong moves.

In fact, leaders of the fundamental Baptist group to which Falwell belongs have approved a statement expressing “deep apprehension” about Falwell getting mixed up with religious leaders whose theology they have always written off as invalid. Growing opposition from this group and other independent Baptists threatens Falwell’s carefully built support base.

PTL founder-president Bakker suddenly announced March 19 that he was turning over his multimillion-dollar TV network and vacation resort in South Carolina to Falwell. Bakker declared that he couldn’t muster the strength to fight expected revelations in the media that he had a sexual encounter with a young woman in 1980 and had paid money trying to keep it quiet. His denomination, the Assemblies of God, had also begun an investigation of the matter.

‘On Top of the Heap’

“Falwell’s the statesman right now. He got down in the rubble and he’s sitting on top of the heap,” said Jeffrey Hadden, a sociologist at the University of Virginia who is an expert on “prime-time” TV preachers.

“But who knows what might be uncovered next? The press and his enemies are on a witch hunt, and Falwell could get burned, too.”

Falwell has appointed an audit committee to find out if PTL money was used to pay off the former church secretary, Jessica Hahn. If such was the case, PTL’s tax-exempt status could be in jeopardy. But Falwell faces other critical issues:

- Can he allay suspicions by Bakker fans and the general public that he is engaged in a power play?

- Can he placate fellow fundamentalists who are alienated over his apparent breach of theological purity?

To Falwell, the most potentially harmful aspect of assuming leadership of PTL is the vitriolic attacks leveled at him by his fundamentalist Baptist brethren for crossing the forbidden theological line to associate with PTL leaders--Pentecostal believers who practice speaking in tongues and faith healing.

“There are some pastors who are telling us that they are pulling out their students from (Falwell’s) Liberty University and cutting off their financial support from the university because we are trying to prevent the destruction of PTL,” Falwell lamented in a sermon last Sunday morning at his Lynchburg, Va., church.

And the action criticizing Falwell’s association with PTL by the seven top officers of Baptist Bible Fellowship International was unusual because the fellowship, whose churches claim 1.4 million members, respects the autonomy of its individual pastors and congregations.

“While we reserve judgment for the present, asking for divine wisdom, we must now express our deep apprehension,” said the statement, which appeared in Friday’s issue of the fellowship’s newspaper.

“There are many who have serious qualms about a non-charismatic pastor leading a charismatic congregation. Therefore, we continue to have strong reservations about this entire, very precarious situation.”

Could Earn Plaudits

If Falwell were to quickly repair the credibility damage with full financial disclosures of PTL’s operations, then turn the PTL board over to another trustworthy group without blending any of the ministry’s facilities with his own, he could earn plaudits from religionists and probably grudging admiration from critics.

“He would be seen as very unselfish,” said Robert Dugan, the Washington-based public affairs spokesman for the National Assn. of Evangelicals.

But if Falwell uses the PTL satellite system to upgrade his own fledgling Liberty Broadcasting Network, appropriates the PTL mailing list for promoting Liberty University and his other projects, he could be subject to jibes that PTL now stands for “Plunder the Loot”--instead of the original “Praise the Lord” and “People That Love.”

Falwell talked at length about his university during his only in-studio appearance on the PTL Club talk show March 26. He told reporters later that day that “there are a lot of people out there who have never once looked at Liberty University, Thomas Road Baptist Church and Jerry Falwell who may give us a glance now.”

But the Rev. John Killinger, pastor of Los Angeles’ First Congregational Church, thinks Falwell wants more than just good publicity and may have agreed to take over PTL as a way to get more air time. From 1980 to 1986 Killinger was a Presbyterian pastor in Lynchburg, the home of Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church.

Syndicates Programs

Falwell is the only top electronic preacher who doesn’t have a satellite network and thus has to syndicate his programs.

“In this case, it would seem to be a cataclysmic grab for power in the TV market, which we all know to be stable if not shrinking,” Killinger said.

But Falwell tried to set the record straight on his first day at the 2,300-acre Heritage USA complex in Fort Mill, S.C., in addressing viewers of the “Jim and Tammy Show”:

“I know who built this ministry. I know the people who support it. I know my own constituency. . . . I am not here to stamp Jerry Falwell on this ministry or to create an independent Baptist empire. I am here to maintain what has been a Christian ministry for the family of God. Period.”

During a Sunday sermon at his church on March 22, Falwell insisted that he hadn’t wanted the job of reorganizing the ministry Bakker abruptly dropped in his lap.

Problems Outweigh Glamour

“If anybody thinks Jerry Falwell is enamored with the $129-million income (of PTL) and $200 million in real estate assets, I’ve learned a long time ago that all the problems, headaches and heartaches, particularly of this kind of a complex thing, greatly outweigh any glamour that is involved,” he said.

Despite a financial report handed out by Falwell showing that PTL’s revenues exceeded expenses by $19.8 million last May, he said that the previous PTL management had applied for a $50-million loan from an unspecified party in England.

Art Borden, head of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability--a voluntary policing agency that includes the Rev. Billy Graham, but none of the other top-rated evangelists among its 354 members--noted that PTL has “substantial debt on all its building programs” which is “a liability for Jerry and the (new) board.”

Falwell’s own religious and educational operations in Lynchburg--which began with a 35-member church in 1956--have revenues estimated at $100 million a year, at least half of which comes from donations.

The Falwell empire includes the “Old Time Gospel Hour” television program, aired by about 350 stations plus cable networks to 1.5 million subscribers; the 7,500-student Liberty University; 22,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church, and the Liberty Federation (formerly the Moral Majority). In all, Falwell employs about 2,000 people.

His Own Fiscal Problems

At the time Falwell has taken on new responsibilities, he already has his hands full with his own ministries--and his own fiscal problems.

He only recently won a long-running battle with the City of Lynchburg to exempt Liberty University from property taxes. A year ago he laid off 225 workers in his Lynchburg offices because of high expenses at the university. And his “Old Time Gospel Hour” telecast was canceled for a week last month by Ted Turner’s super-cable station WTBS because of unpaid bills “well into six figures,” a station spokesman said Tuesday.

Falwell’s TV audience dropped from 889,000 households in 1977 to 547,000 last November, according to ratings.

“It is a finite pie, and more people getting into the pie every month, so you’re going to have smaller and smaller slices,” noted the Rev. William F. Fore, executive director for communications of the National Council of Churches.

Falwell aide Mark DeMoss told The Times that Falwell is indeed considering using the PTL satellite for his own network but has not yet made a decision about it. Falwell told the Lynchburg newspaper Wednesday, however, that for now he does not see how the two networks could be merged, considering the differences in style and theology of the two ministries. Falwell did not respond to repeated Times requests for an interview.

Doubts He Can Do It

Fore said he does not think Falwell can successfully amalgamate the PTL show and the “Old Time Gospel Hour.”

“The pressures are there, but the market cannot shake out the same way as in the airline industry. You cannot merge Jerry Falwell and PTL the same way,” he said. “Every one of the electronic church ministries is almost totally dependent on the unique characteristics of a single individual. It would be like replacing one comic with another comic, or one anchorman with another anchorman, and we know that it just doesn’t work this way.”

“I don’t think he (Falwell) wants to take over Bakker’s operation” on a permanent basis, said University of Chicago historian Martin E. Marty. “I think he wants to be above the fray. When it’s all over, he wants to be seen as the elder statesman” of TV evangelism.

In any event, Falwell has promised his Lynchburg flock that they will remain his No. 1 priority. In fact, on Tuesday he met with key contributors of his congregation to discuss plans to build a new, 10,000-seat church building in Lynchburg.

“About a year ago I made a commitment to come out of politics almost totally and come right back to my first love, which is where I’m standing now. Three-fourths of my schedule will be . . . in Lynchburg as it has since my pullback from the political realm,” Falwell declared in a sermon.

Religious Right

Bakker has been largely apolitical in his ministry, while Falwell’s name has been synonymous with causes of the Religious Right since 1980.

In early 1986, Falwell incorporated the Liberty Federation as an umbrella organization that subsumed Moral Majority. The new organization, he explained at the time, was set up to cover political issues that were too broad for the “strictly moral areas” that Moral Majority had been involved with in earlier years.

Although Falwell’s political visibility is lower now, Pentecostals and charismatics--who make up a large proportion of PTL’s TV audience and are the backbone of PTL financial support--are much more aware of Falwell than they were eight months ago--82% compared to 68%--according to the Los Angeles Times Poll.

But to know Falwell isn’t necessarily to love him: 40% of Pentecostals have unfavorable impressions of him now, compared to 29% in July. However, 35% of Pentecostals look with favor on Falwell now, an increase of 6 points since July, the survey showed. The latest nationwide poll was conducted on March 28 and 29.

Those who have watched the PTL show since the scandal broke last month, if anything, now tend to like Falwell less. While 32% said they have a favorable impression of the Baptist minister, 44% said their view is unfavorable. Only 15% said they didn’t know enough about Falwell to decide how they felt about him.

Baffled by Alliance

Many theologians are baffled by the unlikely Falwell-PTL alliance, which forms a fragile bridge between two popular Protestant traditions fiercely at odds since early in this century.

Falwell has previously shown little tolerance for the Bakkers’ exuberant, often emotion-laden, Pentecostal style.

Indeed, Falwell once observed that present-day Christians who speak in tongues “are people who ate too much pizza last night.”

That aversion to charismatics was also expressed by the Rev. Frank Collins, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Bellflower, who said Falwell’s new venture “scares me to death. The center of their ministry on miracles and speaking in tongues is so far removed from us.”

Some Pentecostal ministers are also leery.

A South Carolina pastor has asked the 15,000 Pentecostal preachers and believers on his mailing list to help unseat Falwell and the five non-charismatic members of the new PTL board. “We are absolutely devastated . . . that Falwell would even dare to take over. Can you imagine the anger? The religious warfare?” the Rev. R. Wayne Miller, founder of Gloryland Bible College in Florence, told a reporter for the Charlotte Observer. “This is the issue--more than Jim Bakker’s adultery. I would rather see PTL close down than to see it used by Jerry Falwell.”

Like to See PTL’s Demise

Some of Falwell’s Baptist brethren would also like to see the demise of PTL.

“My soul!” Falwell exclaimed to his hometown congregation. “In 1980, when we had a part in electing a President and throwing out 12 senators, there was nothing like the backlash we’ve had with this.

“I’ve had 50 hot calls from my Baptist preacher brethren who called us everything but gentlemen. I don’t know what their philosophy is--to bomb it (PTL), to napalm it, maybe. But it’s not mine.”

Pleads for Support

While Falwell said he isn’t going “to make a Baptist camp” out of Heritage Village, he conceded that his “personality will be seen and felt.”

“I don’t think there’s a person on the face of this Earth that believes Jerry Falwell is going to change his doctrine or anyway compromise his convictions,” he asserted.

Falwell hopes his hard-line followers believe that.

“I am hopeful my friends will patiently stand by me and trust me to do the right thing,” he said in a recent letter sent to selected supporters and friends. “Please, please, trust me to follow the Lord’s leading in this matter. This is an unprecedented happening. I need divine wisdom,” he implored.

At the same time, Falwell is resolute that flak from his critics won’t make him throw down the reins of PTL.

“We ought to be friends to all who are friends of Christ,” he told worshipers at Thomas Road Church last Sunday morning. “We don’t have to preach what they preach or believe what they believe, but we ought to be their friends.”

Later, in his Sunday school class, Falwell declared: “We’re in this thing to stay and no one can put us down for that.”

Asked how long that meant, Falwell aide DeMoss said Monday: “Jerry has indicated it may be six months, or it may be six years.”