Swaggart, ‘Temptation’ Film Head Newswriters’ Top Religion Stories

Two events that proved traumatic for evangelical Protestants during 1988 were called the year’s top religion news stories in a survey of the Religion Newswriters Assn.

News about evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, whose alleged consorting with a prostitute led to his defrocking by the Assemblies of God and a diminished television following, was voted by writers as the biggest story. The controversy surrounding the showing of Universal Pictures’ version of “The Last Temptation of Christ,” based on the novel by Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis, was second.

The movie, which opened in August, drew objections from Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and other religious traditions, but it was primarily seen as an affront by some evangelical leaders. The storm was partly precipitated by surreptitiously distributed copies of an early script said to portray Jesus as weak, unsure and lusting for women.

Particularly Disturbing

Both news stories, which lasted several months each, were particularly disturbing to theologically conservative Protestants. First, the Swaggart scandal followed the sex-and-money revelations of PTL’s Jim Bakker by only 11 months and, second, efforts to rally broad public support against “Last Temptation” seemed to backfire.

Swaggart was also named the “top religion newsmaker of 1988” in the survey, the first time that question was asked in the annual survey among the nearly 200 reporters who regularly cover religion for the secular press. A total of 43 writers took part in the 1988 survey.

Runners-up to Swaggart in the “newsmaker” category were “Last Temptation” director Martin Scorcese and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, according to Bill Thorkelson of Minneapolis, who tabulated the survey results.

Easing Restrictions

“Gorbachev undoubtedly got some votes because of glasnost , the new Soviet policy of openness that includes the easing of some religious restrictions,” said Thorkelson, the dean of religion reporters and a past president of the Religion Newswriters Assn.

Christian Century magazine, in fact, declared the “significant steps toward increasing religious freedom” in the Soviet Union, highlighted by observances of the millennium of Christianity in the country last June, as the top religion story of 1988.

Religion news writers, however, ranked the improved religious outlook under Gorbachev only fifth on the list of major religion stories.

Rated third was the September election in Massachusetts of Episcopal priest Barbara Harris as the first woman bishop in the worldwide Anglican communion of churches. Part of that story was the compromise decision of the Episcopal Church in its July convention to allow any congregation rejecting a woman bishop to petition for a male “Episcopal visitor” bishop to administer confirmations. But a woman bishop still would make periodic pastoral visits required by church law, even to congregations rejecting women bishops.

Religious Agenda

Ranked fourth was the religious element in the presidential primaries and election. The perceived religious agenda of ex-minister Pat Robertson, who sought the Republican nomination, was an issue through the Super Sunday primary last March. Political news coverage tended to pay less attention to the ministerial flavor of the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Democratic campaign, the interfaith marriage of Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis and the strong conservative Protestant support for Vice President George Bush.

Other top stories as voted by the writers:

6. Carbon 14 age-testing of the revered Shroud of Turin, which bears the faint image of a crucified man, revealed that the cloth was medieval in origin and therefore could not be the burial cloth of Jesus.

7. More than 1,000 anti-abortion protesters were arrested and jailed, usually briefly, in a wave of demonstrations in more than two dozen cities. Under the banner of Operation Rescue, the protesters attempted to block entrances to abortion clinics.

8. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, based in Econe, Switzerland, ordained four bishops within his traditionalist movement in defiance of the Vatican and incurred excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church.

9. The National Council of Churches, facing a financial and morale crisis, called for another reorganization and hinted at forming a broader ecumenical structure.

10. Ultra-orthodox religious parties in Israel gained added leverage in the November elections, sparking renewed American Jewish concern that the country’s immigration laws might be amended to narrow the definition of “who is a Jew.”