THE CALLING

In the nucleus of the evangelical empire he built from scratch, the Rev. D. James Kennedy bats away the notion that his achievements have made him susceptible to the first deadly sin.

“Pride,” says Kennedy with a thin smile. “Jumping on poor St. Thomas again, as if he hasn’t been beat up enough.” His smile fades, and he clears his throat. “Yes, of course, I suffer all the temptations. But God has given me a thorn in the flesh. A football injury from high school. My neck causes me excruciating pain all day. Ha! And people ask me about pride!”

He sits back in a chair behind his tidy desk, a mahogany replica Early American, in his office at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church and smiles. Kennedy is a distinguished-looking man of 65, with graying hair cut short and parted neatly, left to right, so that it swoops across his forehead like the peak of a baseball cap. He is dressed in an impeccable double-breasted blue suit with a textured blue silk tie and a matching blue silk foulard dripping out of his breast pocket.

Behind him is a wall-to-ceiling breakfront adorned with photos of his wife and daughter and himself, standing alongside former presidents Reagan, Bush and Carter. The rest of the large office is decorated with sofas, coffee tables, prints, kerosene lamps, all Early America replicas, all so spotlessly new and perfectly matched that they look as if they were purchased as a complete set, yesterday, off a showroom floor. There isn’t a nick or scratch on them, as if history could be preserved inviolate. Kennedy is quick to mention that the furniture was a gift from a wealthy parishioner who felt Kennedy’s previous furniture was too shabby for a minister.

“Presbyterians are very demanding of their ministers,” he says. “They like their ministers educated. By my nature, I am a rational man. I am fascinated by logic and philosophy. God hasn’t given me the ability to play basketball, but God has given me, ahem, certain intellectual abilities demonstrated, ahem, by my many summa cum laude graduations.” He clears his throat and lowers his eyes. “I am humbly grateful to God.”

Kennedy, referred to as Dr. Kennedy even by those who know him personally, heads up the burgeoning religious powerhouse that is Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale. The Rev. Billy Graham’s Decision magazine called the church one of the “five greatest” in America. It is also one of the largest (8,500 members) and wealthiest (its members once raised $1 million on a single Sunday). Kennedy claims he is the only evangelical minister with a legitimate PhD, earned after nine summers at New York University.

The church is becoming increasingly influential with the family values crowd: When Dan Quayle was vice president, he stopped by to speak on his way to golf dates in Palm Beach. Graham has appeared there. Jack Kemp, former New York congressman and Housing and Urban Development secretary, calls Kennedy “an inspiration.”

Kennedy’s sermons are carried on more than 500 TV stations, reaching nearly 25,000 cities nationwide, according to Coral Ridge, and dozens of foreign countries. Kennedy’s “The Coral Ridge Hour,” a combination religious-secular sermon seen each Sunday locally on KCAL-TV, reaches an estimated 2 million American viewers, he says, and is the “third- or fourth-highest-rated” religious program on the air.

The church also includes his Evangelism Explosion International, a school started in 1962 for ministers around the world who are taught Kennedy’s preaching techniques, which he describes as “a resonant, rich, cultivated baritone voice [that] can magnetize an audience to the message.” The ministers carry the preaching style back to their homelands to convert others, who become, in Kennedy’s words, part of the legion of “stealth Christians” who are going to remake the world.

He pauses, clears his throat, and adds, “Did you know that Billy Graham has reached 185 nations by television and in person, and we have reached 211? It’s the most significant event of my lifetime.”

Kennedy may be one of the most influential evangelical ministers in the world, yet he is relatively unknown outside evangelical circles. He laughs. “Recognition! Have you read the kind of recognition other evangelicals get?” he says. “Pictures of their mansions on 20 acres in the tabloids. Thank the Lord I’ve escaped that, ahem, animus.”

He is referring, of course, to such ministers as Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, whose credibilities were all but destroyed by revelations of sexual or financial misconduct.

Kennedy’s reputation remains unsullied. “Oh, people have been digging,” says Jeffrey Hadden, a University of Virginia sociology professor and author of two books on such ministers. “But they haven’t come up with nary a rumor. Jim Kennedy is totally untouched by scandal. He is what he looks like: a widely respected conservative Christian opinion-maker.”

He is an opinion-maker with a novel way of influencing the political process. Last September, he opened the D. James Kennedy Center for Christian Statesmanship in Washington, D.C., designed to appeal to the staff members of law and policy makers. “I’m not telling anyone how to vote,” he says, but he does want to influence those who can influence the powerful. This stealth strategy allows him to exert an effect on government without mixing in the circles of power that would draw the media’s scrutiny on him.

At a more grass-roots level, Coral Ridge Ministries, an outreach arm of the church, in March sponsored a national conference, “Reclaiming America for Christ,” an event described as “a mini course in civics.”

Despite the vast sums of money his empire takes in (its annual operating budget is $40 million), Kennedy has never been accused of financial improprieties. When the Washington Post asked to peruse his books some years back, he says, Kennedy said fine, stunning the reporter, who never followed up on the request. “They had already written their story about ministers who hide their books,” says Kennedy, chuckling.

Other evangelical ministers embarrass themselves by “popping off at the mouth,” says Hadden. “Kennedy doesn’t. He knows you have to begin one step at a time to get things done.”

“I’m not like them,” Kennedy says with distaste. “I don’t hear voices. I’ve tried to fill an intellectual gap on TV between fundamentalists and charismatics.” Fundamentalist and charismatic preachers appeal to a limited and fixed audience--the less educated and less affluent--with a message of eternal salvation, salvation their flocks believe can be influenced by a monetary contribution.

Kennedy talks about salvation, too, and hawks his many books, but he doesn’t beg, weep, cajole or sweat on national television. He talks less about salvation than he does about man’s life on earth. It’s what he calls “The Cultural Mandate,” and its theology is simple: Man should be as concerned with his prosperity on earth as his salvation in heaven, which is why it’s every Christian’s duty to involve himself in all aspects of secular society.

“The Bible says, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over the earth,’ ” says Kennedy. “God should be in every sphere of life: economics, business, education, government, art and science.”

*

Each sunday morning, the coral Ridge parking lot is packed with flawlessly clean new cars--Cadillacs, Lincolns, Volvos. One church member, a stockbroker, said he moved to Fort Lauderdale and was looking for a progressive church to join, “when I drove past CRPC one Sunday and saw all those Cadillacs,” he remembers. “I thought: clients!”

The parishioners entering the church are tanned, distinguished-looking men and women in crisp suits or flowing dresses, middle-aged, prosperous and more worried about making their way in this world than the next.

The motto of Coral Ridge, as conceived by its pastor, is “Excellence in all things and all things to God’s glory.” The church and its buildings, dedicated in 1974 and expanded over the years at a cost of more than $15 million, reflect that philosophy. They occupy an entire city block. Kennedy’s vast empire also includes Westminster Academy, which goes from preschool through 12th grade; the Knox Theological Seminary, which also trains ministers in Kennedy’s preaching techniques; a studio where his radio and TV shows are written and produced, and an office building across the street, where his seminarians learn media techniques and where older, gray-haired women sit hunched over piles of envelopes and stacks of bills, counting the “suggested contributions” for Kennedy’s books, tapes and pamphlets. Overhead surveillance cameras monitor them.

The church is famous for its 303-foot spire, which it believes to be the tallest in the country. The vast interior, with its vaulted ceiling, is airy and white, symbolizing earthly paradise. The cross on the altar does not have a crucified Jesus because Kennedy considers that a too painful reminder of earthly tribulations. A phalanx of towering organ pipes and trumpets dominates the altar.

Ushers in silver lame tuxedos lead the parishioners to their seats while a TV camera crew films them. All Sunday services are filmed for “The Coral Ridge Hour.”

The service begins with Kennedy, wearing a royal blue robe with a cardinal red doctoral hood, leading the choir down the aisle amid much pomp and circumstance, loud singing and blasting of the organ. The TV camera pans up to the beatific faces of parishioners.

Cut to commercial: A shot of lemons on a table. A resonant voice talks about the sourness of lemons. Cut to shot of lemonade in a pitcher. The voice talks about how sour lemons can be turned into sweet lemonade, and then a pitch for Kennedy’s book, “Turn It to Gold.”

Cut back to Kennedy, ascending the pulpit carved from African mahogany. He begins his sermon, as usual, with humor. “For some weeks now,” he intones, “I’ve intended to speak on procrastination, ahem, but I never got around to it.” Laughter.

Kennedy’s sermons are more rational essays than religious exhortations. He begins speaking in his measured, stentorian voice, each word clipped off precisely, “pan-demic . . . es-cutcheon . . . my exe-crations.”

“It’s not my nature to be emotional,” he says. “To cry in the pulpit.” His face registers distaste. “Some people’s emotional cup sloshes over.”

Kennedy doesn’t harangue his audience; rather, he seduces it with his Christian logic. Illicit sex, for example, is not only a sin against God, he says, but it also has “societal effects. Taxpayers pay billions to clean up the consequences of that sin for illegitimate children and AIDS.” He emphasizes the financial cost of sin, which his followers can grasp, over its heavenly cost. And he tailors his theology to his parishioners’ secular concerns. For example, if man procrastinates in accepting Christ as his savior, he will be damned, just as he will be damned in the marketplace if he procrastinates in business.

One CR minister was once asked why his church spent $250,000 on music one year and only $72,000 on the poor. He said, “The Bible says, ‘If any one will not work, let him not eat.’ We have to remain true to biblical standards.”

Kennedy’s followers don’t have guilty liberal consciences. They are tired of being told they are responsible for society’s ills--racism, drugs, the homeless, AIDS, among others--things they have worked hard to avoid personally. They are tired of being blamed for doing things God’s way. They want to protect what they have, not share it, and be praised to boot.

This is where Kennedy comes in. He tells them what they want to hear and shows them how to prosper even more. Members have applauded what they see as good stewardship of their money. They can sign up for lectures on how to be thrifty, or invest their money wisely.

Kennedy preaches that man can’t attain heaven by good works alone. Man must be “born again” through a belief that Christ earned man’s way into heaven by dying on the cross for man’s sins. Once a Christian is “born again,” he is automatically “saved” and can turn his attention to more earthly matters: Success. Dominion over the earth. The good life. To protect this good life, Kennedy’s followers tend to be civic-minded. They are members of the Chamber of Commerce, the PTA, the city commission, maybe even the state Senate. They become the people who pass laws that govern this country.

That’s why Kennedy opened his D. James Kennedy Center for Christian Statesmanship. “I want to bring the gospel of Christ and the moral standards of God to the hearts and minds of people in Washington,” he says. “I’m talking about the lower levels, the aides to senators. I’m not so vain to think anyone in government is waiting to hear what I have to say about foreign affairs.” His goal is to influence the people who organize grass-roots campaigns, write letters, form boycotts, become, according to his book, “Chain Reaction!” “a million world changers . . . who consciously, aggressively and persistently labor to mold things after the pattern of God’s truth.”

One of Kennedy’s “world changers” was Doug Danziger, the vice mayor some years ago of Fort Lauderdale who launched a campaign to ban nude nightclubs in the city. An active Coral Ridge parishioner, he was seen as Kennedy’s agent in the matter--or, as he was referred to by Kennedy’s enemies, the evangelist’s “pit bull.” When he was later videotaped having sex with a prostitute at her home, Danziger’s subsequent fall from grace reflected poorly on Coral Ridge. The scandal “really hurt us in the press,” Kennedy says today. “The media used it as a baseball bat against our church.” Of Danziger, Kennedy now says, “Good night! Danziger was never my right-hand man. He was never an officer in our church. He still attends our church, but I rarely see him.”

Kennedy is a master at distancing himself from controversies. When he lent his name to an organization that collected money for children with AIDS, it was discovered that so little of that money reached those children that two states, Florida and Illinois, conducted criminal investigations of the organization. Kennedy claimed, indignantly, that he had simply lent his name to what he thought was a legitimate charity and had no part in its affairs. He seemed to have escaped any allegations of personal wrongdoing.

While Kennedy tries to remove himself from homophobic attitudes, he can still sound patronizing when talking about homosexuals: “They are little boys looking for a daddy to love them. Why, I had a--ahem--sensitive boy in my choir who ran off to Atlanta.” He pauses dramatically, then says, “I buried him.” Another dramatic pause. “AIDS.” He smiles what he believes is a pained smile, but it’s more a smirk. He doesn’t mean to smirk, but he so distrusts instinctive human emotions that, in his pride, he edits them before he expresses them. Something gets lost in the editing process and what emerges are stiff, mannered gestures.

Kennedy, now sitting behind his desk in his office, smiles a different smile, one he believes to be jocular. “There’s a joke among Presbyterians,” he says, “that while Methodists were winning the West for Christ, and Baptists the South, we were sending our sons to Princeton. It’s hard to find a humble Presbyterian.”

Or an evangelical one on TV. “I am the only Presbyterian minister on television,” he says with forced humility, adding humbly, “and, ahem, the only one with a PhD.” (A.B., M.Div., M.Th., D.D., D.Sac.Lit., PhD, Litt.D., D.Sac.Theol., is listed after his name everywhere, denoting that he has master’s degrees in divinity and theology, honorary doctorates in divinity, sacred literature, letters and sacred theology, and a PhD in world religion). He lowers his eyes. But it is hard to see as humble a man whose goal is to Christianize the world.

“I want to show that Christianity is a reasonable faith,” he says. “Compatible with the highest intellectual attainments. I resolved nobody would ever be able to reject a Christian doctrine because I was not properly educated to deliver it.”

*

Dennis James Kennedy was raised by a hard-working, long-suffering father and an alcoholic mother. In his biography, he only touches on his mother’s drinking and the effect it had on him as a lonely, introverted child. Like many children of disorderly homes, Kennedy sought order, first in the Boy Scouts and then in music. He was a drum major in high school and college.

When he is asked about his search for order, Kennedy looks confused. “I never thought about that,” he says. Nor has he ever wondered why his father, raised an Irish Catholic, became a Methodist. “It just never occurred to me why,” he says. He smiles. “I just know the Kennedys were Scotch horse thieves who fled to Ireland.” Kennedy either can’t, or won’t, be introspective. “I only preach my certainties,” he says, “not my insecurities.”

In the 1950s, Kennedy was earning $750 a week as an Arthur Murray dance instructor and living the life of a “swinger.” Then he met Anne Lewis, the daughter of a Presbyterian elder. She was a timid, pretty girl who sewed, worked with children, played bridge and swore she would never marry a minister. She noticed the debonair Kennedy gliding across a dance floor with another woman. Kennedy was so taken with her, too, that he swept by again with a little flourish and a smile. Later he talked Anne into buying a $500 dance course that required her to come to his studio every week. She took out a loan to pay for it.

They were married in 1956, embarking on a marriage that proved successful, Kennedy says, because “it was not built on love and romance. It was based on commitment.” (They have an adopted daughter, Jennifer.)

One day his young wife-to-be asked him why he didn’t go to church. Kennedy told her he didn’t have to to be a good man. She replied softly, “Yes, you do.” He was “utterly taken aback” by Anne’s criticism but put it out of his mind until he woke one Sunday to the voice of a radio evangelist. If you died this moment, the evangelist asked, would you go to heaven? Kennedy immediately accepted Christ as his savior.

“It was like, wow!” he said years later. “I knew I was going to heaven even if I ought to go to hell. Christ freed me from sin and offered me eternal life as a gift.” A year later, Kennedy enrolled in the Columbia Theological Seminary in Georgia to become an evangelical minister.

“It was the hardest and happiest three years of our life together,” Anne said years later.

Kennedy was ordained in 1959 and started the church. He and his wife lived in a motel on the beach and conducted services at a grammar school cafeteria. CRPC began with 45 members, and after a few weeks of its pastor’s fire-and-brimstone sermons, his church had “grown to 17 members,” Kennedy says, smiling. After attending a service, an old woman in a fur stole snapped at Anne one morning, “What kind of cult is this?” When Kennedy went to recruit parishioners, one man slammed the door in Kennedy’s face, saying, “We don’t want anything to do with that sawdust-trail religion.”

Kennedy had been trained in the knee-slapping, Bible-thumping backwoods style of itinerant Southern preachers, but his charismatic style didn’t play with people in Fort Lauderdale. Despite its Southern location, Fort Lauderdale has never been the South. It has always been populated with emigres from the Northeast who considered themselves more sophisticated and intelligent than other Floridians.

Kennedy was a quick study. He learned that the residents were more educated and less God-fearing than he’d expected--except for a minority who saw the city’s partying ambience as godless moral chaos. That minority “had come to the city, not to be free,” said George Knight, former dean of the Knox Theological Seminary, “but to find something fulfilling.” They came for order and certitudes.

Kennedy tailored his message and style to this civic-minded group, and his church grew in size, wealth and power. He became an influential man.

But not, according to him, a wealthy one. He drives a 1989 Mercury Cougar and lives in a modest stucco home along a canal in North Fort Lauderdale. There are no gold-plated bathroom fixtures or air-conditioned doghouses in his life. His leisure interests are tennis on weekends at the church courts--serious games with male church members, very competitive, very little kidding--and, in the winter, skiing in Colorado.

He claims he makes a little more than $50,000 a year, a salary he says he returns to the church. He lives off what he earns hawking his books, videos and pamphlets, a sum he won’t discuss. The money is irrelevant, he says, adding that he has no interest in using it for personal aggrandizement. He keeps his finances pure by distancing himself from them. He let his church buy his $70,000 house, now worth more than $300,000, his car and the snazzy tuxedo he likes to wear to Dave Brubeck concerts. For Kennedy, money means only the power to broadcast his message to an ever-growing audience.

Over the years, Kennedy’s fame and influence spread to national church organizations. He was named “Clergyman of the Year” in 1984. He is listed in the book “Notable Americans” and the “International Who’s Who of Intellectuals.” He’s met presidents and senators and religious superstars (Billy Graham has called him “a great friend”).

He also has been called to testify before a congressional committee investigating the finances of evangelical ministers in 1987. Kennedy did not go quietly into that good chamber, despite his stated opposition to the separation of church and state; apparently, the line is drawn just this side of congressmen looking into his books. He told the committee to mind its own business and clean up its house first. Massachusetts Rep. Gerry E. Studds, who admitted to having a sexual encounter with a male page, was still a member of Congress, Kennedy told the committee, while Jim Bakker’s own denomination had defrocked the disgraced minister.

“The Constitution says, ‘Congress shall make no laws respecting the establishing of religion or prohibit the free exercise thereof,’ ” Kennedy says. This was meant to restrain Congress from meddling in church affairs--not churches from meddling in governmental matters, he believes.

“George Washington said it would be impossible to govern without the Ten Commandments,” Kennedy says. “Now the Supreme Court prohibits them from being tacked up on school walls.” He shakes his head in disgust.

It’s this disgust that fuels Kennedy’s attempts to influence public policy, both in Fort Lauderdale and Washington, over the national airwaves and with his stealth Christianity. Asked if it’s too late to return America to its religious roots, if time hasn’t weathered and eroded our founders’ original intent, Kennedy snaps, “Just because we’re rolling in the mud, does that mean we shouldn’t try to get out of it?”