Televangelist sex scandals in the 1980s rattled evangelical moral confidence

Evidence

DURING THE 1980S, a series of televangelist sex scandals felled a number of popular Christian preachers and rattled evangelicals who thought they had a corner on moral values. The first to fall was Marvin Gorman, a charismatic Assemblies of God pastor in New Orleans. In 1986, Jimmy Swaggart, a rival televangelist located upriver in Baton Rouge, accused Gorman of committing adultery with several woman—including the wife of another preacher, a woman Gorman had been providing with “biblical counseling.” Gorman eventually confessed to “one act of adultery,” though he claimed it was the pastor’s wife who had started grabbing and kissing him. Defrocked and ostracized, Gorman declared bankruptcy in 1987. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 298

Categorization

• XREF: The gap between claimed moral authority and actual behavior among televangelists foreshadows the book’s continuity-not-hypocrisy thesis: the movement was always arranged around a leader’s power, not his purity. — connects to: Televangelist sex scandals discredited evangelical celebrity heroes in the 1980s — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 302; Rival televangelists weaponized adultery accusations against each other — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 301; Evangelical leaders paired sexual purity rhetoric with boasts of superior sexual pleasure — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 474
• SEED: Potential essay angle: the 1980s televangelist scandals as a testing ground for how white evangelicalism recalibrated after its ostensible moral leaders were exposed — the ‘toughness’ response rather than the ‘purity’ response.
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Televangelist sex scandals discredited evangelical celebrity heroes in the 1980s — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 302; Rival televangelists weaponized adultery accusations against each other — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 301; Evangelical leaders paired sexual purity rhetoric with boasts of superior sexual pleasure — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 474

Broader Connections

• Televangelist sex scandals discredited evangelical celebrity heroes in the 1980s #expands (0.95) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 302
• Evangelical leaders paired sexual purity rhetoric with boasts of superior sexual pleasure #complicates (0.72) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 474