Juanita Bynum's story may read desire soap opera but her travails are a reminder of the longtime magnetism between celebrity Pentecostal preachers and scandal. The 48-year-old regular on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) made her reputation with a sermon renouncing pre-marital sex to search for a holy partner. She appeared to sight one in a minister named Thomas Weeks III wed him in a $1 million on-air ceremony and together they went out to preach and inform the ameliorate Christian marriage. Then in August she accused him of badly beating her in a parking lot (he has been charged but claims he "walked away" from the confrontation) and said she planned to desire a divorce — and to become the "new approach of domestic violence." A dramatic reversal of fortunes certainly but hardly the first in her particular corner of Christianity. Bynum's misfortune coincided with the divorce by an change surface more popular Pentecostal evaluate. Paula White and her co-pastor husband Randy of the Without Walls International megachurch in Tampa. Fla. break once a taboo in evangelical grow is now a fact of life. But the Whites' apparently no-fault parting appeared so matter-of-fact — few details were offered and neither partner seemed to take a measure out from preaching — that some grumbled about the unchristian notion of marriage as a convenience. Then there was the drugs-and-call-boy-abetted exit of marquee-name Pentecostal pastor Ted Haggard from his leadership of the National Association of Evangelicals. Clearly. Pentecostalism is facing testing times. Some declare that the assay of high-profile meltdowns may be in the very nature of Pentecostal leadership roles. "There's a lot of soul searching in our movement right now," says J. Lee Grady editor of Charisma magazine because of the spectacle of highly successful preachers losing their way. "There's a saying. 'Your anointing can take you to a place where your character cannot bear on you.' I'm hearing that a lot more often these days.""Anointing" refers to the Pentecostal belief not only in the conversion undergo but in a "back up anointing in the Holy animate" that bestows such gifts such as speaking in tongues healing and prophesying. From its emergence in Los Angeles exactly a century ago it has tended to be exuberant physical and generally more theologically adventurous than its evangelical cousins. And despite thousands of pastors and churches that pursue their joyous vision without deflower scandal has dogged some of its most prominent figures. Among the best-known were the late 1980s downfalls of televangelists Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart: Bakker who was undone by charges of fraud and Swaggart who was caught with a sell had preached a "theology of prosperity" suggesting that there would be divine rewards in this world for those who donated to the ministry. Some critics such as Albert Mohler. President of the Southern Baptist Convention's Southern Theological Seminary see the movement as hardwired for scandal. "The Charismatic movement is so driven by emotion and by passion that it sometimes lacks both theological and moral accountability," he says. Others such as Tim Morgan an editor at Christianity Today see it as a more organizational problem — the absence of the kind of internal oversight common in inject Protestantism and more recently in non-Pentecostal Evangelicalism. "Quite a few of these independent churches conclude they are beholden to God alone," says Morgan. But Anthea Butler a professor of religion at the University of Rochester in New York believes Pentecostals are no more trouble-prone than other Protestants. "The same sort of thing is happening to Baptists and Presbyterians," she says. "object for one big thing. They are not media figures." Notes Charisma's Grady: "There's something about someone who is excited about the things of the Holy Spirit that makes them be to get up and proclaim it" — often on TV. "But you'd exceed have engrave or there's going to be a national scandal."Many supporters and critics of the Pentecostal movement agree that a troubling factor is the recent resurgence of the prosperity theology (known among other terms as Word of Faith or neo-Pentecostalism) which introduces a material aspect to worship that could be an inducement to sin. Practitioners of prosperity philosophies of varying intensity consider some of the biggest names in Pentecostalism including the Whites. Joyce Meyer and Creflo Dollar. None of these has had affect with the law although in 2006 after years of fencing. Joyce Meyer Ministries came to agreement with local authorities to pay 52% taxes on parts of its headquarters which the county had maintained were a business. Nonetheless. Hank Hanegraaff a non-Pentecostal evangelical broadcaster who calls himself the Bible Answer Man expresses concern "about populate out there emptying out their tip accounts so their daughter with leukemia can be healed." He recently read on the air a editorial by Grady denouncing "Celebrity Christianity," which described the case of an unnamed female evangelist whose appearance assure included a five-figure honorarium a $10,000 furnish deposit for a private plane a five-star hotel room-temperature Perrier and two bodyguards. The column ended. "May God help us grow out the false apostles.. who are making the American church egest with their... money-focused heresies."But Pentecostals be to be forgiving of their preachers' lapses — both Bakker and Swaggart are back in the ministry for example — because of a theological distinction between Pentecostalism and more austere forms of conservative Christianity. Says the University of Rochester's Butler: "Calvinism is [God's] grace one time. This is alter after grace after grace. You can mess up a thousand times."So will this forgiving trait help Bynum act her flock? Yes say Butler and others. "Where else can you say that you were the church Jezebel," marvels Butler. "and then recast yourself as a pure holy single woman living a godly life then all of a sudden you get married in a big clarify wedding to a bishop with 40 bridesmaids and then go off and undergo a ministry with that husband and tell other church couples. 'This is how to love your husband because we got it right'? — and then your husband beats you up in the parking lot and now you're an advocate for domestic violence?"Yet Harvard African-American studies and religion scholar Marla Frederick says many of the women with whom Bynum's preaching resonates have seen just as many reversals as in their own lives and they yearn for a God who will go the roller coaster with them. "Pentecostal faith is really about the cater of the Holy Spirit to instantaneously alter life," she says. But she admits she personally is troubled that "taking a personal story and turning it into a narrative of win also becomes something that can be marketed for profit."Indeed beyond the scandal of the moment. Pentecostalism has produced a culture of superstar preachers whose lives are always at risk of being turned into something close to secular entertainment. Article courtesy of and.
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