THE CRIMES OF EVANGELICALS

Why do people follow evangelists and gurus without question, even when their misdeeds are well known?

There was Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker

Tammy Faye Bakker

American televangelist Tammy Messner was born on March 7, 1942, in International Falls, Minnesota. She married fellow devout Christian Jim Bakker, and together they hosted television ministry shows in the 1960s and '70s, including The 700 Club and the Praise the Lord Club. In 1980, scandal ensued when Jim Bakker was caught having an affair with his church secretary, Jessica Hahn. Numerous other affairs surfaced, and the Bakkers fell from grace. In 1989,

Jim Bakker was convicted of fraud and conspiracy. Around the same time, Tammy filed for divorce, which was finalized in 1992.

 

And

This is a list of scandals related to American evangelical Christians.

(Roman Catholic clergy and high-profile leaders from New Religious Movements are not within the scope of this list.)

List of American evangelical Christians involved in scandals 1.1 Aimee Semple McPherson, 1920s–1940s 1.2 Lonnie Frisbee, 1970s–1980s 1.3 Marjoe Gortner, early 1970s 1.4 Billy James Hargis, early 1970s 1.5 Neville Johnson, 1983 1.6 Jimmy Swaggart, Marvin Gorman, Jim and Tammy Bakker, 1986 and 1991 1.7 Peter Popoff, 1987 1.8 Morris Cerullo, 1990s 1.9 Mike Warnke, 1991 1.10 Robert Tilton, 1991 1.11 Melissa Scott, 1992 1.12 Jim Williams, 1994 1.13 W. V. Grant, 1996 and 2003 1.14 Bob Moorehead, 1998 1.15 John Paulk, 2000 1.16 Roberts Liardon, 2001 1.17 Paul Crouch, 2004 1.18 Paul Cain, 2005 1.19 Kent Hovind, 2006 1.20 Ted Haggard, 2006 1.21 Paul Barnes, 2006 1.22 Lonnie Latham, 2006 1.23 Earl Paulk, 2007 1.24 Coy Privette, 2007 1.25 Thomas Wesley Weeks, III, 2007 1.26 Joe Barron, 2008 1.27 Todd Bentley, 2008 1.28 Ergun Caner, 2010 1.29 George Alan Rekers, 2010 1.30 Eddie L. Long, 2010 1.31 Marcus Lamb, 2010 1.32 Vaughn Reeves, 2010 1.33 John Langworthy, 2011

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scandals_involving_American_evangelical_Christians

 

 

AND THERE WAS JIM JONES 

Jim Jones, byname of James Warren Jones    (born May 13, 1931, near Lynn, Ind., U.S.—died Nov. 18, 1978, Jonestown, Guyana), American cult leader who promised his followers a utopia in the jungles of South America after proclaiming himself messiah of the Peoples Temple, a San Francisco-based evangelist group. He ultimately led his followers into a mass suicide, which came to be known as the Jonestown Massacre (Nov. 18, 1978).

                              

In the 1950s and '60s in Indianapolis, Ind., Jones gained a reputation as a charismatic churchman, and, after moving his headquarters to northern California in 1965 (first settling near Ukiah and then in San Francisco in 1971), he apparently became obsessed with the exercise of power. In the face of mounting accusations by journalists and defectors from the cult that he was illegally diverting the income of cult members to his own use, Jones and hundreds of his followers emigrated to Guyana and set up an agricultural commune called Jonestown (1977). As ruler of the sect, Jones confiscated passports and millions of dollars and manipulated his followers with threats of blackmail, beatings, and probable death. He also staged bizarre rehearsals for a ritual mass suicide.

On Nov. 14, 1978, U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan of California arrived in Guyana with a group of newsmen and relatives of cultists to conduct an unofficial investigation of alleged abuses. Four days later, as Ryan's party and 14 defectors from the cult prepared to leave from an airstrip near Jonestown, Jones ordered the group assassinated. When he learned that only Ryan and four others (including three newsmen) had been killed and that those that had escaped might bring in authorities, Jones activated his suicide plan. On November 18, he commanded his followers to drink cyanide-adulterated punch, an order that the vast majority of them passively and inexplicably obeyed. Jones himself died of a gunshot wound in the head, possibly self-inflicted. Guyanese troops reached Jonestown the next day, and the death toll of cultists was eventually placed at 913 (including 276 children).

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/305924/Jim-Jones#md-slideshow-tab-image-content

And there was David Koresh and the Branch Davidians that ended in a holocaust of fire.