Skilled Hindu libertines make these men look like pikers. There are wrongdoers in every culture, in every time.
Jimmy Swaggart is not the first morally flawed man. Be like me and gain Life Eternal." If ever we did, we can no longer hope to be like them. Their strategies have changed over the centuries from militant to marketing, from inquisition to acquisition – but the message has remained the same: "Come! Accept my Savior. Hindus (and Buddhists, Taoists, Hawaiians, animists and a long list of fellow human beings) have long suffered under the righteous moral indictments of our Christian brothers. At least not for Hindus, for whom this is a serious matter.
Soap opera it may be entertainment it is not. Change the setting from rural canvas big top to urban television pulpit, and Jimmy Swaggart becomes a real-life Elmer Gantry for the '80s. Reach*** for analogies, the mind conjured up Sinclair Lewis' "Elmer Gantry." You remember Gantry, the engaging tent preacher and rogue (Burt Lancaster in the movie) who publicly flimflams the faithful to fill his collection plate and privately indulges in pleasures of the flesh. Adultery and promiscuity are right up there alongside communism and Godlessness on their list of deadly sins." In a book published in October Swaggart included "consorting with prostitutes" as one of four definitions of fornication. Judy Mann, a journalist, noted: "One thing that seems strikingly clear about both Swaggart and Bakker is that both of those Bible-thumping churchmen have serious problems with women and sex. Ironically, the man who had made his millions preaching against lust and pornography, had been caught lusting. There he was, a wealthy, world-class superpreacher on TV, weeping, confessing and asking forgiveness of his God, his wife and his electronic following. Jimmy Swaggart, America's most vociferous TV moralizer has suddenly become the world's best-known secret sinner. His is not a pretty story, but it is a terribly important one for Hindus to hear.
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