Volume 36, Number 20 · December 21, 1989
The Phallic Pulpit
By Garry Wills
Fall From Grace: The Failed Crusade of the Christian Right
by Michael d'Antonio
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 252 pp., $19.95
Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture of America
by Randall Balmer
Oxford University Press, 246 pp., $19.95
Forgiven: The Rise and Fall of Jim Bakker and the PTL Ministry
by Charles E. Shepard
Atlantic Monthly Press, 635 pp., $22.95
Of all the men running for President in 1988, only two were forced, by the birth dates of their children, to admit to having had sex with their wives before marriage—and those two, Pat Robertson and Jesse Jackson, were the only preachers in the race. To some, that might seem odd; but not to those who know preachers. The pulpit has always been a libidinous zone. Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker are not likely to surprise people familiar with the sexual exploits of Paul Tillich or Martin Luther King. Or of Henry Ward Beecher. Or, for that matter, of Peter Abelard, the twelfth-century theologian who was castrated for his affair with Eloise, the niece of his ecclesiastical superior. The ranks of the ministry would be considerably thinned if Abelard's punishment followed regularly on Abelard's sin.
Review, 4927 words
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