Corrupt Televangelists

My local paper had a column recently by an atheist attacking televangelists. The gist of the article was that televangelists are all in it for the money; they're frauds and charlatans; and of course the writer pointed out some of the scandals, like the televangelist who was caught patronizing a prostitute.

I had two reactions to this article.

The first is to laugh at the hypocrisy of atheists and secularists. When a Christian leader fails to live up to the standards he professes, they are quick to not only condemn the individual, but to insist that all Christians must share the blame, indeed to say that this casts doubt on Christianity in general. But when one of their own leaders has moral failings, they never accept responsibility for his actions. Stalin was an avowed atheist. He ordered the murder of at least 17 million people. Yet I have never once heard an atheist hang his head in shame and say that this is a crime for which all atheists must share the blame, or even that atheists have some obligation to explain how the philosophy that they claim is so superior to Christianity could nevertheless produce such a monster. Or if you want something a little closer to home, I'm sure you recall the recent scandals of Catholic priests sexually abusing young boys. We heard endless commentaries on how this disgraced the Catholic Church, with plenty saying that this proved that Christianity was a sham. The Catholic Church accepted responsibility for the actions of these men, and took steps to prevent further offenses and to offer some amends to the victims. But … these abusers were not only Catholic, they were also homosexuals. They were, after all, men who abused boys. I never heard one TV commentator say that these incidents proved that homosexuals were all dangerous child molesters. I never heard one representative of a gay rights group accept responsibility for these crimes. When a homosexual Catholic does wrong, all Catholics must share the blame … but of course it would be unfair to say that this proves anything about homosexuals.

But my second and more profound reaction is, "Well, duh!" As a Christian, I believe the Bible. Nowhere does the Bible say that we should expect our leaders to be perfect. Quite the contrary, we are continually reminded that they are fallible, sinful human beings just like the rest of humanity. All of them will have their faults. A few of them will prove to be spectacularly bad.

I don't know of any statistical studies on the ethical performance of the average Christian leader compared to that of the typical secularist leader. It was, after all, big news that a televangelist was consorting with prostitutes precisely because such behavior is very rare and therefore shocking. It is not big news when a Hollywood type consorts with prostitutes. But in any case, the difference between Christians and secularists is that when secularist leaders fail, they make excuses for them. They tell us that their leaders' ethical failures don't really matter because, after all, sometimes you have to be dishonest to make it in such a corrupt system, or because everybody lies about sex, or they angrily reply that we are only criticizing their leader as part of a plot to undermine the important work this person is doing. When Christian leaders fail, we don't make or accept excuses for their actions. At the least we expect them to accept responsibility and show some remorse before they can be forgiven and restored. If their offenses are serious enough the church may say that while they can certainly be forgiven on a personal level, they have forfeited their claim to authority.

The Bible tells Christians to look to God for their example, not to fallible humans. That's why Christians ask "What Would Jesus Do?", not "What Would My Pastor Do?", "What Would George Bush Do?", or even "What Would Britney Spears Do?"

Island of Sanity

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