Haggert, or Swaggert?

I found myself missing Dana Carvey's 'Church Lady' sketches this evening and got on YouTube to find old episodes. This is one of the first to come up, the interview of Jimmy Swaggert after disclosing his problems with prostitutes:

Church Chat

I was surprised just how timely it still was; how the excuses were the same, the phrasing of the problem; and appreciated how the Church Lady, while characteristically brutal, got to the real point.

How is it that our so prominent and powerful right-wing leaders keep getting into trouble like this? We had one wave in the eighties, and are back for another round.

There are two factors, I think: one is being in the limelight after making so many judgmental claims, a takeoff on the old adage that 'people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones'--not only are they fragile, but they're fishbowls.

The second is the loss of love and compassion, the isolation and loneliness that a life of actively combating Gospel love and forgiveness might have wrought. When you are alone at the top; it's easy for the demonic to sneak in.

I don't enjoy the suffering of these fundamentalist leaders, or feel smug about my own life. I just think it's time to do some good preventative work to keep such disasters from happening. And that means reaching out with arms of the Beloved Community, and teaching us all not to make a life of tearing others apart.