It’s getting so that the public scandals from political conservatives and religious fundamentalists are coming so fast it’s beyond ‘gotcha’. You just have to shake your head and wonder when we’ll get past thinking that politicians should preach and preachers should politic and prosper. Look at where it’s got us.
Juanita Bynum is known and admired by thousands as a fiery evangelist whose no-nonsense, lead-by-less-than-perfect-example message of self-improvement was seemingly illustrated by her fairy-tale marriage to a man who also is a widely known minister. The romance, which included a million-dollar wedding, became a nightmare last week when Thomas W. Weeks III was charged with choking his wife, pushing her to the ground in a hotel parking lot and stomping on her.
Okay, hold on a moment — million dollar wedding??? That’s for the greater glory of someone, but not God. The Revs Bynum and Weeks may be sucessful motivational speakers and entertainers, but if they spend a million dollars on a party for themselves the flock should think twice before dropping the grocery money in the collection plate.
Juanita Bynum preached a message of women’s empowerment, but she filtered it through the church, which has not always been supportive of women.
At a forum Thursday at Spelman College, a historically black women’s college in Atlanta, many of the young women in the audience said they were shocked and saddened to hear of the suspected attack on Bynum.
“It just hit me like a wake-up call, that even the strongest can be victims,” said sophomore Elizabeth Alexander. “When he was hitting her, her husband had no respect for her role.”
Alexander said she sought the opinion of her own pastor, who is male, expecting him to condemn Weeks’ actions. Instead, he responded with Scriptures and said nothing of domestic violence being wrong.
“I was thinking, ‘This is my spiritual leader. If I’m abused, what do you do for me?'”
A word of sanity came from Bishop T.D. Jakes, who has advocated more than most of his colleagues for the women in his church.
“Knowing the Bible may make you a strong Christian or a great speaker, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is the only resource we can draw from or work with to help those in our pews who suffer in silence,” Jakes wrote. “Prayer is a good starting point but this is a problem where wise and fair action steps are needed.”
It’s pretty clear this wise and fair action will come from outside the church. We are six years into an administration that actively channels tax money into ‘faith-based’ social services and holds up organizations such as Bynum and Weeks’s ‘Global Destiny Church’ as a model. Women need better advice than, ‘let it be a jewel in your crown’. Secular institutions have many problems and failings, but they are mandated to be fair, transparent and best of all, reality-based.
Kmareka.com 
One wonders at the hypocrisy of thses purveyors of what never was and what never will be; their distorted views of messages from a God and readings of words millenia and languages removed from anything they understand. Since when should anyone be shocked by the miserable behavior of those that market the “spiritual” or “roads to heavenly paradise” and at the same time swim in luxuries that Joshua the son of Joseph and brother of James would have found more fitting of the wealthy Romans than the poor of his day.Is there anything new or surprising in wife beatings by $1000 suited televangelists, or the bizarre sexual mind set of a Jimmy Swaggert, or the cryptic antisemitic rant of supposed “honorable” Billy Graham caught on President Nixon’s taping system. These poor misguided souls, who chastise poor sinners and sell guilt in their lives, have nothing to do with that earlier profound message of 2000 years ago. It is a shame they receive the attention they do, or the millions of dollars that they spend on cars, weddings, mansions and other luxuries in a world of need. they are not the graduates of schools of divinity so much as the graduates of P.T. Barnum’s school of hucksters.
Well, if Jesus had been as smart as Billy Graham he never would have got himself crucified. And if Billy Graham had been as dumb as Jesus he never would have been a favorite of presidents. He would have kept telling them things they didn’t want to hear. That’s what got Jesus in trouble.
One gets the impression from reading the NT and scholars such ar John Dominic Crossan, and oddly enough the Jewish scholar Martin Buber, that the Jesus of reality seems to have emerged with a clarity of purpose and mission that went beyond without concern for his own intelligence and certainly no concern for wealth. Whether his end resulted from his belief in his own “propaganda” can be disputed, but makes for interesting discussion. However. after reading the condescending and ridiculous world view(s) of a Billy Graham (or Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, etc.)Graham’s feeble efforts to wash away the “sucking up” to a corrupt Nixon and other men of power, the Jesus of history looks so much better than those who claim his words but not his life style.The horror of Graham’s antisemitic tirade caught on tape is not the word’s but the use of bigotry to ingratiate himself with a man of power, a Caesar, and to remain a member of the court.