KEY POINTS:
The death of Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, has rocked the evangelical movement. Let's examine the saints and sinners of America's religious right.
Paul Crouch
* Who is he?
Crouch and his wife, Janice, founded the California-based Trinity Broadcasting Network, which started small in 1973 and is now the world's largest televangelist outlet.
* What's his style?
Regal. He and Jan like to appear on air on high-backed purple thrones.
* How does he keep the faithful in line?
Telling viewers if they don't pay up they could spend eternity in the flames of Hell.
* Juicy scandal?
Plenty of it. Three years ago, Crouch paid US$425,000 ($580,171) to a former employee who accused him of trying to lure him into a gay sexual tryst. He made another payout to a terminally ill woman who accused him of ripping off her idea for the end-of-the-world movie The Omega Code, which TBN released in 1999. And the Crouches have been accused of wildly lavish spending on their offices and on their US$5 million oceanfront home.
Jim & Tammy Bakker
* Who are they?
The Bakkers founded Praise The Lord television, which started out as a joint venture with Crouch's TBN, and also ran the world's first religious theme park, Heritage USA, outside Charlotte.
* What was their style?
Big hair, big mics, wide ties, loud outfits and, in Tammy's case, spectacular fake eyelashes.
* How did they keep the faithful in line?
With showbiz glitz - and what Frances FitzGerald in the New Yorker described as a shamelessness "so pure as to almost amount to a kind of innocence". Jim once boasted: "We're gonna broadcast 24 hours a day until the Second Coming of Jesus Christ!"
* Juicy scandal?
Yup. Jim admitted he had slept with a former Playboy model, Jessica Hahn, and then tried to cover it up with a cheque for US$265,000. Tammy, meanwhile, confessed she was addicted to prescription drugs. Jim ended up in prison for fraud, Tammy got cancer and, on the rebound, got divorced and married Jim's best friend.
Ted Haggard
* Who is he?
Founder of New Life Church in Colorado Springs and former leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, with unusually good access to the Bush White House. These days, though, he is Exhibit A for the hypocrisy of the evangelical movement.
* What's his style?
In public, bog-standard gay-bashing, family values-spouting fundamentalism. In private, snorting crystal meth and fantasising about all-male gang-bangs.
* How does he keep the faithful in line?
These days, with great difficulty. On the eve of last year's elections, a gay prostitute went public detailing three years of sexual encounters with the married preacher.
* Juicy scandal?
It doesn't get juicier. The prostitute, Mike Jones, said he came forward when he found out the true identity of his client, as he was enraged by his hypocrisy. Haggard issued a statement saying: "I am a deceiver and a liar. There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life."
Pat Robertson
* Who is he?
Founder of the Christian Coalition, the most powerful evangelical lobbying group in Washington, a former presidential candidate and a broadcaster known for histirades against gays, liberals and Muslims.
* What's his style?
Southern gentleman, with an eloquent line of bigotry to match. He once described feminism as a "socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians".
*How does he keep the faithful in line?
His daily broadcast, The 700 Club, goes out on ABC's Family Channel. He appeals to America's inner conspiracy nut and has claimed the power to divert hurricanes and cure Aids through the power of prayer.
* Juicy scandal?
Robertson provokes outrage with his opinions, and his questionable friendships with violent extremists such as the late Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire. A fellow Korean War veteran testified under oath that he had slept with prostitutes and sexually harassed a maid.
Oral Roberts
* Who is he?
A Pentecostalist healer and founder of Oral Roberts University, a fundamentalist college in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
* What's his style?
He's big on the laying of hands - specifically his right hand, which he claims can cure cancer and other serious illnesses.
* How does he keep the faithful in line?
He told his followers in 1987 that if he didn't raise US$8 million by the following March, God would "call him home". Roberts claimed he made the deadline with three hours to go.
* Juicy scandal?
Critics say "cripples" he claims to have cured were healthy and paid, and "doctors" that congratulated him "could not be identified as doctors of medicine".
Joel Osteen
* Who is he?
The upcoming superstar of the American evangelical movement, based at the Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas.
* What's his style?
Upbeat and inspirational, more Tony Robbins than Jerry Falwell. His slogan is: "Discover the champion in you." His church's theme song is We Are The Champions by Queen.
* How does he keep the faithful in line?
By telling them Christianity will make them rich and happy. He's been accused of preaching a "prosperity gospel".
* Juicy scandal?
None so far.
Billy Graham
* Who is he?
Perhaps the most influential Southern Baptist in history, a preacher, evangelist and adviser to nine presidents.
* What's his style?
In his heyday, a powerful gift for rhetoric that prompted hundreds of people to convert at his rallies. He is credited with building church organisations the world over.
* How does he keep his faithful in line?
Having powerful friends has always helped. He was spotted early on by the press barons William Randolph Hearst and Henry Luce, who thought he would be helpful in promoting their conservative, anti-communist views.
* Juicy scandals?
Not too many. He struck up a friendship with North Korea's former leader, Kim Il Sung, calling him "a different kind of communist", and exchanged gifts with his son, Kim Jong Il. On the Nixon tapes, he is overheard opining that Jews had a "stranglehold" on the US media and were causing the country to go "down the drain" - words for which he later apologised. In 1993 he told a crowd in Ohio he saw Aids as God's judgment on sinners, but later withdrew the remark.
Jimmy Swaggart
* Who is he?
A televangelist from Louisiana who hit popularity in the 1980s and is still active today. He is also Jerry Lee Lewis's cousin.
* What's his style?
Bombastic. During his most famous speech, in which he begged forgiveness for sleeping with a prostitute in 1988, thick tears ran down his face as he acknowledged: "I have sinned."
* How does he keep the faithful in line?
These days, by appealing to their worst instincts. Following the September 11 attacks, he called Muhammad a "sex deviant" and a paedophile, advocated racial profiling of Arabs - everyone, in his words, "with a diaper on their head and a fan-belt around their waist"
* Juicy scandal?
The 1988 sex scandal was one of the defining moments of its decade - not least because it sparked a nasty rivalry with a fellow evangelist called Marvin Gorman.
- INDEPENDENT
