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TechnoratiThe media light has fallen upon famed Pentecostal preachers and their less than perfect lives, which, to many, has come as a shock.
National evangelist or prophetess Juanita Bynum, 48, was granted a restraining order last week after filing for divorce from her husband, Bishop Thomas W. Weeks III, alleging that he beat her at an Atlanta hotel parking lot in August.
Bynum, considered the most prominent black female television evangelist in the nation, had rose to renown, especially in black communities, empowering women with messages renouncing pre-marital sex and breaking free of sexual promiscuity.
Now as she seeks a divorce based on the argument that her marriage has been "irretrievably broken" and that she is a victim of "cruel treatment," critics are attacking what seemed to be presented as a model marriage, with some accusing the prophetess of exploiting the parking lot attack for publicity.
But Bynum, who says she forgives her husband, struck down the notion that Christians live perfect lives.
"I think the misconception of Christianity is that we are people that don't have any problems," she said on ABC News' Good Morning America. "And that is absolutely not the truth."
"The purpose of spirituality is to assist you and give you the proper wisdom that you would need to handle a situation in a much more different way than a person would handle it had they not known the Lord," she continued. "I think we're tested and we're judged how we come through it."
She found it "ludicrous" that critics accused her of trying to gain more popularity, noting that God has already "favored" her with popularity and that she didn't need another person to know who she was.
The Weeks' divorce come just as another renowned Pentecostal duo, Randy and Paula White of Without Walls International in Tampa, Fla., announced their plans for divorce. In this case, the split is amicable and they blamed it on the two different ministerial directions their lives were going.
Both have been married and divorced before.
"Divorce, once a taboo in evangelical culture, is now a fact of life," writes David Van Biema in Time magazine. A poll by Newsweek showed that the divorce rate among pastors is 50 percent, no different from that of the general public.
Still, divorce is disappointing to many evangelicals. The Whites acknowledged that their divorce would let down their followers and attendance at the Tampa megachurch would "take a hit."
And one pastor cautions against attaching perfection with pastors.
"This expectation of perfection is unrealistic," writes Corey J. Hodges, senior pastor of the New Pilgrim Baptist Church in Taylorsville, in The Salt Lake Tribune, "and pastors who attempt to portray such an image cause serious damage to the church congregation and the community of faith in their times of personal crisis."
On further note, with the latest scandals having occurred within the Pentecostalism, some have raised questions about the movement.
"The Charismatic movement is so driven by emotion and by passion that it sometimes lacks both theological and moral accountability," says respected theologian Dr. R. Albert Mohler, the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and one of America's preeminent evangelicals, according to Time. Continue »
