Another Evangelist Preacher Arrested on Sex Charges; Tony Alamo of Alamo Ministries Arrested for Transporting Minors Across State Lines for Sexual Purposes; He’s Not the First of These Great Scammers To Get Caught

Evangelist Alamo Pre-Arrest Days

Alamo, Arrested

UPDATE: Friday, July 24th–Alamo GUILTY on all ten charges.  Read more here.

Tony Alamo, tele-evangelist of Alamo Ministries in Arkansas, has millions of TV followers from whom he has collected millions of dollars throughout the years. Today, he was arrested in a motel in Arizona for transporting minors across state lines for sexual purposes.

It’s really amazing how these so-called men of God can keep on duping people out of money and then live such hypocritical lives. It makes you wonder why so many of them are of the most conservative of denominations. But just in writing that sentence, it’s not difficult to see the answer. Granted, not all of these are television ministers, but that too goes to show just how deep this hypocrisy pervades thoughout these evangelical denominations.

It doesn’t take much of a memory to think of others of the same ilk:

-Ted Haggard of New Life Ministries in Colorado Springs, Colorado, long a friend of James Dobson, of the super-reicht Focus on the Family.

-Joe Barron of the huge Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, arrested for soliciting sex with minors over the internet.

-Michael Peters of Denver, Colorado’s New Hope Baptist Church, arrested for sexual assault of a child.

-Marshal Seymour of Lakeland, Florida’s First Baptist Church of the Mall, arrested for sexual abuse of teenage boys.

-Lonnie Latham, an executive member of the Southern Baptist Convention and minister of the South Tulsa Baptist Church, arrested for propositioning a male plain-clothes policeman, near a gay area in Oklahoma City.

Jimmy Swaggart's Crocodile Tears

The list goes on and on. (In fact, there’s a long-listing of these types of scandals by evangelical clergymen on wikipedia.) I ran onto the list when the arrest of Alamo reminded me of the arrest of Jimmy Swaggart so many years ago. Back in 1986 and 1991, Swaggart was arrested for soliciting prostitutes, but after tearful apologies to his congregation and TV viewers, now he’s back at scamming money from unsuspecting givers.