c. 2005 Religion News Service

COLUMBUS, Ohio _ It’s 10:30 a.m. on a Sunday, and the 5,200-seat sanctuary at the World Harvest Church is pulsating with Christian energy.

Worshippers are jumping for Jesus like teenagers at a rock concert as Pastor Rod Parsley, central Ohio’s raging prophet of prosperity, appears in an explosion of sound and lights.

Buoyed by the emergence of values voters in the 2004 election and fueled by righteous fury at the nation’s courts over the issues of abortion and gay marriage, Parsley, 48, has been whipping America’s evangelical churches into a froth.

For almost a year now, he has crisscrossed the country on a “Silent No More” tour, granting interviews to national news publications and giving notice that he intends to be a major player in state and national politics in the coming years.

Parsley’s political platform is the Center for Moral Clarity, a nonprofit association he formed last summer.

The center is closely aligned with the Ohio Restoration Project, an effort that seeks to organize 1,000 Ohio “Patriot Pastors” who will recruit a network of values voters to become today’s “Minute Men.”

Project activities are scheduled up to the 2006 election, including statewide pastor policy briefings, “Ohio for Jesus” radio spots featuring Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, voter-registration drives and a statewide “Ohio for Jesus” rally in early 2006.

If Parsley’s declaration that he will be silent no more sounds incongruous coming from a man who already heads a $40 million-a-year ministry accessible worldwide via 1,400 TV stations and cable affiliates, Parsley has a ready answer.

For too long, he says, the secular left has intimidated Christians. Ministers also have surrendered their First Amendment right to engage in partisan politics, he says, relegating their churches to the status of “social clubs.”

Parsley’s call to action bristles with the metaphors of war. In his writings, he casts himself as a modern-day gladiator for God, advancing on “the very hordes of hell in our society … terrible as an army with banners.”

Parsley’s critics contend that his political assault comes perilously close to jeopardizing his church’s tax-exempt status because he has done everything but use his pulpit to endorse Blackwell for governor in 2006.

Blackwell wrote one of the four blurbs for Parsley’s new best-selling book, “Silent No More.” In January, Parsley and his mother, Ellen, donated the maximum $2,500 each to Blackwell’s campaign. The pastor also has taken Blackwell around the state on his Silent No More tour, introducing him as Ohio’s “6-foot, 4-inch man of steel.”

Blackwell says Parsley is just one of many Ohio ministers who support him.

“Rod Parsley and I are friends,” Blackwell said. “We have found common ground on a host of social and cultural issues from the protection of innocent life to the defense of traditional marriage.”

Back at his church, Parsley, drenched in perspiration and wiping his face with a black handkerchief, tells the cheering throng on this Sunday that God has chosen him to be a “catalyst for confrontation.”

“Our times demand it, our history compels it, our future requires it, and God is watching,” he says, repeating his book’s final words.

Saying success doesn’t come without sacrifice, Parsley notes that many people refer to his church as Pentecostal, prompting a treatise on the etymology of the word Pentecost.

“Why do you think they call it Pente-cost?” he roars. “Because it’s gonna cost you something!”

Dismissed by many as Elmer Gantry with a credit-card reader, Parsley is equally revered by others as a stentorian voice of morality in a debauched society.

“Rod Parsley is a man of integrity, a man of character, a man of great moral fiber,” said Darrell Scott, pastor of New Spirit Revival Center, a Pentecostal church in Cleveland Heights. “I really believe the moral fiber of America has continued to erode, and I believe that the failure of great societies like America didn’t necessarily come from outside attacks, but from moral failure.

“Rod Parsley preaches a message of holiness, and because I agree with the message and I know the messenger, I endorse what he’s speaking of.”

Interviews and public records show that Parsley is a study in contrasts.

He opposes abortion but supports the death penalty, saying the Bible “is very clear that we are to avenge the blood of the innocent.”

He decries the nation’s incivility and obsession with sex, but defended the conduct of his father when the senior Parsley was accused of sexually harassing his sister-in-law and punching out a house painter in a bill dispute.

He claims he has cured cancer with prayer, but he has been unable to cure his son of a form of autism known as Asperger syndrome.

Parsley, who dropped out of Circleville Bible College during his second year, also urges members of his church and the millions who have watched his Breakthrough ministry on TV to tithe at least 10 percent _ regardless of their financial status _ telling them that God will return the money.

He has preached this prosperity gospel while accumulating vast personal wealth, including a $1 million, five-bedroom, 51/2-bath house with a swimming pool; a $63,000 Cadillac and a $68,000 Lexus LX470 for himself and his wife, Joni; and a $5,000 Polaris all-terrain vehicle.

Parsley shares a gated 21-acre compound in Fairfield County with his mother and father _ church officials Ellen and James Parsley _ who live in a $940,000 home. The senior Parsleys also own a $450,000 vacation home on Lake San Marcos near San Diego.

Parsley’s undisclosed salary and royalties from books, CDs and collectibles such as $15 “Born 2 Raze Hell” T-shirts allow him to pursue recreational passions, such as hunting.

Public records show that he has held a general hunting license in North Carolina; permits to shoot deer, turkey and waterfowl in Ohio; and licenses to hunt mountain lions in Montana in 2002 and 2003.

Parsley also has a permit from the Fairfield County sheriff to carry a concealed weapon _ obtained, he said, because he received death threats.

Asked about his lavish lifestyle, Parsley says he wants “to create a culture where people enjoy the prosperity that God’s given us.”

He addressed the question more directly in his book “God’s Answer to Insufficient Funds.”

“Everybody believed in prosperity until the secular press got upset about it,” he wrote. “We’ve sinned by trying to make people ashamed of the blessing of God on their lives. We have said, `Don’t wear that, don’t drive that, and don’t live there.’ It’s time we said, `Satan, you didn’t give it to me and you’re not going to take it away.’

“Don’t ever be ashamed of the blessing of God on you. Just throw your head back and say, `Bless me, God. Bless me until I can’t stand it.”’

Parsley contends that “to be morally consistent is to be politically unpredictable.”

Rejecting critics’ claims that he has a right-wing agenda, he says he and his supporters are neither Republicans nor Democrats, but “Christocrats.”

He speaks passionately about poverty, noting that his Bridge of Hope Ministry has partnered with Christian Solidarity International to supply food and medicine to persecuted Christians in war-torn Sudan.

“I know that hunger sucks the hope out of a human soul,” he said. “The political left offers only the strained resources of the state, and the political right offers only what they call a more level economic playing field. I’m not sure what that means to someone who is hungry.”

He also speaks forcefully about race, echoing the familiar refrain that calls Sunday morning “the most racially segregated time in America.”

You wouldn’t know that by walking into World Harvest Church, which Blackwell calls “the most integrated church that I’ve been to in a very long while.”

Parsley believes that Ohio voters are ready to elect Blackwell Ohio’s first black governor.

“I think Ken Blackwell has stood up consistently throughout the years as a person who’s stood for values, family and the culture of life,” Parsley said. “I think we’re seeing a crossing over of racial barriers, theological barriers and even political ideology barriers in Ohio.”

He stresses that he is not endorsing Blackwell, although he supports the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act. Proposed by Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., it would permit ministers to engage in partisan politics, a right Parsley says was stolen in 1954.

“We’re not seeing the separation of church and state,” he said, “but the suppression of the church by the state.”

Parsley’s critics contend that he’s close to crossing the line.

“I wouldn’t say that he’s crossed the line yet, but I’d certainly say that he’s sliding toward the edge of the cliff,” said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “When you are promoting Blackwell in these very high-profile events with these other religious-right luminaries … it seems abundantly clear that this is Parsley’s chosen candidate.”

Donald Tobin, who teaches courses on tax-exempt organizations and tax law at Ohio State University, said churches are prohibited from endorsing candidates for a good reason.

“Churches are subsidized through the tax code, and one of the reasons we accept that subsidy as a society is we believe they are engaged in good deeds that are beneficial to society as a whole,” he said. “But if you allow churches to become major political advocates, then you’re forcing taxpayers to subsidize their particular political views.

“And if you do that, then next year we’re going to have the Church of Kerry and the Church of Bush.”

His OSU colleague Alan Semansky, who also teaches tax law, disagrees.

“I think the line should be pushed more toward letting churches endorse candidates, as long as they don’t use church funds,” Semansky said. “If they want to say at a church sermon, `Vote for X,’ that doesn’t bother me. I think that’s what’s happening anyway.”

For all of Parsley’s moralizing about family values and the decline of American culture, questionable associations and bizarre lawsuits shadow him.

Next to Blackwell’s endorsement of Parsley’s book is an equally exuberant blurb by Tony Perkins, president of the Washington-based Family Research Council.

In 1996, Perkins, while managing the U.S. Senate campaign of Woody Jenkins in Louisiana, secretly paid $82,500 to former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke to purchase Duke’s voter mailing list.

Perkins signed the contract, spurring an investigation by the Federal Election Commission. The FEC fined Jenkins’ campaign $3,000 in 2002 for concealing the purchase.

Parsley said he was unaware of Perkins’ dealings with Duke and had no comment. Blackwell said he has known and admired Perkins for years.

“If, in fact, they had a disclosure problem, hopefully they paid the price,” Blackwell said. “In terms of his character and his views on matters of race, Tony Perkins is a stand-up guy.”

Parsley also has a long association with Dale Allison, a disbarred Georgia lawyer who did much of the legal work that helped Parsley build his World Harvest campus.

Allison lost his license to practice law in Georgia in 1997 after he admitted helping a pastor evade a legal judgment by filing phony documents to shield the pastor’s money from his “nosy” parishioners.

Court records in Fairfield County show that Allison served as co-defense counsel in a lawsuit that Parsley’s house painter filed against the pastor, his parents and the church in 1992. The painter, Lewis Bungard, sued after Parsley’s father, James, the church’s chief of maintenance, knocked Bungard unconscious in a bill dispute.

Bungard also accused Rod Parsley of fraudulently accepting $7,000 and reneging on a promise to use the money to help build a home for unwed mothers and an elder-care facility.

James Parsley, now 72, was convicted of disorderly conduct and fined $100. Court papers show that he admitted hitting Bungard but said he thought Bungard was about to attack his son.

The senior Parsley contended that after he struck Bungard, the painter intentionally injured himself further by rolling on the ground and “grinding his face in the gravel.”

The lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed sum.

Rod and James Parsley and the church also were sued in 1992 and 1995 by Naomil “Nicky” Endicott, the senior Parsley’s sister-in-law.

Endicott accused James Parsley of grabbing her breasts and buttocks and offering her money and church-paid trips in exchange for sex while he was her supervisor.

The church’s lawyers fought the cases for years, describing Endicott as a disgruntled family member who was trying to enrich herself. The parties settled in 1995 for an undisclosed sum after Endicott revealed she had tape-recorded James Parsley’s solicitations.

Rod Parsley declined to discuss the two cases, saying only: “Nothing was proven to be anything other than allegations. There was no admission of liability.”

The latter settlement required Endicott to give the tapes to Parsley’s lawyers. As in the Bungard case, Parsley’s lawyers insisted that the settlement include a gag order, leaving much of the evidence known only to the litigants, their attorneys and God.

_ News researcher Cheryl Diamond contributed to this story.

KRE/PH END WENDLING

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