Marjoe: Rapped in Celluloid

NEWS

“If I had to chose one Christian religion to believe in—and thank God I don’t—I’d chose the Pentecostal faith,” announces Marjoe Gortner during an eighty-minute film documentary of his last few months as a Pentecostal evangelist on the revival circuit.

Marjoe, recently released and premiering in New York City, purports to be an exposé of revivalists, of present-day Elmer Gantrys who take prey on the hearts and wallets of innocent, sincere church people. And it is an exposé of sorts. The film exposes Marjoe, who plays himself, as a confused, egocentric young man—a self-developed, repressed schizophrenic. Marjoe’s a cynical unbeliever, yet at the same time a “religion addict.” “Can God deliver a religion addict?” He asks it lightly, but, as we realize at the end of the film, the question is serious.

Marjoe—he claims his name is a combination of Mary and Joseph, though his father denies this—began preaching at the age of four and made national newspapers by performing a marriage ceremony. His mother wrote his sermons and tutored him in delivery. Every body movement, every gesture and expression were drilled into him. When Marjoe proved dull or got tired of memorizing—his childhood sermons ran twenty-five to forty minutes—his solicitous mother smothered him in a pillow or doused him with water. Both parents traveled with him and both were preachers. Marjoe’s father, Vernon, claims his son is a fourth-generation preacher.

Mrs. Gortner developed a series of signals to use while Marjoe was preaching. A “glory, hallelujah” meant that he was speaking too fast, a “praise Jesus” that he was going too slow. And when he really got wound up and the congregation was ripe, his mother signaled him to take the offering. He preached in tents and towns from four to fourteen. Then his father—and the offering—disappeared during a service. About a year later, Marjoe quit preaching. He estimates that he made $3 million for his parents; he got none of it. “They [his parents] never even set up a trust fund or anything for my education. I virtually supported them,” he explains.

After leaving revivalism he lived for a time with an “older woman.” He never defines the relationship, but as he talks of her we hear for the first time of the pain and emptiness of his life. “She cared about me, me as a person, and I felt about her as I wish I could have felt about my mother.” He called his late teens “my bitter period.” But now—why hate? His parents, he reasons, were just doing their thing.

Then a few years ago he went back to preaching. He needed money, and he knew the ropes. “What else could I have done?” On the revival beat he was pious Marjoe, star evangelist, filled with the Spirit. Off-pulpit he was swinging Marjoe, who “only dates stewardesses.” His two lives never mixed, and no one on either side suspected him.

But the dichotomy started to bother him. “I realized that I’d have to go into this thing completely, belief and all, or give it up.” He decided to give it up, but he didn’t leave quietly.

New-Spirit Ministry

A “spirit”-filled church in Atlanta opened its second night club in less than a year, this time atop one of the city’s highest skyscrapers. The Free For All Baptist Church—which admits it’s not like most Baptist churches—plans to convert the present club into a twenty-four-hour soul-food restaurant while continuing the bar operations. Entertainment will include rock, blues, and spirituals. Last fall the church opened a similar night spot in Underground Atlanta, a turn-of-the-century tourist center.

Church leaders say they’re not promoting drinking and dancing, just black community development. The profits will support church nurseries, day-care centers, and a private academy. The church, one of the largest in Georgia, is actually three churches operating in three black communities in the city.

The film juxtaposes scenes of his childhood preaching days with services he held in the last six months. And intermittently we see him explaining the action to cameramen, friends, fellow party-goers, or, soliloquy-style, the audience.

He thoroughly instructs the camera crew about smoking, swearing, and girlchasing. He even makes one of the crew cut his long hair. “These people are zealous to save souls—that’s their whole thing.” he tells them. What should the crew members do if a church member asks if they’re saved? “Tell them you’re washed in the same blood they are,” retorts Marjoe, adding, “It’s all in the blood. It covers everything. It’s a very gory religion.” He also tells them what to watch for, what to zoom in on—people getting healed (“it’s all psychosomatic,” Marjoe explains) or others speaking in tongues. Marjoe knows the tongues act perfectly; he rattles off a few sentences in “angels speech” for the crew’s benefit.

The film’s narrative is not only for the crew but also for the audience, many of whom might not understand what happens during Pentecostal meetings. Narrative and action alternate; the film is well edited and seems shorter than it is. The service sequences give the film its power and its aura of authenticity.

Marjoe preaches like Tom Jones and Mick Jagger perform. He sings, whispers, shouts, prances, and storms the people with the Gospel. Behind the pulpit, in front of the altar, or down the aisles, mike in hand, Marjoe pleads with his people to praise Jesus. “If you can’t feel the Spirit here tonight you’re dead,” he repeats in meeting after meeting, alternating this with a few minutes of pseudo-tongues-speaking. Over and over again he croons such gospel favorites as “He Touched Me” and “Since I Laid My Burden Down” while he lays hands on the expectant, hyper-emotional members of the congregations. Women weep, men moan, and teen-agers faint and twitch as he touches them at the altar. He sells prayer handkerchiefs (cheap red bandanas) that will bring health and wealth and promotes an old album of his childhood sermons, pushing the “blessed” “Hell With the Lid Off” as the best of the bunch.

His performances—and that’s all they are (“I would have been a rock singer or actor with a different background”)—are contrasted with those of the evangelists sharing services with him. Most of the church and tent meetings take place in all-white, southern areas, but the central scene of the documentary is his pseudo-sermon (it’s really little more than a praise-Jesus-oh-can’t-you-feel-him-tonight-everybody-praise-Jesus chant) at a black church’s twenty-four-hour prayer service. He shares the platform and pulpit with evangelist Sister Taylor, a large white woman dressed in white, who claims that “we don’t use God’s money for foolishness,” as the camera subtly zeroes in on her large bejeweled brooch and oversized diamond rings.

Marjoe is more than “charismatic”; his animal magnetism nearly rivals that of Elvis, and he works his charm—for a fee, of course—in a wonderful way on that black congregation. He has them dancing in the aisles, so full of the spirit that they relinquish nearly every last dime at the altar (that altar had a crucifix on it, certainly unusual for a black Pentecostal church).

Music at his meetings is provided by guitar, drums, piano, organ, and choirs and ranges from pure soul gospel through pseudo-rock to unadulterated hillbilly. We never hear him pray or read the Bible, and service for God is never mentioned. His congregations are too busy being blessed.

After one lively service, we see Marjoe and the church’s minister counting the offering. “You count the big bills,” Marjoe says, “and I’ll count the smaller ones.” As they stack the take in neat piles, the minister remarks how “appreciative” he was of this sermon. “I liked that, boy, I really did. You sure got them going.” The congregation was still going when the two left to count the money.

We see Marjoe’s accomplished evangelist act during a homey dinner scene with that pastor and his family. The preacher’s wife complains about all the phony evangelists running around, and Marjoe agrees, adding that the congregation can tell after a night or two if the man is sincere. “Yes,” says Mrs. Preacher, “the people aren’t dumb; they know who’s honest and who isn’t.” The scene ends as the preacher tells about his 800 acres of property in Brazil and the big deal he has with a vegetable canning company to buy his produce. He mentions, incidentally, plans to build a Bible school on the land some day.

But Marjoe can’t take it any longer. “Movie or no movie. I have to get out.” Is he a con man?, a cameraman asks Marjoe’s black girlfriend, Agnes, who seemed horrified at the question. But that’s just what Marjoe is telling us. He’s a small-time con man in the religion game. (He admits he hadn’t hit the “big time.”)

He also, unknowingly, tells us something more. This film is Marjoe’s rap therapy, his expurgation for his phoniness: “I was beginning to feel guilty about taking the people. After all, they really got something out of it; they believed in what I was saying,” he explains. The pity of it is that he’s all alone with his guilt in this celluloid confessional booth. And there’s no one on the other side to hear and forgive.

The Right To Marry

It’s not just anyone who can get married in Israel, as resident Protestants and Jews whose proposed marriages fall outside rabbinical law (i.e., mixed marriages) know. Israel provides no civil-marriage service, and the crisis over this threatens balanced Orthodox-secular coalition. The civil-marriage question, however, is only a part of the larger issue—Israel’s synagogue-state separation.

To alleviate the problem for Israelis, the Independent Liberal Party (ILP) has proposed a civil-marriage bill, scheduled to be voted on in October.

Prime Minister Golda Meir, unhappy that ILP introduced the bill, maintains that the action “contravened the interparty agreement” that three years ago set up the present coalition. Religious critics argue that the bill would upset the “status quo.” But the ruling labor party supports the bill in principle as essential to freedom of conscience.

Earlier, in a mollifying statement, Mrs. Meir informed Labor leaders that she is encouraging the rabbis to find a solution. If they do not, she has threatened to propose “some form of civil marriage” in the party’s 1973 election platform.

A recent survey found that 57 per cent of the Israelis polled endorse civil marriage. Those most likely to favor it were professionals, people in upper-income brackets, and younger, native-born Israelis.

If the bill as it now stands should become law—it applies only to Jewish citizens—it would bring no relief for Israel’s unrecognized Protestants (excluding the Anglican church, which two years ago received recognition). While a few Protestant clergymen have been permitted by the Ministry for Religious Affairs to perform marriages for members of their denominations, there is strong doubt that such ceremonies would be legally binding in court, should a test be made.

Protestants haven’t ignored this slight. The United Christian Council, representing fourteen Protestant bodies, called on the prime minister to either support or create a marriage bill that would benefit Israel’s disenfranchised Protestants.

Rabbi Shlomo Goren, chief rabbi of Tel Aviv and candidate for chief rabbi of Israel, denounced the civil-marriage proposal. He also stated that he is against Christian-Jewish dialogue: “We have had more than enough of such discussions in the Middle Ages. We are not interested in influencing them and we certainly don’t want to be influenced by them.”

Most Protestants in Israel favor a showdown between the Orthodox and the secularists. The secular majority would almost certainly win, improving the Protestants’ lot. But with the weightier problems of security, immigration, and financial woes constantly before it, the government will probably continue for the sake of religious peace and unity to avoid the issue whenever the dreaded spectre of religious kulturkampf threatens to emerge.

DWIGHT L. BAKER

Nipping Hierarchial Heels

The activist National Association of Laity, an unofficial reform-minded Catholic group that claims to have an influence out of proportion to its size, wants more openness and democracy in church money matters. For five years the NAL has been nipping at the heels of the bishops, trying to get them to be a bit less secret about money and a bit more liberal about where and how they spend it.

In the latest heel-nipping episode, NAL executive director Joseph O’Donoghue was directed at last month’s annual convention in Detroit to turn over to the Internal Revenue Service financial reports issued by the bishops along with NAL analyses of the reports. The NAL will ask the IRS to “withdraw the tax exemption privilege from those dioceses … found to be in violation” of the IRS code through failure to report the amount of money spent on lobbying. The NAL claims that the hierarchy spent $6 million last year on lobbying, mostly for aid to parochial schools and on the abortion issue.

NAL attorney Leo Jordan said that the NAL does not oppose lobbying by bishops but that their lobbying should be for such “Christian causes” as aid to the poor. (The NAL opposes state funding of parochial schools.)

While voicing criticism of the bishops as a group, the 175 delegates commended eight bishops, most of them for anti-war stands. Two bishops were censured for endorsing President Nixon’s conduct of the war: Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia and episcopal secretary Joseph Bernardin.

Members called on stockholders to influence corporations to act in more humane ways. The action was in line with the convention theme, “Capitalism and Christianity.”

“We think there is no human suffering today that is not related to economics,” said convention chairman Beverly Leopold, “and we as Christians must take a look at that.”

JEAN MCCANN

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