Religious leadership and hypocrisy go together like inspirational athletes and illegal drugs.
Pulpits attract narcissists, and when their followers demand that they provide weekly moral pronouncements, irony often ensues. For years, one of the most inspiring religious leaders was a preteen named Marjoe Gortner, who, under the direction of his stage mother, made millions during the 1940s and 1950s as a traveling boy-wonder evangelist. His sermons sold well as records, with messages like this one, delivered when he was eight years old: “I say hell is a place of extreme bodily suffering. . . . In hell, you’ll be oh so lonely. People say ‘Oh, there’ll be plenty of company in hell.’ But they’ll be [so] taken up with their own suffering and their own shame that they’ll not care a thing about you.” Later, he renounced his charlatanism and starred in an Academy Award–winning documentary, Marjoe, where he exposed the tricks of his trade.
Still: He wasn’t there to trash faith. He just wanted people to see through the leaders they put too much trust in. “I hope that they will see it’s not necessary to look to some person to, like, jerk you off,” he said of his goals in making the film.