A QUARTET OF US TV EVANGELISTS:

These men--living and dead--have had, and are still having a tremendous influence over US Politics.  Universally Republican, they have been instrumental in dragging the United States to the Political Right, socially and fiscally.

 

The late JERRY FALWELL--founder of Liberty University in Falls Church, VA, (which is today presided over by his son.)  He started a movement called "The Moral Majority" in the 1980's, which lobbied for reinserting Prayer into US public schools.

The late ORAL ROBERTS   of Oklahoma, a faith healer as well as a preacher, founded Oral Roberts University(now run by his son, Richard). He once famously holed himself up in the "Prayer Tower" on campus for weeks, asking God to strike him dead if he didn't raise $8 million dollars by a certain date.  His life was saved, presumably, by a Texas billionaire at the last moment.

JIMMY SWAGGART, in Louisiana, is the cousin of singer Jerry Lee Lewis, and has rock n' Roll in his blood.  His TV broadcasts feature a large number of musical numbers by Jimmy.  In the 1980's, caught in a hotel room with a hooker, he famously pled tearfully for forgiveness on his broadcast.  After he was caught again, his wife, Phyllis, blamed viewers who had not prayed harder for Jimmy and who had failed to send money to the cause.

Swaggart has a University in Louisiana.

PAT ROBERTSON, who once ran as a Republican for US President (coming in second in the Iowa Caucuses),founded Regent University, also in Virginia.  Recent Republican administrations have placed Regent Law grads in important positions.  Robertson is probably most well-known to outsiders as having blamed the 9/11 attacks on New York's tolerance of the homosexual lifestyle and the Feminist movement. 

Really.  You can't make this stuff up...