The Sins Of The Pastor

By TAMALA M. EDWARDS

The Bible is full of men falsely accused and persecuted, and the Rev. Henry Lyons, minister of St. Petersburg's Bethel Metropolitan Baptist Church and head of the powerful National Baptist Convention, USA, says he is one of them. While he admits moral lapses, he says the 82-page arrest affidavit served on him on Ash Wednesday, full of charges of racketeering and grand theft, is the devil's work. In the only interview since then, Lyons, 56, told TIME he was a man at peace--"I can sleep comfortably again"--and ready to fight. "My daddy was a strong Baptist deacon and he gave me this good name. It doesn't mean trickster, deceiver," he said, folding his hands under his robes. "I look forward to getting my good name back."

But even as he pleaded not guilty last week, his supporters may be coming to feel they have embraced a Judas. Already the changes are striking. Lyons has long been a popular preacher, so powerfully connected that some associates called him the black Pope. On a recent Sunday, Lyons forbade a TIME photographer to take a wide-angle shot of the congregation at worship, lest it show 200 people clustered in a space built for nearly 1,000. And when he preaches these days, admits Marva Dennard, a Bethelite and Lyons supporter, "he's preaching to himself." One vocal critic, the Rev. Calvin Butts, head of New York City's Abyssinian Baptist Church, is incensed: "He has brought spiritual wickedness into high power." Butts and others failed to oust Lyons as convention leader last fall when the allegations began to appear, but they intend to try again in September.

Lyons' troubles began to surface last July after Deborah, his wife of 26 years, discovered a deed showing that he shared ownership of a house with Bernice Edwards, a convention liaison. Deborah, believing she had caught her husband in adultery (a charge he denies), made her way to the $700,000 mansion in the tony Tierra Verde neighborhood. Finding his clothes and effects in the lavishly decorated home, she set at least four fires. During the trip home, she hit a tree in her own, less expensive St. Petersburg neighborhood and soon admitted to police that she had set the fires. Deborah would later deny that statement, claiming she was mistaken about the affair and that she had accidentally "dropped a match" in the Tierra Verde house. But the incident set off the investigations that resulted in charges that Lyons used his position as the convention chief to shake down corporations for millions of dollars, spending the money on houses, jewelry, artwork and a time-share condo near Lake Tahoe.

Lyons exaggerated convention membership, putting it at 8.5 million rather than the more likely 500,000, then selling companies the inflated mailing lists. Globe Life and Accident Insurance Co., for example, received a list that included an Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Meanwhile, after the 1996 church burnings, the National Urban League and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith gave Lyons and the convention $244,500 for rebuilding. Only $30,000 made it to the churches; the rest allegedly went to Lyons and Edwards.

Perhaps the most revealing accusations against them involve Loewen, the Canada-based funeral-home chain that sought the pastor's help to sell its burial services through convention churches. Prosecutors say Lyons persuaded Loewen to make contributions to several convention causes and then diverted the money into his own pocket. Lyons and Edwards also allegedly went to Loewen in 1995 after the company lost a bankrupting $500 million civil suit in Mississippi and said they could get the verdict reversed for $2 million. In January 1996 Loewen settled for $175 million. Lyons and Edwards then called to scold Loewen for settling when their influence could have saved the company more money. Even so, Lyons and Edwards demanded the $2 million, claiming they had spent it helping the firm. The company wired $500,000 to a Milwaukee account but asked for receipts before sending the rest. Edwards allegedly called relentlessly. Several weeks passed, and then another call came. Lyons and Edwards said they were at the White House, just out of a heated meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus, which Lyons said was preparing to investigate Loewen for "ripping off poor people." Lyons said he had held them back, but would unleash them unless he was paid. "What I think of Loewen depends on whether [or not] I get my money," Lyons allegedly said, before adding that he was close to Clinton. Loewen sent another $500,000.

When the scandal first broke last summer, Lyons cried he was the victim of a racial smear. With each damaging disclosure, an electronic phone-announcement service would summon Bethel members to emergency church meetings. "We need to talk," Lyons would say before launching into his explanation. But soon other skeletons emerged in the St. Petersburg Times and in the state investigation. In 1991 Lyons spent a year in a federal pretrial-intervention program to avoid being prosecuted on bank-fraud charges. His marriage certificate to Deborah says it was a first union for both; in fact it was his third. One ex-wife recently came forward with stories that he physically and emotionally abused her; another woman is claiming to be his illegitimate daughter. And Bernice Edwards, 40, is not quite the proper company for a clergyman: she has been convicted of federal embezzlement charges, filed for bankruptcy four times and used six aliases.

Lyons, who won the convention leadership as a reformer, insists he has been a good steward, that he has paid down the convention's debts, that most of the payouts to himself and business associates were legitimate, that the truth will absolve him. "I am solidly resolved to put my mark on the convention," he promises. "A positive mark, not the mark that's there now." The convention's board is still packed with supporters. And most of his remaining Bethel members talk of forgiveness. "We don't condone what he did," says parishioner Dennard. "Regardless, we still love him." So much so that his lawyers plan a defense based on the separation of church and state, arguing that if the people of God will not rise against him over church business, why should the government? There are telltale silences, though. The Rev. Alvin Miller, Bethel's associate pastor, refuses to share the Bethel pulpit with Lyons, glowering from the pews. "When you've done wrong, the Lord is going to forgive you," he says, "but if you get caught taking cookies out of the jar, you've still got to suffer the consequences."

--Reported by Timothy Roche/St. Petersburg

With reporting by Timothy Roche/St. Petersburg