Televangelist Gene Scott dies at 75

LOS ANGELES - Gene Scott, the shaggy-haired, cigar-smoking televangelist whose eccentric religious broadcasts were beamed around the world, has died. He was 75.

Scott died Monday after suffering a stroke, family spokesman Robert Emmers said.

For three decades, Scott was pastor of Los Angeles University Cathedral, a Protestant congregation of more than 15,000 members housed in a landmark downtown building.

In the mid-1970s, Scott began hosting a nightly live television broadcast of Bible teaching. His nightly talk show and Sunday morning church services were aired on radio and television stations to about 180 countries around the world by his University Network.

In 1986, he relocated his Glendale church to the United Artists Theater, a Spanish Gothic building established by Charlie Chaplin and other stars in 1927. His church spent $2 million to renovate it.

In some of his speeches, he would use chalkboards covered with Greek and Hebrew and deliver complex lectures on the Biblical languages to make points about the meaning of faith.

“It’s a college-level classroom in the Bible,” he once said.

But he also spoke on current events, sometimes lacing his sermons with profanity. He supported the war in Iraq.

“Iraq is a threat to the world,” he said in a 2003 speech posted on his Web site. “So kick the hell out of ‘em, George.”

Recognizable by his mane of white hair and scruffy beard, Scott never stuck to a conventional format for his show - he once wore glasses with eyes pasted on them and sometimes smoked on the show. On his Web site, he said about himself, “What you see is what you get.”

Unlike other televangelists, his sermons did not condemn homosexuality, abortion or other hot-topic sexual issues. Scott argued that such issues were a personal choice.

“I don’t ask you to change when you come here,” he told the congregation, according to a 1994 Los Angeles Times article. “I take you as you are, as God takes me as I am.”

Scott’s church raised millions through round-the-clock Internet and satellite TV broadcasts, where he would demand of viewers: “Get on the telephone!” to donate.

He had a lavish lifestyle that included a chauffeured limousine and contact with political bigwigs. He claimed at one time to own 300 horses.

But he also spent lavishly on charity. After a fire badly damaged the Los Angeles Central Library, he organized a telethon that raised $2 million. In 2002, Scott gave $20,000 that helped save Museum in Black, which has some 5,000 items from the slave and civil rights eras, from eviction.

His finances came under repeated scrutiny. The state attorney general’s office in 1977 looked into fraud allegations involving Scott’s church and 11 other religious organizations. The investigation was dropped after the Legislature passed a law barring prosecution of civil fraud against tax-exempt religious organizations.

The Federal Communications Commission in 1977 looked into allegations that Scott diverted donations for his own use. Scott denied it and the allegations were never proven.

In 1983, the FCC stripped Scott’s church of three broadcast stations after he refused to turn over financial records. Scott bought airtime from local and cable television stations.

The son of a traveling preacher, Scott was born in Buhl, Idaho, and later moved with his family moved to Gridley in Northern California. Scott, who wrote more than 20 books, earned a doctorate in philosophies of education from Stanford University in 1957, according to his Web site.

Scott is survived by his wife, Melissa.

Services were pending.

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