Bishop Unbound

By DAVID VAN BIEMA

Its plot is borrowed from the book of Genesis, but the musical might be controversial even by secular standards. A wealthy white woman, feeling undesirable after a breast-cancer operation, pays her black maid $15,000 to sleep with her husband. Only after much trouble and prayer does a righteous resolution ensue. Yet the co-author, composer and producer of Behind Closed Doors, which just opened in Chicago, is a man of the cloth: Bishop T.D. Jakes. Doesn't he fear failure? "My definition of success," says Jakes, 43, "is to be able to birth out every creative thought God has breathed into me before I die."

Jakes' emotive preaching flows out of the Pentecostal school, a minority tradition even in the world of the African-American church. His frankness--on stage or in the pulpit--about sex and sexual abuse (topics most pastors prefer to limit to private counseling) is also a breakthrough. "It wasn't just 'Read the Bible verse and talk about it,'" says J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma magazine. "It was a married black man speaking from a shepherd's heart to wounded women, and they lined up by the thousands." At least 2 million bought Jakes' book Woman, Thou Art Loosed. Jakes, a regular on two TV networks (TBN and BET), has generated a stream of other novel gambits. He has cut a Grammy-nominated gospel album, beamed his sermons by satellite into prisons in 15 states and built a $32 million megachurch in a depressed part of Dallas. Al Gore, Pat Robertson and Coretta Scott King are among his fans. George W. Bush calls Jakes' social programs models for a church-state partnership.

Jakes' critics, observing his frenetic style, wonder how well thought out those programs are. But most would agree that it has been years since an American so creative has stood so close to religious fame and power.

--By David Van Biema