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Pastor Darrell Gilyard

This looks like a story for ... Bible Girl! Only, well, she's off writing her book, so instead I'll just point your attention to this story out of Jacksonville, Florida, where pastor Darrell Gilyard today pleaded not guilty to sending sexually explicit text messages to a 14-year-old girl. And where's the local connection?

Well, he wound up in Jacksonville after he was run out of Richardson in 1991: Gilyard, described in The Dallas Morning News back then as "a charismatic young preacher who achieved nationwide attention as a protege of the Rev. Jerry Falwell," stepped down as pastor of the Victory Baptist Church of Richardson in July '91 after it was revealed he'd been screwing around with several members of his own congregation -- and three other churches. Among the complaints made against him at the time: everything from "suggestive late-night telephone calls to long-term sexual relationships with women he counseled." Like that won't come up in court this time around. --Robert Wilonsky

The anti-Rove: Before you go callin' the Reverend Andrew Weaver a hippie, well, he kinda ain't.

Wednesday's New York Times piece about the last-ditch effort to stop President Bush from putting his think tank on the SMU campus prompted plenty of follow-ups -- from The Dallas Morning News to the Associated Press to SMU's Daily Campus. Which is precisely what Brooklyn-based minister Andrew Weaver was hoping for: For a year, the Perkins School of Theology grad has been leading the charge against the library and, especially, the policy center, and he's pushing hard to put the $500-million project to a vote in July, when the United Methodist Church's South Central Jurisdiction holds its conference in Dallas.

"This is the best chance to stop it," Weaver tells Unfair Park. "It would be the ultimate death penalty. I mean, the rest of this country's trying to forget this guy, and you'll be stuck with him forever. It's just appalling. I have strong feelings about this because the seminary there, where I trained, was a tremendous intellectual and emotional experience that gave me a much richer experience in life. I was raised in a conservative Pentecostal church, and [at SMU] they said you don't have to worry about your doubts, just think.

"I feel an indebtedness to keep it from being overwhelmed by the right wing. The library's a ruse. The real piece George Bush and Karl Rove want is the think tank, and putting half a billion dollars on campus will absolutely overwhelm that school. And, worse, without any oversight you'll have the Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby Distinguished Chair in Political Ethics and so on."

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Only a few months after The Dallas Morning News ran its piece on the Hope Fellowship Church in Irving -- novel because it's housed in an old bar and some of its congregants are bikers who've served a little time -- The Christian Science Monitor offers its take on the "motorcycle ministry." Among the most intriguing revelations from the Monitor's story: "There are now cowboy churches, Goth churches, even NASCAR churches." --Robert Wilonsky

Not gonna lie -- it might be easier to get me into virtual synagogue than the real thing.

Sure, I went to Israel when I was a teenager -- Teen Tour, y'all? And during that time I discovered several important things about my faith: Mogen David should not be consumed by the barrel (or thimble, for that matter), Israeli-brewed Budweiser tastes like warm urine even when ice cold, Against All Odds and Supergirl are terrible in Hebrew and English, and there's nothing sexier than a female Israeli solder dancing in a Jerusalem discotheque with an AK-47 over her shoulder. Kids today might miss that profoundly religious experience.

This week comes word that there's now a virtual Israel floating around Second Life. That's due, in part, to a 33-year-old Dallas artist named Beth Brown, who, in 2006, created Second Life's first synagogue, Temple Beth Israel. Brown, who goes by Beth Odets in virtual temple, created Second Life Israel with New Jersey's Chaim Landau, who apparently doesn't like to travel, maybe? --Robert Wilonsky

Bill O’Reilly has been railing against the so-called “War on Christmas” for years. Now he’s lambasting a Massachusetts town for shutting off their Christmas lights at 10 p.m. to conserve energy. The horror. What did Baby Jesus ever do before the former WFAA-Channel 8 reporter got booted out of Dallas?

Now, the Sikhs, they're on to something a little bigger than that Charlie Brown Christmas display in your front yard. For three years they've been protesting France’s 2004 law that bans people from wearing articles of faith, including everything from turbans to yarmulkes to big ol' crosses, to the point of taking their case to the United Nations and the European Court of Human Rights. And this weekend, the international director of United Sikhs brings the issue to the Dallas-Fort Worth, where an estimated 10,000 Sikhs live. Just in time for the holidays.

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CNN

Most people pray while on the freeway; others do their bidding whilst on the side of the road.

I'm not going to lie: I can't tell a damned bit of difference between The 700 Club's story about how some God-fearin' folk believe Interstate 35 is the highway to heaven and CNN's story this morning on the very same subject. At least CNN features some footage from inside the all-nude Diamonds Cabaret, situated in a rather unsexy office park area just off Stemmons Freeway and Walnut Hill Lane (and, like, I sure hope that was during an atypically slow period). Love the way the CNN print version refers to it as "an adult go-go club," because, apparently, Gary Tuchman wrote it in 1966. --Robert Wilonsky

Last month, we cruised the Highway to Hell with Pat Robertson -- good times, good times. You remember, right? K, then. Anyway, mentioned in that 700 Club report was James Stabile, "a 19-year-old homosexual who'd come by to drink and party" on Cedar Springs and wound up, like, finding God or something during Heartland Ministries' so-called "purity siege"? Turns out, yeah, not s'much, reports the Dallas Voice today. Best part: Stabile's father Joseph provided the real story -- and "Joseph Stabile is pastor of Cochran Chapel United Methodist Church, the oldest church in Dallas." Shall we revisit? We shall, we shall. --Robert Wilonsky

The Dallas Theological Seminary this fall starting offering courses in Chinese, though only online -- for now. Says the DTS here, it wants to offer its "language-based theological education to Chinese-speaking people," since, ya know, they do speak the "most spoken" language in the world. Which makes sense, strictly speaking.

Today, the Associated Press takes a look at the seminary's first-of-its-kind Interwebs expansion, which it accomplished "using advertisements in Christian magazines in Taiwan and Hong Kong," resulting in hundreds of applications -- far more than DTS can handle, actually. Only possible snag: the Chinese goverment. --Robert Wilonsky

We now know the perfect way to describe Benny Hinn's hairstyle, thanks to 23/6.com.

Grapevine's Benny Hinn today tells Sen. Charles Grassley, via the Associated Press, to go take a flyin' leap. Which would be fine, except Grassley's the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee who wants Hinn and a handful of other televangelists, including North Texas' Kenneth Copeland, to turn over their financials no later than today, following an investigation by our very own Ole Anthony. Thus far, only Joyce Meyer has cooperated with the senator.

But that's not as interesting as this: On Tuesday, the Web site 23/6 -- as in, "Some of the news/Most of the time" -- offered up its "Inappropriate Hottie Rundown: Senate-Investigated Televangelists edition," in which it ranked the under-investigation televangelists as do-able or not-do-able. About Hinn, the site offers this observation, among many: "prodigal whore." Kenny Copeland, you merit a "Rowrr!" So, mazel tov. --Robert Wilonsky

Memo to our very good Friend, Jack E. Jett: Do not watch the following video, courtesy those folks wandering the Highway to Hell. Whatever you do. Do. Not. Watch. --Robert Wilonsky

Sinners, beware -- Jesus don't want you driving Stemmons Freeway or any other part of Interstate 35, from Laredo to Duluth. Seems the highway's due for a "purity siege," anyway -- a big ol' street-cleaning scheduled in coming End of Days to rid Pat Robertson and Dallas-based Heartland World Ministries' "Highway of Holiness" of the unclean, course, complete with 24-hour "prayer rooms." Only, now how will I get to the Penthouse Key Club? --Robert Wilonsky

Ole Anthony, not sitting on a commode of any kind

As we noted Tuesday morning, Sen. Charles Grassley's investigating six top televangelists: Paula and Randy White, David and Joyce Meyer, Creflo and Taffi Dollar, Eddie L. Long, Wise County couple Kenneth and Gloria Copeland and Irving-based Benny Hinn. And it was all the doing of Ole Anthony of the Dallas-based Trinity Foundation, who's clearly been been dumpster-diving again. Says Anthony, Trinity provided Grassley with enough information to fit in a Volkswagen, which allowed the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee to ask some very pointed questions of the televangelists.

For example, Grassley demanded to know the cost of items purchased for the Meyers’ headquarters, such as a “$23,000 antique commode with marble top,” and to explain each item’s tax-exempt purpose. Shades of $10,000 toilet seats for the Pentagon. The commode raised eyebrows. On a Web site on media, culture and faith called Phil Cooke and the Change Revolution, Cooke explained why Joyce Meyer might own such a regal throne:

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Roy Abraham Varghese, founder of The Institute for Metascientific Research in Garland

Last May, the paper version of Unfair Park published a piece about Garland tech consultant and amateur science philosopher Roy Abraham Varghese, founder of the Institute for Metascientific Research, a one-man, home-grown organization under whose auspices Varghese publishes books, organizes conferences and produces videos marshaled to scientifically prove the existence of God. At the time, Varghese was working on a book with 84-year-old British philosopher Antony Flew -- considered by many to be the most influential atheist of the 20th century -- on his recent conversion to theism, a process Flew in large part attributes to Varghese.

On Sunday, The New York Times Magazine published “The Turning of an Atheist” by Mark Oppenheimer of the Yale Journalism Initiative, exploring the controversies behind the new Flew-Varghese book: There Is a God: How The World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind. The Oppenheimer piece chronicles Flew’s declining memory (he apparently doesn’t remember sources or philosophical conversations cited in his book), his halting speech and his reliance on outdated science as well as his over-reliance on Varghese. At one point Oppenheimer calls Varghese Flew’s intellectual chaperone of the past 20 years and hints that Varghese has exploited Flew.

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Ole Anthony still doesn't like televangelists. And they probably don't like him.

CBS News has quite the revelation this a.m. (revelation -- heh): Sen. Charles Grassley an Iowa Republican and the party's top man on the Senate Finance Committee, is looking into half a dozen televangelists to see if they're abusing their tax-exempt status. See, Grassley wonders if Paula White, Joyce Meyer, Creflo Dollar, Eddie Long, Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn are raising all that dough not for God, but for their own personal Jesii -- and, no, say it ain't so. Grassley wants their financials no later than December 6, so he can see who's been naughty or nice before sending out Christmas gifts. And how did this investigation come to pass? Funny I should ask that:

The letters sent Monday were the culmination of a long investigation fueled in part by complaints from Ole Anthony, a crusader against religious fraud who operates the Dallas-based Trinity Foundation, which describes itself as a watchdog monitoring religious media, fraud and abuse. "We've been working with them for two years," Anthony told CBS News. "We have furnished them with enough information to fill a small Volkswagen."

Back in March, we brought word -- or should that be Word? -- of GodTube, which was Dallas Theological Seminary student Chris Wyatt's answer to, yup, YouTube. But only now, as the Dallas-based site -- its HQ is off Skillman Street and Lovers Lane -- becomes one of the hottest religious sites in the universe and easily the largest Christian broadcaster on the Web, are others getting religion.

A couple of weeks back, MSNBC and ABC News saw the light, and yesterday, The Los Angeles Times picked up on the news that it has become "the first religious website to offer the hot-ticket social media trinity: user-generated video (à la YouTube), social networking (à la MySpace and Facebook) and live webcasting (à la Stickam.com)." And what's the most popular video on GodTube? Funny you should ask ... In related news, my 4-year-old can name all the bounty hunters in The Empire Strikes Back. --Robert Wilonsky