How the 'ultimate scandal' saved one pastor

CNN:

The boy was watching people sing at a sweaty Pentecostal tent service one Sunday morning when a prophet onstage scanned the congregation and fixed her eyes on him.

"You need to come up here," the prophet told the wide-eyed 9-year-old, D.E. Paulk. "The Lord has a word for you that you need to speak to the church today."

As he was led to the stage, D.E.'s heart raced and his legs went numb. He grabbed the microphone with clammy hands and stammered the only words he could find: "Uh.. God... uh... loves you."

From that moment on, D.E. hid behind furniture in his family's church in Atlanta whenever pastors prophesied. But someone would steer him to the pulpit, and D.E.'s family would join the prophet in laying hands on him while predicting mighty signs and wonders for the boy they called "The Promised Seed."

No prophet, though, came close to predicting what really happened to D.E. in the years ahead.

No one predicted that his family would build one of the most racially groundbreaking megachurches in America only to see it collapse from a series of bizarre sex scandals covered by "A Current Affair" and other tabloid magazines and TV shows.

No one predicted that D.E. would discover that the man he believed to be his uncle, Archbishop Earl Paulk Jr., was really his biological father. The bishop had slept with his brother's wife while sharing the pulpit with both.

And no one predicted that after years spent extricating his family from assorted scandals, D.E. would do something in church that was, for many of his parishioners, far more outrageous than anything his notorious uncle did.

"And because it had nothing to do with sex or money," D.E. says, "I never saw it coming."

'Raised by wolves'

The boy who was dragged onstage is now 42 and doesn't look like he can be pushed easily in any direction. D.E. is 6-foot-1, with broad shoulders and beefy "I've been working out" arms. He greets a visitor with a boyish smile and a mellow voice that sounds more suited for a late-night talk show than a pulpit.

He is still in the church business, and so is his family. D.E. is co-founder and senior pastor of the Spirit and Truth Sanctuary, a quaint brick church in suburban Atlanta.

Glowing portraits of D.E.'s wife, Brandi, and their two teenage kids, Esther and Micah, ring his office. So do portraits of his parents, Don and Clariece Paulk, and his sister, LaDonna Diaz. A gushing biography of his uncle, Bishop Earl Paulk Jr., rests on a table. Glossy photos of the church's glory days show the Paulks shaking hands with politicians, gospel music stars and world-renowned preachers such as Joel Osteen, Oral Roberts and Robert Schuller.

Today, D.E. speaks before a racially mixed congregation of about 700. His church grounds aren't crammed with worshippers, buses and police officers directing traffic. The buzz of being the Hot New Thing is gone.

"It's strange for us to be normal," he says, "to not have anything in the news about us, to not be talked about or to not be the biggest church on the planet. It's not part of my life anymore."

His life before was so complicated that D.E. simply told curious church visitors who said his name sounded familiar to "Google me."

Google gives part of his story: How the Paulks built the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit at Chapel Hill Harvester Church into one of the nation's first and largest megachurches; how three American presidents honored their church; how the place imploded after the revelation about D.E.'s biological father. But the headlines don't say what happened to D.E. afterward.

How did the revelations affect his relationship with Don Paulk, the man who raised him; the person he still calls dad. Did his uncle, Bishop Paulk, ever apologize? How could D.E. even set foot in church again?

The headlines also don't explain what happened to D.E.'s mother, Clariece. How did she explain her actions to her son and husband? Did the marriage survive? Clariece Paulk, 76, recently told me that she prayed for over 20 years that no one would discover her secret. At times, Bishop Paulk would apprise D.E. from a distance and say to her, "He kind of looks like me in the shoulders."

"I'd be so afraid that somebody would see a picture of him and Donnie Earl at the same age, and I tried to hide the pictures," she said. "I lived in fear, just misery."

D.E.'s story is not just about a scandal. It's about fate. Are we all captive to the arc of our family history, no matter what we do?

D.E. tells people the scandal was not of his making. He is not the bishop. Yet some things about D.E. remind others of Bishop Paulk. Is D.E. bound to make some of the same mistakes?

"He fights that," says his 76-year-old dad, Don Paulk. "He's made statements like, "I don't want to do that. That's what my Uncle Earl would do.'"

It's a battle D.E. is already losing, says Jan Royston, a former Chapel Hill member who knew the bishop. She is part of a community of ex-Chapel Hill members who still feel betrayed by the Paulk family.

Royston started an online support group for former Chapel Hill members wounded by their experiences. She says D.E. isn't contrite; he's conniving.

The bishop twisted scripture to prey on people for riches, glory and lust. D.E., in Royston's view, is just another manipulative, pulpit predator.

"He was raised by wolves," she says. "Donnie Earl can't help who and what he is."

As tough as the critics are on D.E., no one was more so than the man who left him such a complicated legacy.

Before D.E. could find normalcy, he had to learn to deal with the strange. He had to take on the bishop.

Becoming the bishop's spiritual son

He punctuated his sermons with "darling" and "honey," but there was little tenderness in the bishop's public persona. He was the anti-Joel Osteen, a stout, craggy-faced man who scowled more than he smiled and preached with a raspy, hectoring voice.

Once, the bishop drove away a church member who challenged his authority by implying that she was a lesbian. He warned another critic that he might come after him with his .38 revolver. He hid his television set in a closet because he didn't want his congregation to discover he could succumb to worldly temptations.

Some leaders have Type A personalities. "He was Triple A," says Don Paulk, who is 11 years younger than his brother. "He would rather preach than eat when he was hungry."

The bishop's wrath could fall on his family as well as his congregation.

LaDonna Diaz, D.E.'s older sister, was the bishop's secretary.

"I would leave work some days crying," she says.

But D.E. was treated special from the start. Prophets began calling him "The Chosen One" when he was just a child. Boys, it seemed, were the only ones chosen by God in the patriarchal, Pentecostal culture that D.E. grew up in.

The bishop had three daughters. D.E. was the only male offspring with the Paulk surname. He was expected to become the family's fourth generation preacher and succeed the bishop one day.

The bishop encouraged that dream. He became D.E.'s spiritual mentor.

"I still have notebooks and notebooks from when he would preach," D.E. says. "There would be moments of revelations. I almost couldn't keep up. I was just writing as fast as I could."

The bishop returned D.E.'s devotion.

He placed him front and center at church events. And when D.E. became a standout high school basketball player -- good enough to land a college scholarship as a point guard -- the bishop was a familiar figure in the stands.

D.E.'s wife, Brandi Paulk, says her husband and the bishop drew energy from one another. Now 35, she grew up in Chapel Hill watching that relationship evolve.

"It's almost as if they fed off of each other," she says. "There was a connection there spiritually. He considered him his spiritual father."

When he was in high school, D.E. saw something that made him wonder if that connection went deeper.