Religion: Ousting Two from the Clergy

Many a Protestant parson caught up in scandal has quietly been found guilty by an ecclesiastical panel and has then slipped from view. But last week a double defrocking was proclaimed to the world by the national head of the ministers' denomination. The ousted preachers are Jim Bakker, who confessed to adultery last March and then gave up his multimillion-dollar PTL television network and theme park at Fort Mill, S.C., and his former top executive, Richard Dortch, who was accused of orchestrating a cover-up of Bakker's lapse.

District officials of the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination with 2.3 million U.S....