Bob Harrington spent 20 years in New Orleans, telling drunks, dancers and others to get right with God. But his spiritual sight was never clearer than when muggers broke up his face in Miami.
After three days in a hospital bed, Harrington took the 1989 beating as a signal from God. He gave up a lucrative speaking career and returned to church. And to preaching.
“I’ve made my mistakes, and I believe God wants to correct ‘em,” Harrington says from his office in New Orleans. “That’s where most Christians are. They’re in a ‘left’ position. They’ve left their first love for God.” If it sounds like Harrington has a new slogan, it’s because he does. The man who once went by the moniker “The Chaplain of Bourbon Street” now speaks with the purpose of “Winning the Left Back Right.”
At 70 years old, Harrington still cuts an attention-getting figure, with white, leonine mane and 280 pounds on a 6-foot-2 frame. His barker-style delivery booms out Bible verses and catch phrases with equal ease.
He first gained fame as the preacher who dared speak from the stages of saloons and strip joints, storming the gates of hell for the souls within. Publicity followed; so did audiences with the likes of Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt. Even with arch-atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, whom he debated in a 38-city tour during the mid-1970s.
Toward the end of that decade, he divorced his wife, Joyce, and married Zonnya, the executive vice president of his organization. Then he dropped out of the ministry. The couple moved to Clearwater, where he became a motivational speaker for insurance, real estate, automobile and multilevel marketing executives. And he shunned church, even avoiding the sight of a steeple.
What had happened? No big mystery, he says. Same as the Revs. Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Robert Tilton and Henry Lyons. Money and lust.
“Anytime you turn from God, you turn to the ways of the flesh,” Harrington says. “All the heavy hitters seem to have the same problem. Prodigals, those who have left their first love, are more of a problem than sinners.”
Harrington says those Miami muggers literally beat sense back into him.
The following year, an old friend, former media minister Rex Humbard, phoned him: “Aren’t you ready to come back?” Harrington said yes. He gave up motivational speaking, returned to church attendance, and resumed regular Bible study.
Now divorced from Zonnya, he lives in an apartment on New Orleans’ Lake Ponchartrain and attends a Baptist church there. He still visits Bourbon Street occasionally, but his guest appearances are his main work these days – about 50 a year, not counting his side appearances at local bars and media interviews.
Harrington says he has gathered around him a half-dozen friends in what he calls an “encouragement team,” with whom he can discuss any personal issues. They’re also allowed to call him down on any recurring problems, he says.
“There’s a lot of Old Bob still there,” he admits. “But it’s subdued by the New Bob.”