| Ted Turner is no fan of Christians. Through the years, he has denounced Christians as a religion for "losers" and referred to believers as "Jesus freaks" -and that doesn't even take into account all the morally dubious social causes he supports with his money and his mouth.
But now that his personal and professional lives have begun to unravel (he was ousted earlier this year from CNN after its takeover by AOL), Turner seems less the arrogant foe of faith than he does a sad man who could use some. After all, it was his hatred of Christianity that cost him his marriage to Jane Fonda.
"My becoming a Christian upset him very much-and for good reason," says Fonda, whose conversion made headlines last year. "He's my husband, and I chose not to discuss it with him because he would have talked me out of it."
Turner's eldest daughter, Laura, says Dad felt he was competing with Jesus for Fonda's love. "It was another male," she says. "It took time away from him."
But Fonda says for all his anti-Christian bluster, Turner really does wonder, deep down, if there's more to life than just the here and now.
"Although he claims to be an atheist, at the end of every speech he says, 'God bless you,'" she says. "He wants to get into heaven."
(c) 2001 Focus on the Family. Used by Permission. Reprinted from the July issue of Focus on the Family Citizen Magazine.
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