Earl Paulk, he of the Roman hands and Russian fingers, whose megachurch successor is both son and “nephew,” is dead.  From the Associated Press:

ATLANTA – An evangelical pastor whose leadership of an Atlanta-area megachurch ended in a sex scandal has died.

A paternity test revealed Paulk was the father of his nephew, who is now leader of the church.

Atlanta Medical Center said Archbishop Earl Paulk, who was in his 80s, died early Sunday. The hospital could not release a cause of death. Paulk had been in bad health for the past couple of years after a battle with cancer.

A phone listing for Paulk’s family could not immediately be found.

Paulk co-founded the Cathedral at Chapel Hill in Decatur and helped grow it to a peak membership of about 10,000 in the early 1990s.

A lawsuit by a female employee sparked a chain of events that ended in Paulk pleading guilty in January 2008 to lying under oath by denying affairs with other women.