In the early months of 1987 Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker had it all-a
popular Christian talk show, produced on their own PTL satellite
television network, a 2300-acre theme park visited by six million
people, 2700 employees, and millions of adoring fans. By the end of
that year the Bakkers would lose everything. Jim became embroiled
in a sexual assault lawsuit, which resulted in his forced
resignation as president of PTL. Two years later he was accused and
eventually convicted of fraud, landing him in jail for nearly five
years. The Bakker empire had fallen, and to many its collapse was
symbolic of the changes occurring in the wider culture, both
evangelical and secular. Many who watched the trial of Jim Bakker
viewed its circus-like atmosphere as the very essence of the 1980s
culture of excess, and particularly the greed and hypocrisy of
prominent televangelists. Others-those who were employed by the
PTL, or whose lives were touched by the Bakker's-saw the
organization as an inspiring, innovative, and sincere attempt to
spread the word of God, and were not entirely disillusioned by its
disbandment. This juxtaposition is illustrated in the very name of
the organization: to believers the acronym stood for Praise the
Lord or People that Love, while critics said it stood for Pass the
Loot or Pay the Lady (a reference Tammy Faye's outrageous makeup).
Thus, in three letters, one finds the tensions that defined the
time-the boundless optimism of evangelicals paired with the equal
and opposite skepticism of non-believers; America's newfound
fanaticism for televised entertainment and the disdain for the
lurid excesses of the rich and famous. On its surface, PTL is the
spectacular story of the rise and fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker
from humble beginnings to wealth, fame, and eventual disgrace. John
Wigger makes the case that this is also the story of a group of
people who stood at the center of several major trends in American
religion and culture during the 1970s and 1980s: the expansion of
religion into television and entertainment, the extension of a
faith mission model of the church, the rise and collapse of the
prosperity gospel, the increasing power of religious celebrities,
the mobilization of the laity, and the resurgence of evangelicalism
in American life.
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