ONTD Original: Great Scandals of The Evangelical Church
Every time an ONTD post about a religion-based scandal went up, I wanted to write about my own life as a prisoner of a parent who bought into this easily twisted doctrinal belief. But when the movie 'The Eyes of Tammy Faye' was announced, I got off my ass and started writing. There are a few of these scandals that are deeply personal to me, as the people in question were used to browbeat me and my sister in our teenage years into being good "Christian robots". Of all of them, this is the one I stay mad about 30+ years later. This organization conned my mother into dropping money we didn't have as a family into it. I had to spend summers in Charlotte, NC/Fort Mill, SC because of it. I had to be in church choirs and worship groups with people I legit loathed on NO SLEEP (I was working my way through college on overnight shifts) because Mom needed to be able to brag about how her daughter was going to be just like one of the Winans. This is the nightmare fuel of my trauma and I have willingly jumped into this with both feet. In a way, it's been good for me. It's been difficult to talk about this in real life so this has been preparing me for being able to discuss it more fully in therapy so I can heal. Please to forgive my saltiness alllllll the way through this. You've all been incredibly generous and kind. I appreciate it more than you know.
Welcome to the
Buckle up sistren, there's fuckery to uncover
The basis of this series are my own experiences with living in a Fundamental Christian/Born-Again household until I was in my 30s (when I escaped--I'm not even lying about that), I pulled many of these off the top of my head and then filled in memory with research that sent me down a path of recollections I would much rather forget, BELIEVE ME. Remember, you are not forced to read....but I do hope you learn.
Chapter 4: Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker/PTL
Denomination: Assemblies Of God
The Background: Jim and Tammy met when they were students at North Central Bible College in 1961. They were married a year later, then started touring the country with Jim preaching and Tammy Faye singing while playing the accordion. They caught the attention of known despicable bigot Pat Robertson and were brought in on Robertson's first station WYAH 27 in Virginia, first with a children's show called Come On Over, then as the original hosts of The 700 Club. They also helped Robertson found the Christian Broadcasting Network, the very first channel designed to focus on strictly evangelical programming.
The Bakkers left CBN in the early '70s to launch the similarly focused Trinity Broadcasting Network in LA.
When Ted Turner decided he was booting The 700 Club from his Charlotte, NC stations, he offered Jim and Tammy 2 hours a day on his platform. The Bakkers moved back East and made an old furniture store in Charlotte, NC their first studio. Their program, called the Praise The Lord Club, or the PTL Club, started as a news-type program in 1974, then morphed into its eventual final form, mimicking a late night show, with Tammy Faye as Jim's 'sidekick' and a house praise band (known as the PTL Singers, where BeBe and CeCe Winans got their start).
Eventually the Bakkers built the PTL Club into the PTL Network and in 1978 built Heritage USA, which was designed to be a permanent Disney World-type retreat for Christian families. $200 million of PTL funds were used to purchase land and break ground on Heritage USA.
By January 1987, the approximately 2,300 acre Heritage USA campus included:
the 501-room Heritage Grand Hotel, which had a private section for the Bakker family that you could take tours of and a $1 million 24K gold gilded antique piano made in 1875 in the lobby. (That PTL bought. It wasn't donated to the ministry. THEY BOUGHT IT FOR THE HOTEL LOBBY. Me and Dad looked at each other. Then side-eyed the fuck out of that damned piano.)
Main Street USA (an indoor shopping and dining complex attached to the hotel with shit food and terrible Christian themed tkoches, music and bookstores. Think Circus Circus Buffet in Vegas level food. Do not ask. Just trust OP, when I have led you astray ?)
the Heritage Village Church
The first 21-story Silver Tower timeshare condo complex (which when I visited in 1982 was only about half completed. It was completed in 1985-ish)
The Upper Room Chapel (a small church that was a supposed reconstruction of the home where Jesus Christ and his disciples ate The Last Supper in.)
the Heritage Island water park
a 400 unit campground
The King's Castle Arcade with lame ass Christian themed video and pinball games and a skating rink
the main TV and recording studios for the PTL Network
a seniors-only condo complex
[As well as Burger King. God I loved that fucking Burger King. After the terrible rubber ham in the Main Street USA cafeteria, a Whopper with onion rings and a Coke was a fucking 5-star restaurant experience.]
During the mid-1980s, PTL was pulling in a cool million dollars a week in donations (all TAX FREE) and Heritage USA was the third largest theme park in the US. Not the Carolinas. Not the South. It was Disney World, Disney Land, HERITAGE USA.
In January of 1987, the Bakkers announced plans for the next phase of Heritage USA (as customary) on Jim's birthday: the Crystal Palace Ministry Center, a 1.25 million square foot replica of the fabled Crystal Palace exhibition hall in London to expand the Heritage Grand complex. It would include a 30,000 seat church, a 5,000 seat television studio and would cost $100,000,000 to complete.
One.
Hundred.
MILLION.
TAX-FREE
Dollars.
An Aside: Prosperity Doctrine: This topic has come up in the comments section of every sermon in this series so far, and is an important thing to understand as this sermon and series moves forward.
Part of your 'job' as a Christian is to support your church. That's why churches pass a plate during services to collect both tithes - a portion of your income that you commit to give to the church in question to help it exist (bills, utilities, salaries, maintenance of the facilities, etc.)--and voluntary offerings for various reasons. Usually, members of the church will drop their tithes into the plate in a little envelope and customarily, it's approximately 10% of your income. It's based on ancient stories about Abraham giving a tenth of the spoils of war to God, and Christ's teachings that believers should commit 10% of their income to 'charity and justice'.
Starting in the early 1900s, there was a movement that started to be put together (mostly by tent revivalist preachers) that the more you gave to God over and above your tithing, God would give you earthly wealth as proof of your devotion to Him. These 'seeds' that you sowed along with the Word of Faith you spoke would be multiplied tenfold, and you would then be blessed with wealth and prosperity, that you should use to continue to give to the church...thereby earning you MORE wealth.
Showing off your wealth, which had been seen as a show of pride, greed and arrogance, was now switched into showing off how much God had blessed you. Because you had Rolexs, diamond tennis bracelets, fancy cars, clothes and good health, it was proof of your devotion to The Lord. If you were poor and ill it was because you hadn't given enough to God's servants; that made you a bad Christian and not worthy of blessings. Clearly, you needed to stop holding onto the meager amount of money you did have to support your family and give it to the local traveling preacher, so they could INCREASE your debt wealth.
Prosperity doctrine is a big reason why Evangelical families often ignore their disabled children and family members (both visible and invisible disabilities) because their existence proves they're bad Christians. Because God struck me down with Type 2 Diabetes to show that I'm a evil human who should have just followed the plan my mother had for my life like an obedient child, but it's not too late at age 53 to repent.
It was in the 70's and 80's that this doctrine really took hold of modern Evangelical Christianity though people like Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, Robert Tilton and...Jim Bakker. Instead of the poor and humble traveling tent preacher, slick-suited pastors rolling up in their Cadillac limousines and private jets was now the norm and their expansive 'congregations' (through radio and television audiences) were expected to give money to sow their seeds so they could garner the wealth these scammer teams flaunted.
Almost every major scandal in the modern Evangelical movement can trace their starts in one of two things: sexual assault/abuse and the money the Prosperity Doctrine dumped into their ministries.
The Scandal: Jim Bakker suddenly stepped down from PTL in March of 1987. Liberty University (and equal to Robertson POS) head Jerry Falwell, Sr. (a sermon on this dickwad is coming BY REQUEST!) immediately took over.
In reality, the step down wasn't all that 'sudden'. Falwell was brought in to save the Bakkers from what was going to be a hostile takeover by other Christian broadcasters--whose first order of business was to out Bakker as a serial rapist. Long Island church secretary Jessica Hahn was given $279,000 to keep her from producing receipts that Bakker and another preacher, John Wesley Fletcher, had drugged and r*ped her back in 1980. Hahn exposed Bakker in an interview in Playboy. Bakker fired back that Hahn was a 'professional' who knew 'all the tricks of the trade' but that the sex had was consensual.
While this was going on, the Charlotte Observer newspaper released the findings of the three year investigation they'd had conducted on PTL and Heritage USA, mainly revolving around the Silver Tower and the Heritage Grand Hotel in a series of in-depth articles.
Supporters were always told that their partnership money was used to expand PTL's worldwide ministry and pay for the continued expansion of Heritage USA as a Christian family getaway. One of the major ways PTL raised money was through giving away 'exclusive' goodies for larger donations. [source]
For example, for $1000 'exclusive partnerships', donors were promised lifetime three-night stays at the 501-room Heritage Grand. When those partnership slots were filled, ground was broken on two more complexes: the 550-room Heritage Grand Towers hotel and a second 21-story Silver Tower. Eventually the Silver Towers Complex would be four towers filled with luxury condos, also sold on a 'lifetime membership' fee starting with three nights at $1000, five nights for $5500 and $7000 for a full week. Suckers. My mom was a goddamned sucker.
(I'm not going to get into the other rumors about Jim Bakker's sexuality. I'm just not. But they're there and several employees, male and female, talked about Jim Bakker's advances on them during the height of PTL's popularity. We all went through too much with Josh Duggar. We need a break.)
Too bad the Charlotte Observer had figured out that Bakker had already sold more 'Exclusive Lifetime Partnerships' than even the expanded Heritage Grand and Silver Towers could ever handle. Bakker had sold the same weeks to multiple families (WHY MOM WHY OMG SO DUMB), there was never going to be any further construction on the Silver Tower complex and Bakker used $3.4 million from the money collected to pay off Hahn and keep Tammy Faye in eyeliner, bronzer and red lipstick.
Note: $3.4 million of the hundreds of millions collected.
It wasn't even the FIRST time PTL had been busted for fooling with money raised from supporters. Back in 1982, the FCC came a-knocking because of the approximately $350,000 that the Bakkers had raised for 'overseas missionary trips' that was really used to break ground on what would become Heritage USA and for 'personal use'. The FCC board voted 4-3 to drop the investigation, as long as Jim sold the sole remaining regular television station he owned, so that he would no longer fall under scrutiny from FCC rules. (The PTL Channel was its own entity and not subject to FCC rules.)
Never mind the $1.3 MILLION that the IRS discovered in 1985 that the Bakkers funneled from the ministry for 'personal use'. (it's always that "personal use" thing that keeps coming back up, huh?)
Both cases were sent over to the Justice Department, who failed to start an investigation. See, Ronald Reagan was president at the time and he wasn't interested in busting the Bakkers for fraud, since many of those who donated to their work were ALSO staunch Republican voters in the "Moral Right" that ol' Ronnie didn't want to piss off. (My dad HATED Reagan. He hated Reagan only slightly more than he hated PTL. And he HATED PTL. Rest in Power, Dad.) If it hadn't been for the Charlotte Observer's break of the sham timeshare weeks and the Hahn payoff, the Feds would have continued to turn a blind eye.
Once the payout scandal came to light and the IRS were forced to investigate, they discovered that Jim was running PTL with two sets of books, with the second actually the one with all the dirty laundry (held by Roe Messner, a mega church developer and long-time PTL contributor), including how far in debt the ministry actually was and all the personal trips and luxury items the Bakkers had purchased with money donated from millions of people around the world. Including air-conditioned dog houses for Tammy's pets, braces for their kids and God only knows what else my fucking college fund paid for. [THANKS FOR THE $40,000 IN STUDENT LOANS I WAS PAYING OFF INTO MY 40s, YOU ASSHOLE SCAMMERS. YES I KNOW I GOT OFF EASY, LET ME HAVE MY BITTERNESS.
Forgive student debt. For real. It's crippling to force brandie-new graduates to pony up for the hundreds of thousands now required to get advanced degrees for entry level corporate jobs and/or the levels of classes needed for trade professions. Beauty and electrician school ain't cheap either.]
In 'serve you right' realness, Falwell, who was brought in to mitigate the fallout of the IRS/payoff scandals and pave a way for the Bakkers to return to the head of the Heritage USA ministry, stole it out from under them, declaring Bakker as the 'the greatest scab and cancer on the face of Christianity in 2,000 years of church history'. (Hello Kettle...)
He also took a ride down a water slide in his suit to raise money to keep Heritage USA afloat.
Falwell claimed that Tammy Faye made a long list of demands in order for the Bakkers to give up plans to wrest control of PTL back that included large annual salaries, two cars, a maid for one year and a furnished house on a lake, among other things. She confirmed said list with Ted Koppel on his Nightline program during the Bakkers' '87 apology tour after initially denying it.
"He [Falwell] asked us what we felt that, after all these years of the ministry, of leaving the ministry, what we should have," Tammy told Koppel. "And you know, when you're negotiating --"
"You start out at the top," Jim Bakker finished for her.
[See that? Right there? THAT IS WHY TAMMY GETS NO PASS FROM ME!! By that point if she didn't know Jim was dealing dirty, SHE SURE KNEW AFTER FALWELL SHOWED UP AND SHE WANTED TO KEEP HER PIECE OF THE PIE. Fuck Tammy Faye Bakker. Fuck her right in the ear.]
PTL's tax-exemption status was revoked (remember all of the previous was done as a TAX-EXEMPT Non For Profit); the Assemblies of God defrocked Bakker in May of 1987. In 1988 the Federal government convicted Jim Bakker, the admitted sole financial decision maker of anything related to PTL and Heritage USA, of 8 counts of mail fraud, 15 counts of wire fraud and 1 count of conspiracy. He was originally sentenced to 45 years in Federal prison, which was eventually lowered to 8 years. He was released in July of 1994 after serving only 5 years of his sentence. He supposedly continues to pay on the $6,000,000 tax lien he accrued after the IRS took away his ministry's tax-free/not-for-profit status.
Tammy Faye divorced Jim in 1992 and married Roe Messner. (Remember him? The keeper of the master PTL books who was himself tried for bankruptcy fraud in direct relation to PTL's shenanigans?) She died in 2007 of colon cancer.
YES, I know, she did openly support the LGBTQ+ community in the late 80s/early 90s when that was literally the third rail of Christianity. I get it, Tammy "redeemed" her image with The Surreal Life and such and everyone thought she was very sweet. But it doesn't excuse the fact that she helped Jim bilk millions of dollars out of people who could not afford it. She was just as much responsible for and certainly prospered from the bullshit of PTL as Jim and in my book, she never gets a goddamned free pass. Ever. YMMV on that opinion. It's OK. I get it.
The only innocents in this mess were Tammy Sue and Jay, Jim and Tammy's kids and I cringed watching them get trotted out during the PTL Club week after week like performing ponies. Ugh. I felt bad for them, I really did.
Current Ministry:
In January 2003, Bakker began broadcasting the daily Jim Bakker Show at Studio City Cafe in Branson, Missouri (where all has-beens go to make money) with his second wife, Lori Graham and his and Tammy's daughter, Tammy Sue. The broadcast has a millennial/survivalist focus (Think 'Stay pure for Jesus and here's how to build YOUR Tribulation bunker') and was first broadcast on Daystar, CTN, and satellite TV.
In January 2008, Bakker's ministry moved into a new television studio near Branson in Blue Eye, Missouri. The studio is housed in a 600-acre development called Morningside that strangely resembles Bakker's former location, Heritage USA. However, most or all of the property in the new development is owned by associates of Bakker rather than by Bakker himself or his ministry.
In 2015, Bakker was finally able to purchase back the rights to the name 'PTL Television' and its logos; he renamed his Generation Now satellite station the PTL Television Network. It is available online and via streaming services like Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV, plus some cable distributors.
PTL 2: Electric Boogaloo
During the pandemic, Bakker and Morningside were sued by the Missouri AG for shilling a health supplement called Silver Solution that an "expert" claimed would prevent and cure COVID-19. It would be made available to those who 'donated' $80 to $125. Bakker had to pay out $156,000 in damages and was ordered to never advertise for the product ever again. It contains colloidal silver, which HAS been proven to turn you blue if too much of it is in your system:
Surprisingly, this man did this TO HIMSELF
Many buildings and the waterpark on the old Heritage USA site are abandoned, but a large chunk of land, many of the smaller chapels, the huge pyramid that once served as PTL main headquarters and the Heritage Grand Hotel were purchased by MorningStar Ministries, an organization founded by long-time Bakker friend Rick Joyner, to be used as their headquarters. The Upper Room remains as a small church, the 18-hole golf course was refurbished and is still in use and Joyner is looking into rebuilding and reopening the waterpark located in Ft Mill, SC. Some of the land has been turned into housing sub developments and Joyner is fighting with the City of Charlotte over the 21-story Silver Tower--the city wants it torn down, Joyner wants to rehab it into housing.
Jim and Tammy's son, Jay, followed his father into Christian ministry. However unlike his scammer father, Jay's ministry, Revolution Church in Seattle WA, is a congregation open to all and openly rejects the fundamentalism, prosperity doctrine and social ultra-conservatism that he was raised with in PTL. He is the author or co-author of three books: Son of a Preacher Man: My Search for Grace in the Shadows, an autobiography about his growing up in PTL; Fall to Grace: A Revolution of God, Self, and Society and Faith, Doubt, and Other Lines I've Crossed: Walking with the Unknown God. He is also the subject of the Sundance documentary One Punk Under God.
Sources: me, my damned bike, my sanity, my college fund, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
disclaimer: I do believe in a higher power out there in the cosmos (I choose to call it 'God', you good sistren can call it whatever it is you want to). Be a good person. Treat others how you want to be treated. DO NOT LET SOME FLASHY ASS GUY ON THE RADIO/TV TELL YOU WHAT TO BELIEVE. Or one who stands in front of you in a pulpit on Sundays either. The best lesson I got out of my years of Christian captivity (oop, education) was the one that my mother really didn't want me to have: QUESTION EVERYTHING. The Bible is a book, claiming to be the Word of God but written by FALLIBLE HUMAN MEN. It has been messed with multiple times and fashioned to fit what a small group of people (white men) WANTED it to say. You're allowed to challenge it. As a matter of fact, it's your duty to.
tl;dr: Matthew 7: 3-5
Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye...
Welcome to the
Buckle up sistren, there's fuckery to uncover
The basis of this series are my own experiences with living in a Fundamental Christian/Born-Again household until I was in my 30s (when I escaped--I'm not even lying about that), I pulled many of these off the top of my head and then filled in memory with research that sent me down a path of recollections I would much rather forget, BELIEVE ME. Remember, you are not forced to read....but I do hope you learn.
Chapter 4: Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker/PTL
Click to viewDenomination: Assemblies Of God
The Background: Jim and Tammy met when they were students at North Central Bible College in 1961. They were married a year later, then started touring the country with Jim preaching and Tammy Faye singing while playing the accordion. They caught the attention of known despicable bigot Pat Robertson and were brought in on Robertson's first station WYAH 27 in Virginia, first with a children's show called Come On Over, then as the original hosts of The 700 Club. They also helped Robertson found the Christian Broadcasting Network, the very first channel designed to focus on strictly evangelical programming.
The Bakkers left CBN in the early '70s to launch the similarly focused Trinity Broadcasting Network in LA.
When Ted Turner decided he was booting The 700 Club from his Charlotte, NC stations, he offered Jim and Tammy 2 hours a day on his platform. The Bakkers moved back East and made an old furniture store in Charlotte, NC their first studio. Their program, called the Praise The Lord Club, or the PTL Club, started as a news-type program in 1974, then morphed into its eventual final form, mimicking a late night show, with Tammy Faye as Jim's 'sidekick' and a house praise band (known as the PTL Singers, where BeBe and CeCe Winans got their start).
Eventually the Bakkers built the PTL Club into the PTL Network and in 1978 built Heritage USA, which was designed to be a permanent Disney World-type retreat for Christian families. $200 million of PTL funds were used to purchase land and break ground on Heritage USA.
By January 1987, the approximately 2,300 acre Heritage USA campus included:
[As well as Burger King. God I loved that fucking Burger King. After the terrible rubber ham in the Main Street USA cafeteria, a Whopper with onion rings and a Coke was a fucking 5-star restaurant experience.]
During the mid-1980s, PTL was pulling in a cool million dollars a week in donations (all TAX FREE) and Heritage USA was the third largest theme park in the US. Not the Carolinas. Not the South. It was Disney World, Disney Land, HERITAGE USA.
In January of 1987, the Bakkers announced plans for the next phase of Heritage USA (as customary) on Jim's birthday: the Crystal Palace Ministry Center, a 1.25 million square foot replica of the fabled Crystal Palace exhibition hall in London to expand the Heritage Grand complex. It would include a 30,000 seat church, a 5,000 seat television studio and would cost $100,000,000 to complete.
One.
Hundred.
MILLION.
TAX-FREE
Dollars.
An Aside: Prosperity Doctrine: This topic has come up in the comments section of every sermon in this series so far, and is an important thing to understand as this sermon and series moves forward.
Part of your 'job' as a Christian is to support your church. That's why churches pass a plate during services to collect both tithes - a portion of your income that you commit to give to the church in question to help it exist (bills, utilities, salaries, maintenance of the facilities, etc.)--and voluntary offerings for various reasons. Usually, members of the church will drop their tithes into the plate in a little envelope and customarily, it's approximately 10% of your income. It's based on ancient stories about Abraham giving a tenth of the spoils of war to God, and Christ's teachings that believers should commit 10% of their income to 'charity and justice'.
Starting in the early 1900s, there was a movement that started to be put together (mostly by tent revivalist preachers) that the more you gave to God over and above your tithing, God would give you earthly wealth as proof of your devotion to Him. These 'seeds' that you sowed along with the Word of Faith you spoke would be multiplied tenfold, and you would then be blessed with wealth and prosperity, that you should use to continue to give to the church...thereby earning you MORE wealth.
Showing off your wealth, which had been seen as a show of pride, greed and arrogance, was now switched into showing off how much God had blessed you. Because you had Rolexs, diamond tennis bracelets, fancy cars, clothes and good health, it was proof of your devotion to The Lord. If you were poor and ill it was because you hadn't given enough to God's servants; that made you a bad Christian and not worthy of blessings. Clearly, you needed to stop holding onto the meager amount of money you did have to support your family and give it to the local traveling preacher, so they could INCREASE your debt wealth.
Prosperity doctrine is a big reason why Evangelical families often ignore their disabled children and family members (both visible and invisible disabilities) because their existence proves they're bad Christians. Because God struck me down with Type 2 Diabetes to show that I'm a evil human who should have just followed the plan my mother had for my life like an obedient child, but it's not too late at age 53 to repent.
It was in the 70's and 80's that this doctrine really took hold of modern Evangelical Christianity though people like Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, Robert Tilton and...Jim Bakker. Instead of the poor and humble traveling tent preacher, slick-suited pastors rolling up in their Cadillac limousines and private jets was now the norm and their expansive 'congregations' (through radio and television audiences) were expected to give money to sow their seeds so they could garner the wealth these scammer teams flaunted.
Almost every major scandal in the modern Evangelical movement can trace their starts in one of two things: sexual assault/abuse and the money the Prosperity Doctrine dumped into their ministries.
The Scandal: Jim Bakker suddenly stepped down from PTL in March of 1987. Liberty University (and equal to Robertson POS) head Jerry Falwell, Sr. (a sermon on this dickwad is coming BY REQUEST!) immediately took over.
In reality, the step down wasn't all that 'sudden'. Falwell was brought in to save the Bakkers from what was going to be a hostile takeover by other Christian broadcasters--whose first order of business was to out Bakker as a serial rapist. Long Island church secretary Jessica Hahn was given $279,000 to keep her from producing receipts that Bakker and another preacher, John Wesley Fletcher, had drugged and r*ped her back in 1980. Hahn exposed Bakker in an interview in Playboy. Bakker fired back that Hahn was a 'professional' who knew 'all the tricks of the trade' but that the sex had was consensual.
While this was going on, the Charlotte Observer newspaper released the findings of the three year investigation they'd had conducted on PTL and Heritage USA, mainly revolving around the Silver Tower and the Heritage Grand Hotel in a series of in-depth articles.
Supporters were always told that their partnership money was used to expand PTL's worldwide ministry and pay for the continued expansion of Heritage USA as a Christian family getaway. One of the major ways PTL raised money was through giving away 'exclusive' goodies for larger donations. [source]
For example, for $1000 'exclusive partnerships', donors were promised lifetime three-night stays at the 501-room Heritage Grand. When those partnership slots were filled, ground was broken on two more complexes: the 550-room Heritage Grand Towers hotel and a second 21-story Silver Tower. Eventually the Silver Towers Complex would be four towers filled with luxury condos, also sold on a 'lifetime membership' fee starting with three nights at $1000, five nights for $5500 and $7000 for a full week. Suckers. My mom was a goddamned sucker.
(I'm not going to get into the other rumors about Jim Bakker's sexuality. I'm just not. But they're there and several employees, male and female, talked about Jim Bakker's advances on them during the height of PTL's popularity. We all went through too much with Josh Duggar. We need a break.)
Too bad the Charlotte Observer had figured out that Bakker had already sold more 'Exclusive Lifetime Partnerships' than even the expanded Heritage Grand and Silver Towers could ever handle. Bakker had sold the same weeks to multiple families (WHY MOM WHY OMG SO DUMB), there was never going to be any further construction on the Silver Tower complex and Bakker used $3.4 million from the money collected to pay off Hahn and keep Tammy Faye in eyeliner, bronzer and red lipstick.
Note: $3.4 million of the hundreds of millions collected.
It wasn't even the FIRST time PTL had been busted for fooling with money raised from supporters. Back in 1982, the FCC came a-knocking because of the approximately $350,000 that the Bakkers had raised for 'overseas missionary trips' that was really used to break ground on what would become Heritage USA and for 'personal use'. The FCC board voted 4-3 to drop the investigation, as long as Jim sold the sole remaining regular television station he owned, so that he would no longer fall under scrutiny from FCC rules. (The PTL Channel was its own entity and not subject to FCC rules.)
Never mind the $1.3 MILLION that the IRS discovered in 1985 that the Bakkers funneled from the ministry for 'personal use'. (it's always that "personal use" thing that keeps coming back up, huh?)
Both cases were sent over to the Justice Department, who failed to start an investigation. See, Ronald Reagan was president at the time and he wasn't interested in busting the Bakkers for fraud, since many of those who donated to their work were ALSO staunch Republican voters in the "Moral Right" that ol' Ronnie didn't want to piss off. (My dad HATED Reagan. He hated Reagan only slightly more than he hated PTL. And he HATED PTL. Rest in Power, Dad.) If it hadn't been for the Charlotte Observer's break of the sham timeshare weeks and the Hahn payoff, the Feds would have continued to turn a blind eye.
Once the payout scandal came to light and the IRS were forced to investigate, they discovered that Jim was running PTL with two sets of books, with the second actually the one with all the dirty laundry (held by Roe Messner, a mega church developer and long-time PTL contributor), including how far in debt the ministry actually was and all the personal trips and luxury items the Bakkers had purchased with money donated from millions of people around the world. Including air-conditioned dog houses for Tammy's pets, braces for their kids and God only knows what else my fucking college fund paid for. [THANKS FOR THE $40,000 IN STUDENT LOANS I WAS PAYING OFF INTO MY 40s, YOU ASSHOLE SCAMMERS. YES I KNOW I GOT OFF EASY, LET ME HAVE MY BITTERNESS.
Forgive student debt. For real. It's crippling to force brandie-new graduates to pony up for the hundreds of thousands now required to get advanced degrees for entry level corporate jobs and/or the levels of classes needed for trade professions. Beauty and electrician school ain't cheap either.]
In 'serve you right' realness, Falwell, who was brought in to mitigate the fallout of the IRS/payoff scandals and pave a way for the Bakkers to return to the head of the Heritage USA ministry, stole it out from under them, declaring Bakker as the 'the greatest scab and cancer on the face of Christianity in 2,000 years of church history'. (Hello Kettle...)
He also took a ride down a water slide in his suit to raise money to keep Heritage USA afloat.
Falwell claimed that Tammy Faye made a long list of demands in order for the Bakkers to give up plans to wrest control of PTL back that included large annual salaries, two cars, a maid for one year and a furnished house on a lake, among other things. She confirmed said list with Ted Koppel on his Nightline program during the Bakkers' '87 apology tour after initially denying it.
"He [Falwell] asked us what we felt that, after all these years of the ministry, of leaving the ministry, what we should have," Tammy told Koppel. "And you know, when you're negotiating --"
"You start out at the top," Jim Bakker finished for her.
[See that? Right there? THAT IS WHY TAMMY GETS NO PASS FROM ME!! By that point if she didn't know Jim was dealing dirty, SHE SURE KNEW AFTER FALWELL SHOWED UP AND SHE WANTED TO KEEP HER PIECE OF THE PIE. Fuck Tammy Faye Bakker. Fuck her right in the ear.]
PTL's tax-exemption status was revoked (remember all of the previous was done as a TAX-EXEMPT Non For Profit); the Assemblies of God defrocked Bakker in May of 1987. In 1988 the Federal government convicted Jim Bakker, the admitted sole financial decision maker of anything related to PTL and Heritage USA, of 8 counts of mail fraud, 15 counts of wire fraud and 1 count of conspiracy. He was originally sentenced to 45 years in Federal prison, which was eventually lowered to 8 years. He was released in July of 1994 after serving only 5 years of his sentence. He supposedly continues to pay on the $6,000,000 tax lien he accrued after the IRS took away his ministry's tax-free/not-for-profit status.
Tammy Faye divorced Jim in 1992 and married Roe Messner. (Remember him? The keeper of the master PTL books who was himself tried for bankruptcy fraud in direct relation to PTL's shenanigans?) She died in 2007 of colon cancer.
YES, I know, she did openly support the LGBTQ+ community in the late 80s/early 90s when that was literally the third rail of Christianity. I get it, Tammy "redeemed" her image with The Surreal Life and such and everyone thought she was very sweet. But it doesn't excuse the fact that she helped Jim bilk millions of dollars out of people who could not afford it. She was just as much responsible for and certainly prospered from the bullshit of PTL as Jim and in my book, she never gets a goddamned free pass. Ever. YMMV on that opinion. It's OK. I get it.
The only innocents in this mess were Tammy Sue and Jay, Jim and Tammy's kids and I cringed watching them get trotted out during the PTL Club week after week like performing ponies. Ugh. I felt bad for them, I really did.
Current Ministry:
In January 2003, Bakker began broadcasting the daily Jim Bakker Show at Studio City Cafe in Branson, Missouri (where all has-beens go to make money) with his second wife, Lori Graham and his and Tammy's daughter, Tammy Sue. The broadcast has a millennial/survivalist focus (Think 'Stay pure for Jesus and here's how to build YOUR Tribulation bunker') and was first broadcast on Daystar, CTN, and satellite TV.
In January 2008, Bakker's ministry moved into a new television studio near Branson in Blue Eye, Missouri. The studio is housed in a 600-acre development called Morningside that strangely resembles Bakker's former location, Heritage USA. However, most or all of the property in the new development is owned by associates of Bakker rather than by Bakker himself or his ministry.
In 2015, Bakker was finally able to purchase back the rights to the name 'PTL Television' and its logos; he renamed his Generation Now satellite station the PTL Television Network. It is available online and via streaming services like Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV, plus some cable distributors.
PTL 2: Electric Boogaloo
During the pandemic, Bakker and Morningside were sued by the Missouri AG for shilling a health supplement called Silver Solution that an "expert" claimed would prevent and cure COVID-19. It would be made available to those who 'donated' $80 to $125. Bakker had to pay out $156,000 in damages and was ordered to never advertise for the product ever again. It contains colloidal silver, which HAS been proven to turn you blue if too much of it is in your system:
Surprisingly, this man did this TO HIMSELF
Many buildings and the waterpark on the old Heritage USA site are abandoned, but a large chunk of land, many of the smaller chapels, the huge pyramid that once served as PTL main headquarters and the Heritage Grand Hotel were purchased by MorningStar Ministries, an organization founded by long-time Bakker friend Rick Joyner, to be used as their headquarters. The Upper Room remains as a small church, the 18-hole golf course was refurbished and is still in use and Joyner is looking into rebuilding and reopening the waterpark located in Ft Mill, SC. Some of the land has been turned into housing sub developments and Joyner is fighting with the City of Charlotte over the 21-story Silver Tower--the city wants it torn down, Joyner wants to rehab it into housing.
Jim and Tammy's son, Jay, followed his father into Christian ministry. However unlike his scammer father, Jay's ministry, Revolution Church in Seattle WA, is a congregation open to all and openly rejects the fundamentalism, prosperity doctrine and social ultra-conservatism that he was raised with in PTL. He is the author or co-author of three books: Son of a Preacher Man: My Search for Grace in the Shadows, an autobiography about his growing up in PTL; Fall to Grace: A Revolution of God, Self, and Society and Faith, Doubt, and Other Lines I've Crossed: Walking with the Unknown God. He is also the subject of the Sundance documentary One Punk Under God.
Sources: me, my damned bike, my sanity, my college fund, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
disclaimer: I do believe in a higher power out there in the cosmos (I choose to call it 'God', you good sistren can call it whatever it is you want to). Be a good person. Treat others how you want to be treated. DO NOT LET SOME FLASHY ASS GUY ON THE RADIO/TV TELL YOU WHAT TO BELIEVE. Or one who stands in front of you in a pulpit on Sundays either. The best lesson I got out of my years of Christian captivity (oop, education) was the one that my mother really didn't want me to have: QUESTION EVERYTHING. The Bible is a book, claiming to be the Word of God but written by FALLIBLE HUMAN MEN. It has been messed with multiple times and fashioned to fit what a small group of people (white men) WANTED it to say. You're allowed to challenge it. As a matter of fact, it's your duty to.
tl;dr: Matthew 7: 3-5
Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye...