|
|
Christian News Today |
Bi- Sexual Felon
Or Hero - Jim Bakker?
The mouth of
an immoral woman is a deep pit;
He who is
abhorred by the LORD will fall there. Proverbs 22:14
The
righteousness of the upright will deliver them,
But the
unfaithful will be caught by their lust. Proverbs 11:6
The Man of The
Hour?
By John Davies
Who
said I cannot judge liars, rapists and thieves? Not God! Rather Jesus told us
in Matthew
Luke 19:5 And when Jesus came to the place, He looked up and saw
him, and said to him, "Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I
must stay at your house." 19:6 So he made haste and came down, and
received Him joyfully. 19:7 But when they saw it, they all complained, saying,
"He has gone to be a guest with a man who is a sinner." 19:8 Then
Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, "Look, Lord, I give half of my goods
to the poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I
restore fourfold." 19:9 And Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has
come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham;
EX 22:1 "If a man steals an ox or a sheep, and slaughters
it or sells it, he shall restore five oxen for an ox and four sheep for a sheep.
EX 22:4 "If the theft is certainly found alive in his hand,
whether it is an ox or donkey or sheep, he shall restore double.
“He was one of the worst of the very
worst preacher men begging on TV, the kind of conman and scripture twisters
that could make anyone flip the channel as fast as humanly possible (Christian
or non-Christian), the leader of the so-called PTL Club (Praise the Lord), a
show full of hand clapping and bebopping and unscrupulous moneychanging
shenanigans and crocodile tears galore -- and the odd thing was, even when he
had fallen as far as he could fall (lying, cheating, promiscuity, false
prosperity theology to separate trusting Christians from their money, rape,
homosexuality, tax fraud) he was always sincere, by his own word he probably
felt he really was serving God, and he probably started out not all that far
from the truth.”
(Douglas Christian Larsen)
Jim Bakker was founder and former president of the
PTL Ministries. Sam Johnson was director of World Missions in 1986. Richard Dortch
was the PTL's 2nd minister in 1984. In 1987 former Secretary of the Interior
James Watt, and retired televangelist Rex Humbard were named to the PTL board
by then- chairman Reverend Jerry Falwell.
Bakker resigned from Praise The Lord ministries in 1987
after admitting he had an affair with a ministry secretary. In 1989, he was
convicted in
Bakker's 45-year sentence was reduced to 18 years
and he served five before his parole in 1995. While in prison, his former wife,
Tammy Faye - now remarried as Tammy Faye Messner - divorced him.
Bakker has since contended that his years in prison
were his salvation. He re-read all the scriptures and crucially concluded that
the so-called "prosperity preaching" of his PTL days - wherein he
equated dollar-wealth with godliness - was misguided. For a while, Bakker lived
by his new creed that God also attended to the poor. He moved to
Although many sheep are leery of Bakker, the clergy
admired his propensity to rob and use the sheep. In 1995, when he was barely
out of prison, he addressed a Christian
leadership conference where 10,000
clergymen cheered and gave him a 15-minute standing ovation. "I thought
people would spit on me," he later recalled. "Instead they received
me with open arms."
Bakker is now back on the air with "The Jim
Bakker Show," taped in
Jim Bakker is an evangelical fundamentalist who
began his television career co-hosting a children's puppet show with his wife
Tammy Faye on Pat Robertson's 700 Club television show. Bakker rose to fame as a TV evangelist in the
PTL (Praise the Lord) Ministry, an enterprise he started in 1974 and built from
the ground up. The PTL claimed in 1987 to have 13 million subscribers and
assets of $175 million including Heritage
The PTL Network reached an estimated 13 million
households on its own cable channel and was also aired on 180 other commercial
stations. Heritage
Guests who have made appearances on the Bakker's TV
show included: evangelists Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, James Robison, and
Robert Schuller; actors Mickey Rooney, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Pearl Bailey,
Anita Bryant, Little Richard, and Mr. T.
Speaking about the rise of an entrepreneurial
movement in Pentecostal Christianity author Susan Harding wrote of the PTL:
"It reached its apogee in Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's Heritage
However, all has not been rosy for the PTL which by
1978 was $13 million in debt and in 1979 was investigated by the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) about Bakker's on-the-air solicitations for
overseas work, which were used to pay the bills for his domestic operations.
The investigation of the PTL Network
disappeared in the restructuring of the FCC that occurred in the early
years of the Reagan administration. Bakker and his ministry continued to expand
and managed to stay financially afloat until 1987.
The fall of the PTL began at the February 1987
National Religious Broadcasters convention when Jimmy Swaggart heard rumors of
sexual infidelities on the part of Jim Bakker. Bakker, fearing that Swaggart
would create a public scandal and take over Heritage USA, resigned from the PTL
Network in March 1987, turning temporary control over to Jerry Falwell. Falwell examined the books
and found that the PTL was more than $60 million in debt. Falwell refused to
turn the network back to the Bakkers, claiming them to be unfit for the
ministry of the gospel. Falwell's financial rescue plan for the PTL complex was turned down by Judge Rufus
Reynolds as being inadequate for contributors and creditors. Falwell then
resigned as head of the PTL in 1988, turning the ministry over to board members
James Watt and Rex Humbard.
Meanwhile the IRS had been investigating the PTL
since 1980, claiming the Heritage
Jim Bakker had no formal training in theology--he
failed to complete even the introductory course in religious doctrine at
Bakker has been disordained as an Assembly of God
minister. At its peak 25 ordained ministers from the Assemblies of God worked
full-time for the PTL. PTL sold "lifetime memberships" for a $1,000
or more which entitled buyers to a
3-night stay annually at a luxury hotel in Heritage
Bakker, who apparently made all of the financial
decisions for the PTL and kept two sets of books to conceal the accounting
irregularities, took conspicuous consumption to new extremes. PTL once spent
over $100,000 for a private jet to fly the Bakker's clothing across the
country. PTL also spent more than $100 on a purchase of cinnamon rolls because
Jim and Tammy wanted the smell of them in their hotel room.) "They
[Bakkers] epitomized the excesses of the nineteen eighties--the greed, the love
of glitz, and the shamelessness-- which in their case was so pure as to almost
amount to a kind of innocence."
The PTL, the Christian Broadcasting Network, and
the Trinity Broadcasting Network in April 1980 pooled their resources to
provide live and taped coverage of the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship
International's day-long prayer rally, "Washington for Jesus."
Jim Bakker claimed that the PTL sent "a large
monthly contribution to Mark Buntain whose overseas ministry feeds 12,000 children
a day." However, the Charlotte Observer reported in 1979 that the PTL
raised thousands of dollars for foreign missions that never went to the
missions. In 1986 the PTL claimed it was in the process of building a
Jim Bakker's daily TV show reached an estimated 5.8
million households each month during 1986. After losing Jim and Tammy Faye
Bakker in 1987, "The PTL Club" broadcasts went from 67 TV stations
down to 32 stations, and its viewing audience dropped by half.
In 1988 Bakker, his number 2 administrator Richard
Dortch, and aides David and James Taggart were indicted on charges of fraud and
conspiracy. Bakker and Dortsch were charged, among other things, with illegally
taking some $4 million in bonuses from PTL funds, defrauding at least 150,000
contributors to the PTL, mail fraud, tax evasion, defrauding the thousands of
"lifetime partners" who bought memberships to Heritage USA, and
conspiring to "create and continue to lead lavish and extravagant
life-styles." Bakker was found guilty on 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy
and in October 1989 was sentenced to 45 years in jail and fined $500,000. He
was paroled because the original judge made some statements about Jim’s
religious beliefs which were not proper.
Sources:
1. "Jim Bakker
Indicted on Fraud Charges," Fund Raising Management,
Jan 1989.
2. Russell Shaw, "TV
Ministries Gaining Ground After Scandals,"
Electronic Media,
3. Louise Bourgault,
"The 'Jim Bakker Show': The Program, Its
Viewers and Their Churches," The
Journal of Communication and
Religion, Mar 1988.
4. Letter from Sam Johnson,
PTL Ministry,
5. Letter from Jim Bakker,
PTL Television Network,
6. Sara Diamond, Spiritual
Warfare (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1989).
7. "God and Money: Sex
Scandal, Greed and Lust for Power
TV Preaching World," Newsweek,
8. "Divided
Pentecostals: Bakker and Swaggart," The Christian
Century,
9. Susan Harding, "The
World of the Born-Again Telescandals,"
10. David Earle Anderson,
"The 'Holy War' for Ratings,"
Christianity and Crisis,
11. "Power, Glory--And
Politics," Time,
12. "Jerry Falwell Is
Not Just Another Baptist Minister,"
Christianity Today,
13. "Can Jim and Tammy
Make a Comeback?," U.S. News & World Report,
14. "Fresh Out of
Miracles," Newsweek,
15. "TV's Unholy
Row," Time,
16. Richard N. Ostling,
"Jim Bakker's Crumbling World," Time,
17. Facts on File (New
York, NY: Facts on File, 1989).
18. Terry C. Muck,
"Healing the Church--After Bakker: Thanks to a
Christians," Christianity Today, 1989.
19. "An Unholy War in
the TV Pulpits,"
20. Richard N. Ostling,
"Falwell Throws In the Towel," Time,
21. Richard N. Ostling,
"Tuesday, the Rabbi Bought PTL," Time,
22. "Praise the Lord,
Pay IRS," Time,
23. Frances FitzGerald,
"Jim and Tammy," The New Yorker,
24. GroupWatch - The Interhemispheric
25. Hadden, Jeffrey K. and
Anson Shupe. Televangelism: Power and Politics on God’s Frontier.
26.Jean Seligmann,
"The Inimitable Tammy Faye, Newsweek,
27. Cited in Gordon Witkin
and Jeannye Thornton, "Stones Fly in the TV
28. Transcript, Jim
Bakker's statement of
29. Megan Rosenfeld,
"Bakker Says His Ministry is at an End,"
30. Art Harris and Michael
Isikoff, "The Bakkers' Tumultuous Return,
31. Transcript of ABC's
"Nightline,"
32. "Statements from
Bakkers,"
33. Ted Mellnik,
"Bakker, Dortch Dismissed," Charlotte Observer,
34. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bakker
Independent
(
http://news.independent.co.uk/
The life of Jim Bakker, the
world's most famous fallen tele-evangelist, has always been about numbers, and
we are not just talking hymns and psalms. There was the $1.9m salary he paid
himself in 1986, the last full year that he led the Praise The Lord (PTL)
Ministry that he founded in 1972 with his thickly mascara'd wife, Tammy Faye.
At the time, he owned six luxury mansions, 47 bank accounts and a single
Rolls-Royce. He was accustomed to raising $1m from his TV-goggling disciples
across
We could go on in this vein
for ever. It was never exactly clear how many sexual partners (allegedly both
women and men) he enjoyed in those crazy days before his reckoning with the law
and crushing humiliation. We do know he paid $265,000 in cash to buy the
silence of a church secretary he had been involved with in 1980.
The opulence of the Bakkers'
lifestyle at the height of their reign could not be measured in simple figures,
however. They enjoyed the American Dream, but a garishly inflated version of
it. They had an air-conditioned dog kennel and gold-plated bathrooms. Theirs
was the kind of money that bought everything except good taste. Tammy Faye, who
used glove puppets to help explain the Word of the Lord on air, is still seen
today as the gold standard for eye shadow run amok. There is even a documentary
film about her simply called The Eyes of Tammy Faye Bakker. Jim had a monkey
face. His apple-shiny cheeks contrived to look at once bloated and stretched.
The Bakkers flaunted their
wealth and used it to raise more and more of it. They offered a model of extravagant
living that viewers drank in, presumably not in a spirit of post-modern irony.
At its peak, the PTL broadcasts touched 13.5 million American households every
day. The Bakkers are still being pursued for $3m (£1.9m) in unpaid income tax.
But there is one number, above
all, that Jim Bakker, will never forget. It is 07407-058. Put
"Inmate" in front of it, and you will see why. Bakker was sentenced
to 45 years in federal prison for his crimes, even though some of the counts
against him were later reversed and in 1994 he was released after only five
years behind bars. By then, Tammy Faye had divorced him and Bakker, we all
assumed, would fade into shamed obscurity. One thing was for sure, he told one
interviewer shortly afterwards - he would never preach on television again.
He did write a book, however,
simply called I Was Wrong. And then, lo and behold, Bakker was wrong again. Not
only is he preaching once more, but he is doing it before the cameras. Second
chances are encouraged in Christian teaching and, for sure, they are allowed in
Since January, Bakker, 63, and
his new wife, Lori Graham Bakker, have been turning up here each weekday
morning to record an hour-long show of music, pious chat and, of course,
old-fashioned preaching. The show is being carried by a growing roster of
television stations across
Bakker, in other words, has
made a swift journey from shamed to shameless. When the new Jim Bakker Show hit
the airwaves in January, it was 16 years to the day since his last PTL
appearance. Yet the sins that were subsequently unearthed were surely enough to
make any resurrection in the TV evangelising business an utter impossibility.
Chief among them was his success in persuading countless viewers to donate sums
of $1,000 or more to purchase "lifetime partnerships" in a hotel
complex at his glitzy Christian theme park in
The theme park, with a
Bakker has since contended that
his years in prison were his salvation. He re-read all the scriptures and
crucially concluded that the so-called "prosperity preaching" of his
PTL days - wherein he equated dollar-wealth with godliness - was misguided. For
a while, Bakker lived by his new creed that God also attended to the poor. He
moved to
Bakker recently commented that
it was a "supernatural act of God" that got him back in front of the
cameras. He may also have been inspired by his ex-wife, Tammy Faye. In 1994,
she married Roe Messner, a construction contractor who used to be one of Jim's
best friends and who helped build Heritage USA, and now she too is exploiting
her notoriety on the tube. With a little-known actor, Jim J Bullock, she has a
cable chat-show featuring D-list
But, in fact, most of the
credit for Jim's resurrection goes to a Branson businessman called Jerry
Crawford. Crawford's unbroken admiration of Bakker stemmed from his memory of
visiting Heritage USA many years earlier, an experience, he has since claimed,
that saved his then crumbling marriage. Crawford owns the
"Oh my, I never really
planned to come back on television," commented Bakker himself. "I had
been sick for two months before the show started, and I think it was related to
my losses before, to the press, and what I've been through. I think it was just
my body saying, 'No! No! Don't put your head above the crowd. You'll get
tomatoes thrown at you again.'"
And the reception has been
remarkable. "I've never been welcomed so wonderfully anywhere in my
life," Bakker said of Branson and his new audiences. "I'm beyond
excited, I'm overwhelmed." His show airs daily on 30 Christian broadcast
television stations around the
And among the folks packing
the
He may not want to be an
example - prison is seldom something the average viewer aspires to - but Bakker
has not been able to resist digging out some of the trappings of his old
incarnation. A few of the more valuable paintings that used to adorn the walls
of Heritage
So, what about Bakker's old
fetish with numbers? At what stage in his show, you may be wondering, does he stare
deep into the lens of the television camera and implore his new-found flock to
send their dollars to Branson? Wouldn't it be nice to build a Bakker motel
adjacent to the café, at least? No, that is not part of the script this time
around and if it was, you can be sure that Bakker would be scooped up by
federal agents faster than he can say "Praise be to Je-sus!"
But we cannot let him off the
hook completely. Someone has to pay for the cost of the show.
Programming is expensive
nowadays. So there it is, for those who make it all the way to the end of the
Jim Bakker hour - a gentle request to viewers to write a cheque, large or
small, to keep the show on the air. And donations, believe it or not, are
rolling in.
Don't Call Me
Brother:
A Ringmaster's Escape from the
Austin Miles has been a well-known circus ringmaster for most of
his adult life. It was, he found, good preparation for his experiences with PTL
and the Assemblies of God churches. Miles is the first ordained Assembly of God
minister to leave the movement and write an in-depth book revealing the inner
workings of this sect. This is not rumor, not innuendo. It is fact, seen
first-hand, and fully described for the first time. Don't Call Me Brother is
not a book written by an outside observer - Austin Miles was an active
participant in the evolution of the PTL Club.
- Austin Miles was on intimate terms with the entire cast of PTL's
characters and the high-tech world of Christian movers and shakers: Jim Bakker,
Tammy Faye Bakker, Pat Robertson, Charles and Frances Hunter, Richard Dortch,
John Wesley Fletcher, Christian celebreties such as Pat Boone and Ephram
Zimbalist, Jr., and many others.
- Austin Miles opened the door on the steam room where Jim Bakker
was cavorting - in the nude - with three other men.
- Austin Miles was there when televangelism hatched its
super-successful fund-raising schemes, and he participated in the staged
"financial crisis" telethon, during which millions of dollars poured
into the coffers of the PTL Club.
- Austin Miles watched the development of Jim Bakker's violent mood
swings and saw the chilling possibility that Jim Bakker could have become
another Jim Jones.
- Austin Miles was there when Jim Bakker started a fist fight with
his producer over the favors of the current Miss
Austin Miles had fame, wealth, and a wonderful family. But by the
time he finally broke free of the fanatic world of the religious right, he had
lost everything. Don't Call Me Brother is his story. A poignant, outrageous,
sometimes hilarious drama peopled with colorful real-life characters. Building
to a climax with a surprise double-twist ending, this story is tough but fair,
a must-read for those who want to know what really happens in the world of
Note As a friend of the author Austin Miles, and having read the
book, I have no doubt over the matters he witnessed firsthand. Although I'm an
Assemblies of God minister, I recognize that in all human organizations
(churches are human organizations) there will be fallible people with poor
judgment and liable to temptation. Austin Miles has come back to Christianity,
and has repudiated the negative attitude he expresses in his book towards
Christianity, although he still maintains what he saw was true. He and I have
had many wonderful conversations, and will continue to do so. He is a preacher
again, and travels to churches. He has returned to Christian ministry with
lessons learned and a new attitude. Rev. Richard F. Lee.
A
PBS Television documentary title "Religion and Politics" that first
aired in December of 1987 spotlighted Ronald Reagan's interference in the
Justice Department's attempted initial investigation of Jim Bakker, as well as
the investigations of the IRS and FCC. An interesting sidelight to this
cover-up concerns George Bush. He made a trip to
See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not
escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we
turn away from Him who speaks from heaven,
whose voice then shook the earth; but now He has promised, saying,
"Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven." Now this, "Yet once more,"
indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that
are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since
we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which
we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire. Hebrews
12:25-29
Fire can be a very constructive and destructive thing depends on
how it’s used. It does purge impurities out of certain things but it also
destroys other things leaving nothing behind. Assembly of God preacher and
Evangelist Jim Bakker presided as the king over one of the most corrupt
television ministries of the past two decades.
A successful televangelism group run by Jim and Tammy Bakker is a
testimony that Evangelical pastors sold their own souls just to make their
wallets thicker, when they were supposed to bring God to the people. As a
result Jim Bakker and his sidekick Richard Dortch ended up in prison accused of
sexual immorality, tax evasion, and racketeering. The wave of corruption not
only affected other televangelists such as Jimmy Swaggart, but also showed a
dark, dirty fight for the control of PTL among several other prominent
televangelists.
Felon Richard Dortch, senior vice-president of PTL and associate
pastor of
Most people are aware of Jim Bakker's $265,000 payoff to Jessica
Hahn to keep her sexual services to him a secret, his longtime homosexual
relationship with his right hand man David Taggart, his prison sentence, his
close relationship to Billy Graham, and his lust for public spotlight.
On CNN/Larry King Live, Jan. 30, 2001 from Bonifay, Florida, Jim
Bakker, whose ministry crumbled in 1987 when it was discovered that he used
church donations to pay his secretary to hide their sexual affair stated
"I'm actually making plans to go back on television. I haven't announced
it. It's not too many weeks away. We may be making our debut."
The Associated Press reported on December10, 2002 that the cafe
where Jim Bakker plans to carry daily broadcasts has opened. Now, the fallen
televangelist must persuade TV stations to carry his talk show. Diners at
Bakker's backers, both newfound and those dating to Bakker's
scandal-riddled PTL Ministries in York County, S.C., are financing and
encouraging the project. "It's surreal to me right now. I know there are
some people who won't like me, and I don't blame them. But since I've been in
The minister - he is unaffiliated with any denomination - returned
to Christian evangelism upon his release from federal prison in 1995 and began
working with a ministry in
As his fellow evangelists seemed to take their turns facing
justified criticism, Billy Graham maintained his own integrity and the
sincerity of his message. Far from publicly condemning his peers, Billy spoke
of them with concern, and even visited Jim Bakker in prison for birds of
feather stick together.
It is not known whether the Graham's, including Billy and Franklin
Graham, will be assisting Bakker in with his ventures.
None of the Graham's supported or comforted any of the Jim Bakker's
victims! It didn't matter to the Grahams that
-Bakker had 47 bank accounts, 6 luxury homes, $1.9 million dollar salary
and Rolls Royce and Mercedez cars.
- Falwell called Bakker a liar, an embezzler and sexual deviate. He
fired Bakker's entire staff when he took over Praise the Lord show. Falwell
bankrupted the PTL Club calling Bakker "the greatest scab and cancer on
the face of Christianity in two thousand years of church history"
But Jim Bakker won't have to pay $120 million to former followers
who bought "partnerships" in his PTL tele-ministry. A jury in
However the Internal Revenue Service says Bakker and Messner owe
personal income taxes from the 1980s when they were building their Praise The
Lord empire reported the Charlotte Observer. The IRS assessed the taxes after
revoking the PTL ministry's nonprofit status, said Roe Messner, Tammy Faye's
husband since 1993.
Tammy Faye Messner new husband said Jim Bakker and his former wife
didn't want to talk about the tax issues. "We don't want to stir the
pot," Messner said. He said the original tax amount was about $500,000.
Penalties and interest account for the rest of the bill. The notices
reinstating the liens list "James O. and Tamara F. Bakker" as owing
$3 million.
On his website, Jim Bakker is still being a parasite, living off
money that he steals from others, stating:
Dear Internet Friend,
It's not an accident that you have come to this page on this
website at this critical hour in the life of this ministry!
Lori and I thank you for your meaningful support. Even Moses had
the help of faithful loved ones who held up his arms to steady him at a
critical hour in his ministry (Exodus
We need you today to hold up our arms, to steady us at this
exciting hour in the life of this growing and vital outreach. My heart is
bonded with you and the Apostle Paul who admonished the Saints of God:
He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows
bountifully will also reap bountifully.
So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly
or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver.
And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you,
always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every
good work.
- 2 Corinthians 9:6-8, NKJ
I need your help right now! Think it not strange that you are
reading these words from my heart at this very moment, "online"! Your
obedience to God's leading will be a needed breakthrough for us right now.
Would you make a pledge to this ministry for $100?
Bakker, who apparently made all of the financial decisions for the
PTL and kept two sets of books to conceal the accounting irregularities, took
conspicuous consumption to new extremes. PTL once spent over $100,000 for a
private jet to fly the Bakker's clothing across the country. PTL also spent
more than $100 on a purchase of cinnamon rolls because Jim and Tammy wanted the
smell of them in their hotel room. "They [Bakkers] epitomized the excesses
of the nineteen eighties--the greed, the love of glitz, and the
shamelessness--which in their case was so pure as to almost amount to a kind of
innocence. "
PTL sold "lifetime memberships" for a $1,000 or more,
which entitled buyers to a 3-night stay annually at a luxury hotel in Heritage
Between 1984 and mid-1987, the Bakkers received annual salaries of
$200,000 each and Jim awarded himself over $4 million in bonuses. The Bakkers
own, among other things, a $600,000 house in
The former televangelist preached at Central Assembly of God in
Jim Bakker nor the Assembly of God with whom he was ordained have
never publicly discussed or dealt with the fact that Jim Bakker was Bi-sexual
or that his real lover was a man! Although a contrite Jim Bakker returned to
his childhood church to ask forgiveness, he never talked about David Taggart
his great male lover! Bakker, the founder on the now non existent PTL Club and
Village, has downplayed the role of the bisexual evangelist John Wesley
Fletcher, who arranged his tryst with Jessica Hahn. He hardly talks about James
and David Taggart, the brothers who many claim controlled Bakker in his final
PTL years Fletcher was bitter and said Bakker had failed to keep promises and
had forsaken him during tough times. Fletcher stated during the
"Pearlygate" media storm that he, too, had been sexually involved
with bisexual Bakker, reported Christianity Today.
So it was not surprising that Tammy Faye Bakker ( now Messner),
who divorced Bakker, would have a prominent role in the gay pride festivities
in
There are those who believe that Tammy Faye is really a drag
queen. Once adored by viewers of the electronic church, Messner now appears at
gay-pride events nationwide, such as a Tammy Faye look-alike contest held in
Washington, D.C., recently where, according to National Public Radio, she was
"surrounded by men in falsies and pancake makeup and...impossible to
upstage."
"I'm just trying to give back to them," she says.
"I...tell them there's a God who loves them and cares for them. I told
them there's a better way out...that nothing can give you peace except
Jesus." Messner does not specifically address the issue of homosexuality
being a sin when she talks to groups of gays. "I leave that up to the Holy
Spirit because unless He speaks to them, they won't change anyway," she
said.
But Tammy Faye's former husband, Assembly of God Evangelist Jim
Bakker, the founder on the now non existent PTL Club and Village, has downplayed the role of the bisexual
evangelist John Wesley Fletcher, who arranged his tryst with Jessica Hahn. He hardly talks
about James and David Taggart, the brothers who many claim controlled Bakker in
his final PTL years or that David Taggart was his lover and gave him blow jobs.
Fletcher was bitter and said Bakker had failed to keep promises
and had forsaken him during tough times. Fletcher stated during the
"Pearlygate" media storm that he, too, had been sexually involved
with bisexual Bakker, reported Christianity Today
Bakker, former head of PTL Ministries and Heritage USA, served five years in federal prison on fraud charges. He has spoken about confession of sins, forgiveness, and reconciliation for the last two years in churches around the country, RNS reported. Bakker's wife, Tammy Faye, divorced him while he was in prison and married his best friend, Roe Messner. Bakker, who remarried about two years ago, is starting a ministry in