Well I just heard about the death of Jim Bakker. Yeah, the preacher-man who built an empire in the 70s and 80s on TV culminating in his dream of a vacation time share scheme at the PTL Club’s acreage near Charlotte, NC. He was the one who championed a very easy, cheap grace theology mixed with prosperity theology. Send him money and God will bless you was the main gist of his whole scheme. And somehow in the midst of building his dream place, he got charged with a federal crime dealing with money and mail fraud. And then there were sex crime allegations and soon Mr Bakker ended up in prison. Tammy Faye, his wife divorced him (she’s the one known for the eye makeup streaming down her face). Later Bakker remarried and found a new audience in his post-incarceration life and kept trying to rebuild an empire, which never seemed to come together. But he did have some fans and there’s that.
At the beginning of my second semester at Duke Divinity School, a little prayer group I was in decided it would be interesting to go over to Charlotte and visit the PTL club. This was before Bakker’s full demise. He was under scrutiny and yet the show was still going on. So we got in a car and drove over there. I was from Virginia, one of us was from Indiana, one guy was from Charlotte, and I can’t remember who all else came with us, maybe a Puerto Rican. We went to the place where they taped their broadcast and watched an episode, which, was a little disappointing that day as Jim and Tammy Faye were absent, but there was a little “service” of a thing and they dismissed us. We then toured the grounds, including the big building that had an indoor mall replete with crystal chandeliers and places to buy trinkets. We were young adults and quite skeptical of the whole thing, as young adults can be.
It was after we got back to the campus that a few days later we learned of Jim Bakker’s arrest and the Reverend Jerry Falwell’s takeover of the operation. Remember that waterslide in a three piece suit? Jerry Falwell was later invited to Duke’s campus to give a speech, and he was greeted with some protestors.
This has nothing to do with Jim Bakker, but the Duke campus also got to hear Gary Hart speak just days before he ended his presidential campaign over sex abuse allegations and a yacht named “Monkey Business.”
What is it with people who get into leadership suddenly thinking they’re above scrutiny and moral boundaries?
Jim Bakker’s theology did not serve him or his followers very well. Neither did Jimmy Swaggart’s. In fact I dare say that the theology of the 1980s TV preachers led to the state of the church today, a state where people are now saying that America will see the closing of over 100,000 churches in the next few years. We lost our way in the midst of our prosperity and lowering of moral standards.
Maybe Jim Bakker got religion before he died. I sincerely hope he did. But he led a generation or two astray with his promises of prosperity. Maybe the words of Jesus about taking up your cross and following him are more vital and more substantial.
My wife’s brother wasn’t a church going man, and one of his high school friends turned into a radio preacher in the hills of Southwest Virginia. He saw Gary one day and told him he should listen to him on the radio sometime. And Gary’s response was: “You know what I like about you being on the radio? I have a button I can turn to shut you off.”
Maybe more of us should use it.
