Jim Bakker’s rise, fall and legacy, remembered by a reporter who covered it

Jim Bakker, the televangelist who built the PTL Television Network and the sprawling Heritage USA Christian theme park near Fort Mill, has died. He was 86.

At its peak, Heritage USA drew more than 6 million visitors a year. Bakker and his then-wife, Tammy Faye, became household names through their television ministry and frequent appeals to viewers for donations.

But Bakker’s empire collapsed in 1987 amid revelations that the ministry paid a church secretary, Jessica Hahn, to cover up a sexual encounter with Bakker. He was later convicted of fraud and spent nearly five years in federal prison.

Tim Funk, a retired Charlotte Observer reporter who spent years covering Bakker and PTL, joined WFAE’s Nick de la Canal to reflect on Bakker’s rise, fall and legacy.

Nick de la Canal: For people who weren’t here in the 1980s, just how big of a phenomenon were Jim Bakker and his then-wife, Tammy Faye?

Tim Funk: I’d say they were both very big, Nick, in a 1980s sort of way.

First, there, as you mentioned, was this daily upbeat TV show, “The Jim and Tammy Show,” which featured contemporary gospel music, chats with born-again Christian celebrities, and often tearful pleas for donations.

Also, much commented on, was whenever Tammy sang, people would watch to see her mascara fall down her face.

And then there was Heritage USA, sort of a Christian Disney World just down the road from Charlotte. This 2,300-acre theme park had a big water park and a daily Passion Play complete with real camels. So along with NASCAR, it helped put Charlotte on the map, which I think delighted Jim and Tammy’s many followers but embarrassed their many critics, who saw Jim and Tammy as these over-the-top grifters.

De la Canal: What was it about Jim and Tammy Faye that connected so strongly with their audience?

Funk: I think a few things. I think a lot of the more conservative Christians were turned off by the broader culture and were looking for something more G-rated, more upbeat, and more openly worshipful of Jesus. I mean, PTL stood for “Praise the Lord.”

But also in Jim and Tammy, you had these two people who had come from blue-collar families and were now living the high life, preaching and living out the prosperity gospel, which said God wanted you to be well off, even rich. And that appealed, I think, to many Pentecostals and evangelicals who had aspirations to be upwardly mobile themselves.

De la Canal: During the 1980s, the Observer (raised) questions about PTL’s finances. This was years before Bakker stepped down in 1987. What do you remember about that period, when this enormous empire began to unravel?

Funk: I should say that I was in the Raleigh bureau. The best reporting was anchored really by Charlie Shepard, who did a lot of the great reporting that won The Charlotte Observer the Pulitzer Prize for their coverage.

I remember how big the story of his fall was in 1987, not only in Charlotte but nationally. Ted Koppel may not mean a lot to some of your younger viewers, but he was the host of ABC’s “Nightline.” And he had Jim and Tammy on right after this broke, and he compared the national fascination with their fall to sort of rubberneckers slowing down when they see a car wreck.

I mean, Jim and Tammy betrayed their followers, but they also came to be the perfect symbol of a decade where on TV you could watch “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” And the biggest line in movies was the one from that film “Wall Street”: “Greed is good.”

De la Canal: Bakker later said that going to prison changed his understanding of wealth and Christianity. Do you think that he really changed?

Funk: Well, maybe briefly, but he eventually found his way back to hosting a TV show, this time with his second wife, Lori. They set up shop near Branson, Missouri, and hawked dried food and survivalist gear for the coming apocalypse, Armageddon, as predicted in some interpretations of the Bible’s Book of Revelation.

Interestingly, a person who came to believe that Bakker did change was Jessica Hahn, who, as a 21-year-old church secretary, had a 15-minute tryst with Bakker that contributed to his downfall.

I talked with her for the obituary that’s now running on The Charlotte Observer site. And she believes Bakker eventually did get back to preaching the real gospel. I think that was a minority view, though.

De la Canal: Ultimately, what do you think Jim Bakker’s legacy is?

Funk: I think it’s probably twofold.

In the history books, he’ll be the guy behind both the rise and the fall of televangelism. For most, though, I think he’s a cautionary tale not to be seduced by these sweet-talking preachers who may really be more interested in your wallet than in your soul.