Tuesday, March 7, 2023

It is the 7th of March 2023 Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org, I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Quick question: who won last year's Academy Award for best actress?

It was Jessica Chastain for her portrayal of Tammy Faye Bakker, then Messner in the film “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.” She portrayed the late televangelist as a sympathetic victim of her own fame and husband. While we are happy to give sympathetic pictures of tragic figures (and her story is tragic), we here at the Almanac have another way of looking at the Tammy Fayes of the world. That’s right, we are inducting a new member to the Dr. Gene Scott All-Stars on the anniversary of her birth on the 7th of March in 1942- Tammy Faye LaValley/Bakker/Messner.

Dr. Gene Scott All-Stars are those colorful characters in the history of the church whom we look at sympathetically but also recognize a certain garishness, oversized personality, and television persona. Tammy Faye, like other All-Stars, isn’t more of a sinner than anyone else but caught up in the world of televangelism, she seemed to succumb, for a time, to the temptations of money and fame. Let’s tell her story in brief.

Tammy Faye was born in International Hall, Minnesota, on this day in 1942. She was raised in relative poverty, and her parents were pastors in the Assemblies of God. Their divorce soured Tammy Faye from the church.

She attended North Central Bible College in 1960 at the age of 17 and met Jim Bakker, a fellow student. They were married within a year and moved to South Carolina, where they worked as itinerant preachers. When their friend Pat Robertson started his religious broadcasting network with one channel, he invited the Bakkers to bring their puppet ministry to television. From there, they hosted the 700 Club before the Robertsons and Bakkers had a falling out. 

The Bakkers then moved to Southern California, where they lived with Paul and Jan Crouch and helped start the Trinity Broadcasting Network—with shades of the 700 Club Jim and Tammy Faye had a successful show taken back by the founders of the network. Again on the move, the Bakkers ended up in Charlotte in 1978, where they began one of the first satellite networks for their own Praise the Lord (or PTL) program.

Their on-screen charisma, Tammy’s instantly recognizable eyelashes, and campy charm begat an empire. By the end of 1978, they started construction on Heritage USA- a broadcasting compound, hotel, and theme park. It is estimated that at its peak, it was the 3rd most popular resort in America behind the two Disney parks.

But things were growing too quickly, according to Tammy, and the couple began to live separate lives. She would develop an addiction to Ativan and spend time at the Betty Ford clinic in Palm Springs. Jim would be accused of marital infidelity and paying off his mistress with funds raised for the ministry. In 1989 Jim was sentenced to 45 years in prison. In the meantime, Jerry Falwell attempted to hijack the PTL network- (ultimately, PTL would be sold to a San Diego ministry and later bought back by Jim when he got out of jail, only serving five years of his sentence).

Tammy Faye divorced Jim and married their business associate Roe Messner. He would be convicted of bankruptcy fraud and serve over two years in prison. What’s interesting about this time in her life- divorced, her second husband in prison, and being diagnosed with colon cancer- she went back to church. All this time as a Christian broadcaster and mogul, she had stopped attending church- shunned by her more conservative Assemblies of God denomination Tammy Faye spent decades outside the church- another case of Christian celebrity and ministry seemingly eclipsing the need to be, well, a Christian and member of a congregation.

She would not leave the limelight- she cohosted a talk show with Jim J Bullock from the sitcom “Too Close of Comfort”. She would publish her third autobiography, “I Will Survive and You Will Too!” in 2003, a year before going public with her lung cancer- she would die in 2007. Born on this day in 1942, Tammy Faye- a tragic figure in religious broadcasting and cautionary tale- was 65 years old.

The last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Isaiah 65- an apocalyptic promise:

“See, I will create
    new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
    nor will they come to mind.

But be glad and rejoice forever
    in what I will create,
for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
    and its people a joy.

I will rejoice over Jerusalem
    and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying
    will be heard in it no more.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 7th of March 2023, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who also got into the ministry through puppets- Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man with an unhealthy obsession with televangelists, I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.