Drug trips, ‘wife-swapping’ and scandalous steam baths – inside the rise and fall of America’s most famous TV preachers
NOT since pulpits were covered in gold had religious leaders displayed their riches with such abandon as Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker.
The original American televangelists drove around in a vintage Rolls-Royce, slept in a palatial hotel suite with wall-to-wall mirrors and kept their dogs in an air-conditioned kennel.
In just two years their adoring fans donated £150million to these icons of 1980s excess.
Tammy’s blue eye-liner, shoulder pads, breast enlargements and monumental shopping sprees were all funded by the generosity of the Praise The Lord (PTL) channel’s viewers.
Their influence was so great that both President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan sought their presence in the 1980 election campaign.
But the pretence of God-fearing virtue collapsed seven years later when it was revealed that Jim had used church money to pay off a young secretary who was accusing him of rape and that Tammy was being treated in the Betty Ford clinic for an addiction to prescription drugs.
More allegations followed, including wife-swapping, prostitutes and Jim "frolicking" with three naked men in a steam bath.
A new film starring Jessica Chastain as Tammy and Andrew Garfield as Jim explores the rise and fall of the Christian power couple.
Surprisingly, though, the movie titled The Eyes of Tammy Faye reveals that the wife was in fact a pioneer of progressive thinking about same sex relationships.
At a time when the spread of AIDS was cruelly dubbed the ‘gay plague’, she urged her viewers put their “arms around” men with the misunderstood disease.
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Chastain believes Tammy’s interview with an AIDS-infected gay pastor called Steve Pieters in 1985 saved lives.
The actress, whose performance is tipped to win an Oscar, says: “This is going to make me emotional, when I saw the connection that she had with Steve, I feel like they saved lives by that interview.
“Because it was at a time when the conservative evangelical community was turning their backs against the LGBTQ audience that she had.
“The AIDS epidemic was just destroying lives and killing people.”
Cashing in on faith
Brought up in a family of preachers, Tammy was a natural performer who could both sing and play the accordion.
With Jim, whom she married in 1961, they were mainstays of early religious TV channels.
It was their puppet show on televangelist Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network that created nationwide recognition.
Then in 1974 they went it alone with their own glitzy PTL channel, where Jim told his flock: "God wants his people to go first class."
Their 20 million viewers were urged to phone in their donations, which they did rapturously.
A lot of us were quite appalled by their extravagant lifestyle
Reverend Steve Pieters
Four years later they created their own Christian theme park called Heritage USA, which attracted six million visitors a year to its water rides and Bible school.
The Bakkers used the funds to buy themselves lavish homes, including a beachfront condo and a 3,000-square-foot suite at the park’s hotel.
Reverend Steve Pieters, a clergy person with the Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC) in California, tells The Sun: “My clergy friends and I tended to laugh at them. We saw the caricatures of Jim and Tammy on comedy shows like Saturday Night Live.
“A lot of us were quite appalled by their extravagant lifestyle.”
But Tammy was not just in it for the money.
Ground-breaking interview
When she learned of the plight of openly gay pastor Pieters she decided to take a stand.
Steve, 69, who was diagnosed with AIDS in 1982, says: “There was a senator who wanted to quarantine all the people with AIDS, he wanted to put us all on an island.
“A lot of the conservative Christians would talk about AIDS as God’s punishment to gay people, but Tammy felt differently.”
Two years after learning he had the killer immune deficiency syndrome, Steve was given eight months to live.
But he was the first patient to be placed on an experimental antiviral treatment called suramin, which quickly put his stage four lymphoma and Kaposi sarcoma into remission.
He wanted to put us all on an island
Reverend Steve Pieters
Having heard Steve’s story Tammy invited him to appear on her show in November 1985 via a TV link.
During the incredibly emotional appearance Tammy welled up as she told her audience ‘I want to put my arms around him’ and ‘we are all just people.’
Steve recalls: “I did not anticipate that she would be so incredibly compassionate and supportive.”
Tammy told her viewers that God loved everyone and that parents should not reject their children if they come out as gay.
Steve says: “I have had any number of people come up to me and tell me that the interview saved their lives.
“One fella told me ‘my mother always had PTL on 24 hours a day and when I saw your interview I realised I wasn’t going to hell and I didn’t have to kill myself like I thought I had to do.’”
The reaction of some influential fundamentalist Christians was very different, including the homophobic preacher Jerry Falwell who was involved with PTL.
Rape claim in $1m Playboy interview
The Eyes of Tammy Faye suggests that it was the interview with Steve which convinced Falwell that he had to take control of the TV channel.
Two years later a series of scandals allowed him to do just that.
First, Tammy took a break from broadcasting because she was so high on prescription drugs that she hallucinated cats on the wings of the plane flying her to rehab in California.
Just a few days later Jim resigned as chairman of PTL ministries after it emerged that he’d paid £85,000 in hush money to church secretary Jessica Hahn.
In a one million dollar interview with Playboy magazine Jessica claimed that Bakker had drugged and raped her when she was aged just 21.
He denied that account and others that followed, including allegations that he’d cheated on Tammy with both men and women, including prostitutes.
While he managed to convince many fans that these sensational stories were part of a plot against him, Jim could not avoid investigations into the financial mismanagement of his ministry.
The reality is she was a drug addict at the time
Jessica Chastain
In 1989 he was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 45 years in prison, with the jail term being reduced to eight years on appeal.
It is not clear whether Tammy was aware of what her husband was up to.
Jessica says: “The reality is she was a drug addict at the time. So I think she was just kind of sleepwalking through her life and wasn’t in any financial meetings.
“And the US government thinks the same because they never charged her.”
'I became obsessed with her'
Three years later Tammy divorced Jim and in 1993 married property developer Roe Messner, who also spent time in prison for fraud.
Over time word spread about her interview with Steve and she became a hero of the gay comnunity.
When Jessica saw it, the actress became obsessed with Tammy's life.
She says: “I kind of like, hear her voice in my head all the time. I really became obsessed with her and I watched all the videos.
“I think I’ve watched every single thing that had been filmed on her.”
Tammy was diagnosed with cancer, which she battled for 11 years, before dying in 2007 at the age of 65.
Her son Jay, 46, became a liberal pastor, who like his mum supports gay rights, and singer daughter Tammy Sue, 51, recorded a song for the film’s credits.
Preacher not converted
Remarkably, Jim, 82, who remarried in 1998, is still asking for donations from his flock to keep his TV show going.
The Jim Bakker Show broadcasts from a 700 acre plot in rural Missouri where he prophesises disaster.
Last June he was ordered to pay £115,000 in damages for falsely claiming that a product called Silver Solution could cure Covid-19.
That means there is little chance of his shattered reputation ever being rejuvenated.
But Jessica hopes that her film, which she spent ten years working on to make sure it got made, will place Tammy in a fresh light.
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She concludes: “I just knew I had to be a part of telling her true story, because I felt like a large injustice was done to her."
The Eyes of Tammy Faye is in cinemas now.
