PTL

Starred review from June 12, 2017
Professor of History at the University of Missouri Wigger (American Saint) starts this captivating exploration of the rise, stumble, and fall of the PTL evangelical empire founded in 1973 by Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker—one of the first major televangelist operations in the United States—with a brief review of the Pentecostal evangelical religion in America and the early biographies of both Bakkers before plunging into the development of the PTL business empire. The scandal-ridden downfall of the Bakkers was front-page news in the late 1980s and early ’90s, but the story starts in the early ’60s with the just-married Bakkers setting off to travel by car as evangelical preachers. The Bakkers started on television with a children’s show on a network headlined by Pat Robertson, the Bakkers’ expansion to owning studios and stations came quickly. Jim Bakker’s spin on what is broadly known as “the prosperity gospel,” a particularly American evangelical take on the relationship between God and money, was what led both to the couple’s spectacular success and, eventually, ruin. Wigger does an outstanding job of untangling and following the various threads of the PTL, only briefly allowing himself a moment of ahistorical judgment when discussing the 45-year prison term eventually passed on Jim Bakker. Anyone interested in the theological underpinnings of certain contemporary strains of right-wing American politics, as well as those more particularly interested in the Bakkers or televangelism, should find this book rewarding.

May 15, 2017
A history professor recounts and updates the scandals revolving around the PTL Club and its guiding lights, evangelical preachers Jim Bakker and his then-wife, Tammy Faye Bakker.In this deeply researched combination of recent history and biography, Wigger (History/Univ. of Missouri; American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists, 2009, etc.) builds on a number of historical threads from the 1970s and '80s, when the Bakkers were first famous--as well as vastly and ostentatiously wealthy--and then infamous due to the PTL Club, their televised "religious" enterprise. (PTL stands for either Praise the Lord or People that Love.) The author's main themes are hubris and greed as well as financial fraud, sexual exploitation, phony religion, the siren song of celebrity, and the dangers of the prosperity gospel. Wigger acknowledges the far-reaching investigation during the 1980s by Charles E. Shepard, a Charlotte Observer reporter who wrote Forgiven: The Rise and Fall of Jim Bakker and the PTL Ministry (1989). In many ways, Wigger's book serves as a skilled, informative update of Shepard's expose. Tammy Faye Bakker is now dead, but Jim Bakker is back after serving five years in prison for multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy. He has remarried and is now running an enterprise called Morningside, which serves people who want to buy supplies for a predicted apocalypse. One of the most damning parts of the book concerns Jessica Hahn, a young admirer of Bakker who was raped by the preacher and a colleague, and the horrifying detail provided by the author remains as upsetting as it was when originally disclosed. The Bakkers started out with good intentions when they chose to become itinerant preachers, but the monsters they became make it difficult to feel any sympathy for them despite Wigger's thoughtful presentation. Many of the other high-profile evangelicals in the book--including Billy Graham, Jimmy Swaggart, and Pat Robertson--also inspire very little admiration. A worthy, clearly written account of a movement and its downfall.

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