For Jay Bakker, the son of televangelists Jim and Tammy Bakker, loving God meant always having to say you were sorry.
“I had this idea of an angry God, that everything I did was bad and wrong,” he says now about his childhood, which until the age of 13 was spent living, literally, in a theme park, Heritage USA, built by the millions of dollars the Bakkers raised through their Praise the Lord ministry.
Despite his seemingly idyllic upbringing, Bakker says, “I thought I was losing my salvation.” Those feelings of guilt only intensified in 1987, when a sex and accounting-fraud scandal brought the PTL empire crashing down. Eventually his parents would divorce, Jim Bakker would go to prison and Jay would spend his teen years adrift in a haze of drugs and alcohol.
Now rehabilitated and married, Jay Bakker, who turns 31 later this month, is a minister of the gospel himself. He's even on TV -- though only for a few weeks. “One Punk Under God,” a documentary about his life, airs for six weeks beginning 8 p.m. CT Wednesday on Sundance Channel (digital cable).
With his bald pate, sideburns, pierced lower lip and arms filled with tattoos, Bakker resembles the comedian David Cross if Cross had joined a biker gang. Yet on screen and in person, he is a paragon of Christian humility, soft-spoken and quick to talk about the tender mercies of God.
When we spoke in California this summer, Bakker and his wife Amanda were preparing to move to New York City to start a new planting of Revolution, a sort of anti-church he first became involved with in 1994, when he was recovering from substance abuse but still feeling alienated from God.
“One Punk Under God” chronicles his final months in Atlanta, when Revolution was based at a club called Masquerade and undergoing a crisis mostly instigated by Bakker. Risking the support of his church's biggest funders, he declared Revolution to be gay-affirming and began teaching that the Bible does not condemn homosexuality. (Here are photos and an account of his visit to the Open Door Community Church, which figures in an episode of "One Punk.")
Though Bakker attributes his liberal outlook to his parents, who welcomed Christians to PTL without regard of creed or sexual orientation, it's clear that his primary influence was Mom, aka Tammy Faye Messner, with whom he remains close.
The production company behind “One Punk” has made two documentary films about Tammy Faye Messner, including “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” and Bakker says he agreed to do a TV show because of their sympathetic treatment of her.
By contrast, his decision to thumb his nose at Revolution's financial supporters reflects the strained relationship with his father, who is once again involved in TV ministry. Before he agreed to be filmed for a documentary, Bakker had not spoken to his father for two years.
Released from prison in 1993, Jim Bakker remarried and relocated to Branson, Mo. He does a daily TV show with his wife, Lori Bakker, on a set that looks like it was borrowed from “Live with Regis and Kelly.” In the fourth episode of “One Punk,” Jay goes to Branson to visit Jim, and they have a heart-to-heart talk ... on “The Jim Bakker Show.”
Here are edited excerpts from my interview with Jay Bakker.
What was it like growing up inside Heritage USA, a theme park with a 500-room hotel?
My life was very guarded, but we had a lot of fun at Heritage, too. We'd run all around playing cops-and-robbers. Some little old lady would come around the corner and we'd be like, “Freeze!! Miami Vice!!”
You don't seem to have a lot of traumatic memories of that time.
I have traumatic memories of when we lost PTL. But, you know, I was heavy as a kid. I got made fun of a lot. That was hard. There were kids who said stuff. There was this (DJ) who would always make fun of my mom on morning radio. There were still tough times. I got in trouble, got punished, spanked. I had to go pick my own switch once.
I read that Jerry Falwell's mom did that when he was a boy, too -- made him choose his own switch when she whipped him.
Oh man (laughs bitterly). Me and Jerry Falwell, peas in a pod.
What was that year like for you, the year it came apart?
I was losing my friends. I wasn't able to go back to school. I wasn't able to play with some of my friends because their parents worked for my parents and Jerry Falwell (who was brought in to run the church) didn't want anybody to be seen with the Bakkers.
We went to live in Gatlinburg, Tenn. My dad owned that house in Gatlinburg. He owned the parsonage. Jerry Falwell kicked us out. They had the (Heritage) security guards make sure we didn't take anything out. I remember sitting in my room as a little kid crying because I couldn't stay in my house anymore. We were forced to leave and I couldn't understand why.
I saw my dad cry for the first time. He was on the phone with Jerry Falwell and he was saying, “I'm only asking for one thing. Take care of the partners. Just make sure you take care of the people.” And he was bawling, and that scared the daylights out of me. My dad always had a heart for people but I never knew how much.
When you look at other TV evangelists, was your father like them or not?
Well, in some ways he was and in other ways he wasn't. I mean, (there were) the constant telethons, because you have to pay television bills and staff bills. But if you put his show next to Christian television today, there wasn't a lot of gold and white and red, Las Vegas-looking sets. It was, like, stucco and a couch (on the set). My mom did shows on penile implants and did interviews with people who were dying of AIDS in the 1980s when nobody was. They did comedy. They had a live band. It was almost like Johnny Carson.
Your dad also hopped off the Pat Robertson-Jerry Falwell political express.
He did. I remember he was asked by George (H.W.) Bush to be mentioned because he had a lot of pull at the time. And he was like, “No.” One reason when they fell that the backlash was so bad was because, I think, people were so fed up with all that stuff (preachers in politics) that a lot of people's anger was pushed toward my family. But they weren't involved in politics.
I would think after all you went through, the one occupation you would cross off your career list would be “minister.”
See, me and my dad and my mom, we've all had our downfalls and our conflicts, but my dad instilled in me to help people. I remember after PTL fell, he took me to the toy store and said, “I want you to pick out a bunch of toys. They're not for you.” We went and spent Christmas with this really poor family. It made a huge impact on me. I think that at the end (of PTL), my dad was spending so much time raising money that he lost his passion, which is helping people.
When it got to a point where I realized what grace meant -- the unconditional gift, the undeserved favor, the reflection of God in our lives, and that God loved me no matter who I was or what I'd done -- I realized I was going to be a minister.
Jay, I saw you on Larry King this week , July, 07 and also Tammy Faye, GOD BLESS her, she was an inspiration to me, and you are doing so good to have been thru so much, You keep the faith and God Bless you. Jay, I am homebound as my husband is also, is it possible you could tell me a preaching site on TV that we could watch on Sundays, we are in N.C. and born again, I hope you can help me, I still and always will love Jesus, and I have got the desire to hear or see the word being preaced, Thank you, yesicare6@aol.com
Posted by: Becky | July 21, 2007 at 07:37 PM