Could Be a Jolt to TV Ministries : Repercussions Seen in Bakker Scandal

The admission by popular religious TV talk show host Jim Bakker that he paid blackmail over a sexual encounter may deal a severe blow not only to the evangelistic empire he relinquished but also to the evangelical world generally.

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, who took over as board chairman of the $129-million-a-year PTL ministries at Bakker’s request, said Bakker’s resignation on Thursday was “a blow to the cause of Christ and we’ve taken it broadside.” Falwell fought back tears as he discussed the situation on Pat Robertson’s “700 Club” television show Friday morning.

‘I am not naive enough to think that a ministry of the magnitude of PTL . . . could go through a dilemma such as this without creating a backwash that would hurt every gospel ministry in America, if not the world,” Falwell said later in a statement.

Meanwhile, Paul Roper, a former general manager of Anaheim’s Melodyland Christian Center, told the Charlotte Observer that in 1985 he had received $115,000 from PTL on behalf of the woman involved in the sexual encounter.

Bakker’s abrupt resignation came as some of his prominent fellow television preachers have been widely criticized or ridiculed--Robertson, for his ambitious bid for the GOP Republican presidential nomination in 1988, and especially Tulsa-based evangelist Oral Roberts, for his claim that “God will call him home” if he fails by April 1 to raise $8 million for medical scholarships.

Bakker attributed his resignation Thursday to the allegations of former friends who “conspired to betray me into a sexual encounter at a time of great stress in my marital life.” He denied that this “one-time mistake” in 1980 amounted to a sexual assault or harassment.

Speaking from his home in Palm Springs on Thursday, Bakker said that he did not have the resources to combat “a new wave of attack” that he expected from the Charlotte Observer on the allegations.

The North Carolina paper said Friday that it had been investigating claims that in 1980, a New York church secretary, Jessica Hahn, then 21, had sexual relations with Bakker in a Florida hotel and was paid $115,000 in 1985 after she told PTL about it.

Bakker did not say in his statement that his denomination, the Assemblies of God, had begun a formal investigation last week of allegations of sexual misconduct.

Assemblies of God officials said Friday that they have refused to accept the resignation Bakker tendered Thursday until they have a chance to complete their investigation.

Terry Terrell, Assemblies of God coordinator of district and church relations, said that the North Carolina district superintendent asked Bakker to discuss the allegations but that “there was no opportunity available.” Terrell did not elaborate, except to say that if it is found that Bakker, 47, violated his ministerial requirements, he will be dismissed.

The Rev. Everett Stenhouse, assistant general superintendent of the church, based in Springfield, Mo., said the scandal has hurt the church and cast doubt on the integrity of ministers who raise money through televised appeals.

“I think that the church needs to be very cautious in protecting its integrity,” Stenhouse told a news conference.

The Charlotte Observer said that Roper, who was with Anaheim’s Melodyland Christian Center from 1978 to 1983, met Hahn and later presented PTL in February, 1985, with a draft of a lawsuit seeking millions of dollars in damages. Roper told the newspaper that after meeting with a PTL official and Los Angeles attorney Howard Weitzman, he received on the woman’s behalf a check for $115,000.

In his telephoned statement to the Observer, Bakker said it was “poor judgment to have succumbed to blackmail. . . .”

“Money was paid in order to avoid further suffering or hurt anyone,” he said.

Bakker had announced only two weeks earlier that his wife, Tammy Faye, had been absent for a prolonged period from the weekday “Jim and Tammy” talk show because she sought therapeutic treatment in California for addiction to prescription drugs.

In his Thursday statement, Bakker said that he and his wife are both under full-time therapy at a California treatment center.

“I have told Tammy everything, and Tammy, of course, has forgiven me,” he said.

Falwell assembled a board of directors for PTL (which stands for both Praise the Lord and People That Love). The board includes former Interior Secretary James Watt and Ben Armstrong, head of National Religious Broadcasters. Immediate past Southern Baptist President Charles Stanley of Atlanta withdrew from the board late Friday but was replaced by another ex-president of the Southern Baptists, Bailey Smith of Oklahoma.

It was not the first time Falwell has stepped in to help a minister embarrassed by charges of an affair. The Lynchburg, Va., pastor was invited to supervise a Baptist church in Bangor, Me., after the pastor there confessed in 1985 that he had had an adulterous affair. The congregation selected a new pastor in April, 1986.

But Falwell does not regard the present situation as a temporary one, said a Falwell aide, Mark DeMoss. He indicated that the two ministries would have “separate boards and management.”

Falwell, who has reduced his political activities in recent months, had been devoting more time to developing his Liberty University in Lynchburg, the Liberty Foundation (the new name for the Moral Majority political lobby) and a projected 24-hour television network of his own, which is behind schedule. Falwell’s “Old Time Gospel Hour”--taped services at his Thomas Road Baptist Church--appears on cable and broadcast television stations.

Falwell’s ratings, however, have not been as high as those of preachers Jimmy Swaggart and Robert Schuller and talk show hosts Robertson and Bakker, according to University of Virginia sociologist Jeffrey Hadden, author of “Prime Time Preachers.”

Falwell and the new board, which will meet for the first time Thursday, will assume control of an organization that reported $129 million in revenues last year at its headquarters in Fort Mill, S.C., 20 miles south of Charlotte. The complex includes Heritage USA, a 2,300-acre retreat, amusement park, television studio and a 500-room luxury hotel. Construction is also under way on enough condominiums to house 40,000 people and a $100-million, 30,000-seat “Crystal Palace.”

Yet Hadden said Bakker was “more heavily in debt than any of the other tele-evangelists.”

Moreover, Hadden said, it remains to be seen whether Falwell, a fundamentalist, can blend his ministries with the charismatic, or Pentecostal, direction of PTL. Pentecostal beliefs include speaking in tongues and other ecstatic “gifts of the Holy Spirit” that fundamentalists tend to believe are not authentic or, at least, are divisive for the church.

The audience constituencies also are different, Hadden said.

When 86-year-old Rebecca Pledge and 15 of her friends at a Los Angeles rest home turned on the television at 8 a.m. Friday to watch the “Jim and Tammy” program, she told The Times that all they saw were “a lot of ministers, Jerry Falwell and others, praying.”

Pledge, who declined to identify the rest home, said she and her friends contribute $25 a month to Bakker, but she could not figure out what was happening other than “something was wrong.”

Told that Falwell was taking over the PTL ministries for Bakker, who had resigned, she said, “Well, I don’t like Jerry Falwell.”

Hadden said that the PTL and the Bakkers may engender sympathy initially from regular supporters.

“There is no question that the audience will see this as evidence of how powerful demonic forces are in the world,” Hadden said.

Neal Eskelin, a PTL official in Fort Mill, said Friday that 99% of the calls in response to Bakker’s resignation were favorable.

But Hadden said that without a talk show host of “the same intensity (as Bakker’s) that holds the audience,” the organization may have trouble.

The Bakkers on Friday were staying at a fashionable Spanish-style home just off Palm Canyon Drive near downtown Palm Springs. The home, which is protected by closed-circuit television cameras and numerous security guards, admitted only Heritage USA staff members through the gate during the day.

“Only the Lord knows what will happen,” said a youthful staff member who drove a station wagon into the walled property. “We have to trust in Him.”

Don Hardister, who described himself as Bakker’s security guard, said, “Flowers and cards from well-wishers have been coming in all day.”

Hardister said the Bakkers moved into the Palm Springs house about a month ago. He said Tammy Bakker is receiving treatment at the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, which is often used by wealthy and celebrity patients with drug or alcohol problems.

Bakker also owns a home in Palm Desert, about 10 miles away, which he bought for $449,000 in May, 1984. The Bakkers were criticized late that year for that purchase and for loans to buy two luxury cars because they had told viewers that they had given all they owned to save the television program from its “biggest crisis financially.”

Dawn Nickell, secretary to the Riverside County tax assessor, said that the Bakkers still owe $2,129 in taxes from 1984 on their Palm Desert home. That year, she added, Summit Assn. of North Carolina was a co-owner of the house. Summit dropped out of its partial ownership in 1985.

Nickell added that the Bakkers have five years in which to pay the tax bill before the home is sold to the state.

Times staff writer Louis Sahagun contributed to this article from Palm Springs.