Doing Good, Doing Very Well

The unwanted light of publicity that lately has fallen onto Jim and Tammy Bakker and the PTL television ministry that they founded has now illuminated the obscure question of what they were paid for their good works. The apparent answer is plenty. Over a period of a little more than three years ending last month the Bakkers are reported to have received a mind-boggling $4.8 million in salaries, bonuses and other payments. In the last three months alone their compensation totaled $640,000. The Rev. Jerry Falwell, who took control of PTL after Bakker resigned in a sex scandal, says that the report by the Charlotte Observer is “essentially correct.” PTL stands, alternately, for Praise the Lord or People That Love. Some critics say that it also stands for Pass the Loot.

Television ministries have become a big business that attracts big bucks. Estimates of total donations to programs seen on 221 TV stations range up to $2 billion a year. PTL alone in 1986 reported revenues of $129 million. Among its assets is a $172-million religious theme park that annually draws 6 million visitors. All this has made PTL and other such ministries formidable enterprises indeed. It also helps explain the sometimes fierce competition among TV preachers for the loyalty and financial support of an audience that, surveys indicate, has grown little if at all in recent years.

PTL claims that it is supported by the contributions of 13 million subscribers. The Internal Revenue Service’s rules on tax-exempt organizations like PTL say that private individuals may receive its funds only as “reasonable” payment for the services and goods that they provide. Reasonable people may differ about what’s reasonable, but payments that have averaged about $125,000 a month for the last three years pretty clearly come under the heading of wretched excess.

The Bakkers’ salaries were last divulged by PTL more than eight years ago. Then they were said to total $72,800 a year, apparently excluding any unannounced bonuses or other compensation. PTL’s now-reorganized board of directors has agreed to continue paying the Bakkers undisclosed salaries indefinitely. Blessed are the poor. Clearly blessed, too, are the well-off.