Bakker Pleads for Support, Considers a New Ministry

In his first extensive interview since the disclosure of the sexual encounter that led to his fall as head of PTL, evangelist Jim Bakker Wednesday night said that he would like to return to the PTL ministry or build a new one, perhaps in California.

“If Jerry Falwell won’t let us go home, I dream . . . of building another city, maybe in California. I’d like people to write me if they want me to do that,” said Bakker, flanked by his wife, Tammy Faye, during an interview at their Palm Springs home on the ABC News “Nightline” show.

Frequently quoting from the Bible and often interrupted by his wife, Bakker also denied many of the latest charges leveled against him by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who became chairman of PTL when Bakker left in disgrace in March.

Bakker also said the PTL board of directors was responsible for the salary of more than $1 million the Bakker’s received last year. Falwell said Wednesday that the salary totaled $1.9 million, but Bakker placed it at $1.1 million.

Bakker said, “I think we’ve made a lot of mistakes and I’m very sorry about it . . . but Tammy and I had nothing to do with our salary.

“We should have said no, but our board cared about us, and they would tell us, ‘Jimmy and Tammy you earn every penny that we give you.’ ”

“They told us they thought we deserved it,” Tammy Bakker interjected with a giggle.”

Bakker again denied reports of homosexual activity and said his accusers should “come out from behind the bushes” and produce proof of homosexual acts.

“I’ve been married to this man for 26 years, and I can tell you that he is not a homosexual or a bisexual,” Tammy Bakker interjected.

“If I am guilty of everything I am accused of,” Jim Bakker said, it would not justify what he called the unfair takeover by Falwell.

Bakker’s comments Wednesday night capped an extraordinary cross-country exchange of charges and insults by the two evangelists. Earlier, Falwell held a two-hour press conference at Heritage USA, the PTL’s Christian resort and theme park in Fort Mill, S.C., in which he said that Bakker’s claims that he was tricked into giving up PTL show Bakker “either has a terrible memory or is very dishonest or is emotionally ill.”

“To say Jerry Falwell stole this ministry is like saying somebody stole the Titanic just after it hit an iceberg.”

Falwell also accused Bakker of lying to him about a sexual encounter with former secretary Jessica Hahn, of having “homosexual problems” dating from 1956 and of raiding ministry coffers before abruptly resigning in disgrace March 19 as chairman of the 518,000-member PTL organization. PTL stands for Praise The Lord and People That Love.

Falwell said Bakker’s refusal to “repent,” combined with the desperate fiscal condition of PTL, now more than $70 million in debt, would make it a “disservice to God and to the church at large” to allow Bakker ever to return to PTL.

“I don’t see any repentance here,” Falwell said. “I see the greed, the self-centeredness and the avarice that brought them down.”

On a Tuesday appearance on “Nightline,” Bakker said Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, wangled the takeover by suggesting that another television evangelist, Jimmy Swaggart, was scheming to take control of PTL.

Falwell took over as chairman of the $129-million-a-year PTL ministry after Bakker admitted that he had a tryst six years before with then-19-year-old Hahn and paid blackmail to prevent a public disclosure of the sexual encounter.

Bakker said Falwell originally promised to act as a “caretaker” of PTL pending Bakker’s eventual return to the ministry’s leadership. On May 17, Bakker told Falwell he was ready to come back.

No Warm Welcome

Instead of a warm welcome, Falwell said he confronted Bakker with disturbing new information about his tryst with Hahn, as well as alleged homosexual advances.

Bakker originally said that he had engaged in a single sexual encounter with Hahn, and that intercourse had not taken place because he was “temporarily impotent” at the time, Falwell said.

Based on subsequent interviews, Falwell said he now believes that Bakker and an associate, evangelist John Wesley Fletcher, had sex with Hahn and that another, unnamed associate also tried to have sex with Hahn but that she “was prostrate and on the floor and unable to respond and unable to accommodate him.”

Falwell also told reporters that he has spoken with men who allege that Bakker made homosexual advances to them.

“What Jim Bakker needs to do,” Falwell said, “he needs to come clean about Jessica Hahn and repent. . . . Secondly, he needs to acknowledge these homosexual problems dating from 1956 to the present time as they’ve been alleged to us and say, ‘Yes, I’ve been wrong. I made a mistake. I’ve sinned, but I ask God’s forgiveness.’ ”

Falwell said Bakker should return the “millions” he is alleged to have taken from PTL before leaving the ministry. He said the Bakkers were paid $1.9 million last year, $300,000 more than was previously disclosed.

Falwell suggested that Bakker “knew the end was near” as early as Jan. 1 when he “left to go with his wife to the (California) hospital to treat her drug dependency, and I can certainly understand that. . . .”

‘D-Day Was Imminent’

Instead of at least occasionally returning to the ministry headquarters to preach, Falwell said Bakker stayed away for three months, “while at the same time they raided all the checking accounts of hundreds of thousands of dollars. I think they had to know that D-Day was imminent, and they had no intention of coming back.”

On April 28, when Falwell stopped payments to the Bakkers, the couple were asked what the PTL could do to make their lives easier.

According to Falwell, the Bakkers submitted a list including $300,000 a year for life for Jim Bakker, $100,000 a year for his wife, rights to their books and records and their parsonage in South Carolina, among other things.

The PTL board, which met before Falwell’s news conference, learned the ministry has $4.7 million in the bank and $500,000 pledged in its goal to reach at least $7 million by Sunday.

Falwell began a “May emergency” campaign May 18, saying that in order to survive, the ministry needs at least $7 million by Sunday and $20 million to $25 million within 2 1/2 months.