Bad-Boy Bakkers in Fundamentalist Mainstream

Historian David Potter once described the American South as a sphinx who rarely, if ever, yields its secrets.

Observers of the PTL scandal agree that the scene is a strange, bizarre episode in American religious history. Strange, yet not so strange if one looks more closely at the South and its religious tradition. Jim and Tammy Bakker, like snake handlers who speak in tongues and drink strychnine, are among the more dramatic images that the Southern fundamentalist religion developed along its sawdust trail.

Fundamentalism in the South dates back to the 18th Century and a national religious movement known as the Great Awakening. During this period itinerant evangelists whose emotional religious message was no longer welcome in middle-class Eastern centers like Boston, New York and Philadelphia moved west and south to proselytize frontier communities.

Evangelists in the Great Awakening were famous for their camp meetings at which thousands of white and black Southerners sang, prayed and were converted.

Significant differences quickly emerged between white and black evangelical traditions. Black preachers and congregations reshaped their hymns with African rhythms, and at times used dance and healing ceremonies reminiscent of West African voodoo. Their religious concerns focused on social and political issues of slavery and, more recently, of racial segregation. Black preachers drew heavily on Old Testament texts to show parallels between their own people and the Children of Israel.

White preachers, by contrast, drew on the New Testament and focused on personal salvation. Their God was a highly personal figure, and their religion featured revivals at which worshipers recanted their sins and pledged to live a better life during the coming year.

The difference between black and white Southern religion is dramatically seen in the life styles and the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Billy Graham. The religious agenda shaped by each reflects deep historic differences between black and white Southerners.

The sentimental quality of the religion of Southern whites parallels their Anglo-American musical tradition. Their fundamentalist sermons and their country music both focus on problems of sex, alcohol and unemployment. These sacred and secular worlds overlap in broad patterns within which the lives of Jim and Tammy Bakker are far from unique.

The Bakkers can also be understood in the context of the white Southern bad-boy and bad-girl tradition. Southern heroes who fall from grace are often loved even more for their failings. One of the Bakkers’ severest critics, Jimmy Swaggart, is a cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis, who popularized the Southern bad-boy image through rock-’n’-roll performances and highly publicized dramas in his personal life.

A significant shift in the Southern evangelical tradition occurred with the emergence of the electronic church. Through the media, especially television, Southern ministers like Oral Roberts broadened both their audience and their income. They brought emotional, face-to-face religious messages first to regional and later to national congregations.

Enter Jim and Tammy Bakker’s PTL ministry--the most contemporary version of the Southern white evangelist gone electric. Their religious message was a deeply rooted and very American worship of materialism couched in the name of religion--with a dose of Southern patriotism thrown in for good measure.

They also instilled a fear of contemporary life in their audience, and through it a need for the comfort offered by their ministry. To escape this fear, the Bakkers created Heritage USA in Fort Mill, S.C., a fundamentalist version of Disneyland where believers found shelter.

The appearance of Tammy and Jim--with their jewelry, flashy clothes and ability to cry at the drop of a hat or a coin--derives from both country-music and soap-opera worlds. They are a couple at once very Southern and very American.

Though country music singer Ray Stevens recently criticized the Bakkers’ materialism with his song, “Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?,” the Bakkers have shown an extraordinary ability to survive their problems unscathed. Unlike the Rajneeshpuram in Oregon created by the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Heritage USA has not been sold at public auction--nor is it likely to be. Their mix of both Southern and American appeal provided the shield needed to weather the storm.

Like summer heat, religious fundamentalism drenches the American South with its spirit. The white preacher with one hand clenched and the other shaking a Bible is a familiar image in the region. Through television, the Bakkers made this Southern world a daily American experience, and we may ask whether the South has now become more American or America more Southern.