Bakker Now Preaching ‘Gospel of Meekness’

Former televangelist Jim Bakker, on probation after serving a 4 1/2-year sentence for bilking thousands of followers out of nearly $158 million, appears to be slowly taking on a more public life, preaching on a gospel of humility that he said he learned in prison.

Nearly 400 people who assembled at the Rev. Marvin Gorman’s Temple of Praise Church last Sunday gave Bakker a standing ovation after his 1 1/2-hour sermon, which focused on his prison discovery of the “gospel of meekness.”

Bakker, who has made few public appearances since he was released from federal custody, will be a featured speaker at a major Pentecostal rally in Oklahoma in April and has signed a contract for a book about his downfall, said Lee Grady, executive editor of Charisma, a magazine that covers the Pentecostal movement.

“I think there will be a large number of people who will take Jim Bakker seriously now,” Grady said. “Christian people are very forgiving. There are a great many people hoping to hear Jim say he’s made a sincere turnaround.”

Many who listened to Bakker said that they welcomed him back into active life.

“He’s been to the bottom. He’s suffered. He has been purified,” said Vivian Collins, 47, of Marrero, La.

Bakker’s federal conviction and the collapse of his PTL Ministries was preceded by the disclosure in 1987 that he had a sexual encounter with former church secretary Jessica Hahn in 1980 and authorized the use of about $265,000 in ministry money to buy her silence.

Prosecutors said he oversold vacation shares in Heritage USA, a North Carolina vacation and retreat center, and diverted $3.7 million of believers’ money to sustain a lavish lifestyle.

Bakker’s wife, Tammy Faye, divorced him in 1992 and married former PTL contractor Roe Messner.

Bakker told the New Orleans congregants that he underwent a radical theological shift in prison. Jabbing the air overhead, he said his preaching in his PTL days consisted of “a point here, a point there and a whole lot of bull in between.” He described it as the “gospel of prosperity.”

He discussed his prison experience without ever explicitly acknowledging whether he was guilty of the crimes the jury convicted him of in 1989.

He came closest in what was nearly his first line, when he asked forgiveness of any in the congregation whom he had offended or hurt. Later he said he was ruined because he did not appreciate that “money is the root of all evil.”

Bakker appeared at Temple of Praise at the invitation of Gorman, whose image, like Bakker’s, was tarnished by an episode of adultery. Gorman was the head of a thriving television ministry when in 1986 fellow televangelist Jimmy Swaggart of Baton Rouge publicly accused him of having a number of adulterous affairs. Gorman contended that there was only one, but was ruined nonetheless.

Neither Bakker nor Gorman would make himself available for an interview. But in their remarks both men, former Assemblies of God ministers, indicated that they feel a certain kinship after losing their prosperity and influence in public scandals in the 1980s.

Gorman has been slowly rebuilding a church, which was nearly filled Sunday.

“We’ve been hoping to have Jim preach here for years, even while he was in jail,” said Gorman’s son, Randy. “He was always supportive of my father. And we know what it means to be hurting.”