John Wigger, author of a new book called “PTL: The Rise and Fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Evangelical Empire,” argues that the savvy Bakker is changing with the times to tap into new opportunities.
“The Prosperity Gospel, with all its glitz and money, fit the culture of the 1980s and Jim found that was a very successful component of his message,” said Wigger, a professor of history at the University of Missouri. “In this post-9/11 era, he’s found that the Apocalypse and survivalism make for a very compelling message that will also gain him an audience.”
How’s Bakker’s show doing? Hard to say. His daily hour-long show from Missouri is carried via satellite on various Christian TV channels – Daystar, Angel One, the Word Network – and on a dozen or so local stations (though none in Charlotte). But there are no Nielsen ratings for Christian television.
Just as elusive: Information about how much money Bakker’s ministry brings in, how much it spends and how much he and his wife are paid.
Some things never change. Bakker is heavily into the New Apostolic Reformation, a movement that took off in the 1990s and is little more than dominionism or even Christian Reconstructionism (perhaps not quite as extreme as the latter). This somewhat explains its embrace of Donald Trump by cloaking their hypocrisy with biblical references about how he is "called by God" to be in the White House. Never mind Russian interference and media 24/7 propaganda by CNN.
Buzzfeed had a piece about him three years ago that I missed.
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