Word: bakker
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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After appearing on ABC's Nightline last week, ousted PTL Leader Jim Bakker invited TIME Correspondent Jon D. Hull into his Palm Springs home. Hull's report...
...Bakker sits in a corner of the white couch in his trinket-filled Spanish- style living room, looking like a schoolboy with bad grades. His hands are clasped between his knees, and his eyes remain fixed on the large black leather Bible spread before him. His pasty white face carries a sad, dazed expression. He is plainly shaken by his fall from grace. "We've almost died," he says. "I want to tell you . . . the first five weeks was like living hell." He pauses and touches the Bible. "At times we really wished they would have put a bullet...
Dressed in tan slacks and a check shirt, Bakker had issued his greeting at the adobe gateposts of his palm tree-lined driveway. "If this be a holy war, I am declaring a cease-fire and a truce," he said. "I'm just going to step out of the arena. I made a mistake by ever stepping out and trying to tell our side of the story...
Apparently disturbed by his Nightline appearance, Bakker declines to discuss details of the PTL controversy. Nor, he says, is Wife Tammy Faye available. "This whole time she's been shopping," he says, noting that she visits at least two flea markets a week. Until recently, both Jim and Tammy Bakker went five days a week to the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., where they were both outpatients. "I went because of Tammy," he says, explaining that his wife was addicted to a prescription tranquilizer as well as an over-the-counter allergy medicine...
...from his TV audience, Bakker relies on his Bible and his fan mail, the closest thing he has to a ministry. He says he has received more than 500 letters just from other ministers, as well as offers to serve as a pastor or appear on TV shows. "I've been invited to be a clergyman in, I think, half the world's religions...