Word: bakkers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...roller-coaster ride," the Rev. Jim Bakker has often remarked. Through tumultuous financial ups and downs, the boyish-looking 47- year-old preacher has become a powerful czar of Christian entertainment. His enterprises encompass the PTL (for Praise the Lord or People That Love) network, carried by cable TV to 13.5 million homes; a daily television talk show, broadcast on 178 stations; and the 2,300-acre Heritage USA at Fort Mill, S.C., America's splashiest Gospel-theme amusement park, which was visited by more than 6 million people last year. His projects, which also include a lavish hotel...
Suddenly and unexpectedly, Bakker's control of this seemingly flourishing domain, built over 13 years, came to an end last week. With trembling voice, the televangelist confessed to the Charlotte Observer that he had been < "wickedly manipulated by treacherous former friends" who had "conspired to betray me into a sexual encounter." Following that involvement, Bakker said, he had "succumbed to blackmail" to protect his family and organization. After the news broke, Bakker resigned as head of PTL, handing control of his troubled operation to fellow TV Preacher Jerry Falwell...
According to the North Carolina daily, Bakker (pronounced baker) had a onetime sexual encounter with a 21-year-old church secretary during a visit to Florida. The two met in 1980, at a time when Bakker's 19-year marriage to his TV co-host Tammy Faye Bakker, now in her 40s, seemed to be foundering. (This month Tammy told her TV audience that she was drug dependent; she and her husband are currently being treated at a California center for addicts and their families.) The paper said that during 1985 the secretary and her representatives received $115,000 after...
...Like Dixie (Then I Don't Want to Go) should be spitting out of your car radio as you make the more than 150-mile drive from Pigeon Forge to Fort Mill, S.C. It will put you in the mood for Heritage USA, Televangelist Jim Bakker's hotel and convention complex that attracts 5 million of the faithful each year. Cynics call the place Six Flags over Jesus, but you will be disappointed if you come expecting a Holy Roller coaster or a guided walk across the Sea of ! Galilee. Still, Heritage is not your everyday theme park...
Disney had, of course, savored that triumph long before Jim Bakker was born. And having tasted success with Disneyland in California, he looked for a larger playground. His gaze fell on central Florida. Twenty years ago, the region was not much more than scrubland, orange groves, gas stations and $5-a- night motels. It was a place vacationers drove through, as quickly as possible, on their way to Miami or the Gulf Coast. But just before his death in 1966, the Man with the Mouse had bought, secretly and at the fire-sale price of roughly $200 an acre...