Word: bakkers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...face of Gospel TV's theological simplifications and secular agendas, its sometimes overbearing personalities and unrelenting emphasis on money, should earnest Christians simply shun electronic religion altogether? To Hollywood's Ogilvie, that is not an option: "Otherwise we roll over and play dead." Jim Bakker sees video technology as the means to fulfill Jesus' 2,000- year-old injunction to reach out to the world and spread the Gospel. If Jesus were on earth today, Bakker asserts, "he'd have to be on TV. That would be the only way he could reach the people he loves...
...Bakker (pronounced baker), 46, is the boyish-faced Pentecostal proprietor of the PTL (for People That Love or Praise the Lord) Network in Charlotte, N.C. The network ranks second to Robertson's CBN in Christian cable (13 million households, 24 hours, all religion). The featured offering is the daily Jim and Tammy show, a variety-and-talk program with Bakker and his wife as hosts on an opulent, hacienda-style set with orchestra, singers and live audience. Bakker's receipts exceed $100 million a year. Much of the money is eaten up by his Heritage USA theme park, opened...
Lest views be tempted into backsliding, atheism, or switching channels, Bakker observes that "freethinkers" invariably die, usually from cancer, disease, or drug overdose. Though more prosaic than being struck by lightning, such fates are equally effective. In a 1979 interview. Bakker traced India's problems to a rejection of Christian principles. In Africa, he insisted, the Christians live in better houses. As a couple from Canton, Ohio, announced on PTL. "Belief in God blessed us financially and then spiritually...
...Bakker's faith in God and man, though reduced to the proportions of cars and boats, is not based on greed. Like the cargo cults, the South Sea islanders who worshipped the army transport planes that bought unimaginable riches of K-rations and surplus hardware, the Bakkers grasp best the material manifestations of the divine. Welfare checks number not among such miracles: "Why can't man throw money at his problems? Because God wants things to be in accord with His will... We're tired of all the hype. We want to go back to old foundations." When God speaks...
Both the Baptist minister in Chicago and PTL's Bakker feel concern for their congregations. But PTL traps its audience in a Pavlovian circle of wealth coupled to religion, a ritual of cash register bell-ringing. Like commercial television, it inflames material appetites and arouses expectations, rather than hopes. Facing no adversity as persistent as graffiti blackly spattered, its viewers can have faith that God provides for believers. As a result, there is no reason to care for the truly needy beyond one's small circle of friends. To clutch a phonebook and express passionate concern for those listed...