Tammy Faye Messner (1942-2007) was a singer, author, television personality, and evangelist who co-founded The PTL Club.
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Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I’m Jenny Kaplan and this is Encyclopedia Womannica.
Today we’re talking about a famous 20th century American televangelist who, along with her husband, built a commercial televangelism empire that eventually collapsed in scandal. Meet Tammy Faye Messner.
Tammy Faye was born in International Falls, Minnesota on March 7, 1942. She was the eldest of eight children.
Tammy Faye and her siblings had a strict religious upbringing in the Pentecostal tradition. At the age of 10 while at Pentecostal church services with her mother, Tammy Faye had an “epiphany” of sorts and started speaking in tongues. That was a transformative experience for her, and, according to her autobiography, made her want to devote her life to religion.
In 1960, while attending North Central Bible College in Minneapolis, Tammy Faye met a fellow student named Jim Bakker (pronounced Baker). A year later the two were married, and a year after that Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker moved to South Carolina to start their ministry.
The couple travelled all across the U.S. working the preaching circuit, with Jim preaching and Tammy Faye singing and playing the accordion. During that period, the couple also had two children, a boy and a girl.
In 1964, the couple got involved in the growing medium of television. While living in Portsmouth, Virginia for a short time, they were founding members of the well-known and still running Christian show The 700 Club. Tammy Faye and Jim also created a popular puppet show for children that ran on the Christian Broadcasting Network for nine years.
In 1974, after moving to Charlotte, North Carolina, Jim and Tammy Faye co-founded a televangelist news program called The PTL Club, short for Praise The Lord. The show, which mixed glitz and popular entertainment with a prosperity gospel, was a massive success. After only a year, The PTL Club grew into its own network and fully-fledged corporation pulling in approximately $120 million a year. By its peak in the 1980s, PTL’s flagship show, the “Jim and Tammy Show”, reached as many as 13 million households each week.
Tammy Faye played an important role in the television series. According to her obituary in the New York Times, “Ms. Messner, who stood 4 feet 11 inches, was known for appearing on camera in overstated outfits and heavy makeup. She was openly emotional, whether praying for the health of an ailing viewer or for generous financial contributions. When she broke down on camera — and she did so often — her tears and mascara both ran copiously, leaving long black streaks on her face.”
Tammy Faye was the glamorous but sensitive, emotional touchstone for audience members, telling sentimental stories and often singing during shows. She willingly discussed topics generally considered taboo in evangelical circles, including AIDS, homosexuality and substance abuse. Tammy Faye’s own issues with drug abuse and depression made her a target of tabloid headlines.
In the mid-1980s, Tammy Faye famously interviewed Steven Pieters, a gay minister with AIDS, on a segment of The PTL Club. During the interview, Tammy Faye made an emotional plea to viewers, saying, “How sad that we as Christians, who are to be the salt of the earth, we who are supposed to be able to love everyone, are afraid so badly of an AIDS patient that we will not go up and put our arm around them and tell them that we care.”
In 1988, Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker’s empire started to collapse. It was revealed that PTL had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to silence a woman who had accused Jim of rape. This scandal opened the floodgates, and soon the couple’s business and their wildly opulent personal lives were under scrutiny.
Tammy Faye stood by her husband and famously cried multiple times on TV while defending him and their lifestyle, which included lavish homes, matching Rolls-Royces and an air-conditioned dog house.
In 1989, Jim Bakker was sentenced to 45 years in prison on 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud. Three years later, Tammy Faye filed for divorce.
In 1993, Tammy Faye married wealthy property developer Roe Messner. The two met years earlier when Messner’s contracting company did construction on the Bakker’s Christian theme park Heritage USA, which had been a major part of the Bakker’s ministry in its heyday. Messner and his wife had remained close friends with Tammy Faye and Jim in the intervening years.
Three years later in 1996, Roe Messner also went to prison after being convicted of bankruptcy fraud. He served 27 months.
Even though Tammy Faye came from a Christian Fundamentalist background, she became a gay icon in the 1990s after years of refusing to denounce homosexuality and advocating for AIDS awareness. She often attended pride marches. In the 2000 documentary, “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” she was asked about her attitude toward gay rights and said, “I refuse to label people. We’re all just people made out of the same old dirt, and God didn’t make any junk.”
Tammy Faye died from cancer in 2007 at age 65.
Tune in tomorrow for the story of another remarkable woman from history. All month we’re talking about Witches and Saints.
Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator.
Talk to you tomorrow!