An "Outrageous" Ministry

By David Brand

Televangelist Jim Bakker once broached the delicate subject of his finances to his huge television congregation. "You know, one time they accused me of being a wealthy man," he said. Then, looking sincerely into the camera, he told the audience that when an audit was carried out "several years ago" his net worth "came out to be $15,000."

That declaration was made in late 1985. Since then a remarkable improvement seems to have taken place in the financial affairs of Jim Bakker, 47, and his singing wife Tammy Faye, 45, former cohosts of The Jim and Tammy Show, an inspirational daily cable hour. The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer reported last week that the couple received nearly $1.6 million in pay last year from their PTL (for Praise the Lord or People That Love) television ministry. In the first three months of this year, the paper added, the Pentecostal preacher and his wife received $640,000. In all, the Bakkers were paid $4.8 million in salary, bonuses and other compensation between 1984 and last month.

The revelations of these celestial sums were yet another chapter in the saga of Bakker, an Assemblies of God minister who for 13 years ran the $129 million-a-year PTL empire, which includes the Heritage USA theme park in Fort Mill, S.C. Six weeks ago he stepped down as PTL president and chairman after admitting to a 1980 tryst with Massapequa, N.Y., Church Secretary Jessica Hahn and to then making a "blackmail" payment. A $265,000 hush-money package was assembled for Hahn and her advisers.

Jerry Falwell, the Lynchburg, Va., Baptist Fundamentalist who assumed the post of PTL chairman in mid-March, last week reviewed the lavish compensation ( that has been made in the past to Bakker and his fellow PTL officials. Falwell's reaction: "outrageous" and "indefensible." Among the disbursements were $350,000 in 1986 and $270,000 in the first quarter of 1987 to Richard Dortch, 55, the new president of PTL and Bakker's former chief aide; $360,000 last year and $250,000 as of March to David Taggart, 29, another Bakker aide; $160,000 in 1986 and $50,000 this year to Shirley Fulbright, a PTL executive assistant. Falwell ordered a halt to bonuses and all other remuneration, apart from salaries, for PTL's 2,000-member staff. Said Falwell, who earns $100,000 a year from his Lynchburg ministry: "I don't think any reasonable person could believe these salaries are acceptable. In my opinion, no ministry in America pays pastors and staffs at this level."

Falwell and his board plan to meet this week at Heritage USA. According to a Falwell spokesman, the audit that unveiled the PTL pay structure will be high on the agenda. On the PTL television show, of which he is now host, Dortch announced that for the next twelve months "I will not accept any salary whatsoever, nor pension benefits or any other benefits." Dortch remains under fire for his role in helping to negotiate the settlement with Hahn, and he may be dismissed at this week's PTL board meeting. One major concern of the board's is that angry viewers of the ministry's cable network, which reaches 13.5 million households, may stop mailing in the contributions that last year swelled the ministry's revenues to $129 million. In recent weeks both Falwell and Jimmy Swaggart, the Baton Rouge, La., preacher who passed along rumors about Bakker's sins to Assemblies of God officials, have sent out letters telling contributors that the PTL scandal has hurt their own fund raising. Last week three members of a Columbus family filed a $601 million class- action suit against PTL. They say their donations were used for illegal purposes rather than good works.

For Bakker, who has been in seclusion at his Palm Springs, Calif., home, there were even more damaging revelations at week's end. They were made by John Ankerberg, a Southern Baptist TV preacher from Chattanooga, Tenn. Interviewed on CNN, Ankerberg accused Bakker of involvements with prostitutes and homosexuals over at least the past nine years. Said Ankerberg: "From the people I have heard, from the evidence I have seen, it is more than talk." He described a pattern of persistent misbehavior among top members of the PTL staff, involving "wife swapping" and "diversion of funds," that he said had been condoned by both Bakker and Dortch. At week's end, Tammy Bakker released a statement from her husband, denying that he had ever been with a prostitute or was homosexual. She also said that "99%" of what the media had printed about the Bakkers "bears no truth whatsoever."

With reporting by B. Russell Leavitt/Atlanta