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Christianity Today, July (Web-only), 2007 |

Will Tomorrow's Evangelicals Remember Tammy Faye?

She was an icon of a changing movement, but didn't actually change it, say experts.

Ted Olsen and Elizabeth Lawson | posted 7/27/2007 08:55AM

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But other conservative Protestants were repulsed. "For people outside of the evangelical community, [PTL] was confirmation of the tackiness and wrong-headed extravagance of televangelism," Eskridge said. When the PTL world came crashing down, it was the first time that many evangelicals discovered that the Bakkers were seen as public faces of the movement. While it prompted some to counter the image, "it really stoked up the desire on the part of a lot of evangelicals to flee in the opposite direction" or even to distance themselves from Pentecostal and evangelical labels altogether.

A Dallas Morning News editorial lamented that not enough conservative Christians sought distance. "Regrettably, Tammy Faye Bakker's downfall discredited neither the prosperity gospel—which holds that God wants you to get rich and that wealth is a sign of favor—nor the burlesque style of televangelism, which continues to, well, prosper. Diamonds, like the Almighty, are forever," the paper said.

Related Elsewhere:

Highlights from Tammy Faye's last interview with Larry King are available online.

Rob Moll writes that Tammy Faye reminded us how to die in, "Resurrecting the Public Death."

David Neff blogged about "singing Tammy Faye's song."

Weblog links to many of the eulogies written about her.

TammyFaye.com and the website of The Eyes of Tammy Faye (CT's review) have more information on her life.

Other Christianity Today articles on death and dying are in our special section.

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July (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51

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Eddie Francisco

Posted: August 03, 2007 3:42 PM

I'm not one to campaign for plain, unadorned faces on evangelical women. But this phrase jumped out at me as I read: "women who wanted to believe that it was acceptable to be a bit worldly." So how much is "a bit worldy"? And once we become comfortable with that "bit worldly," will we then start justifying being a little "bit [more] worldly"? At the same time, I would suggest that Tammy Faye's makeup style was more than "a bit." It was extreme, and to many even comical.

Chaplain Mary Murphy Veteransjustice@aol.com

Posted: July 31, 2007 6:22 PM


The daughter of parents who used the dust bowl in Okahoma to Live The Social Gospel - and to encounter "The Prosperity Gospel" (sic) Powers and Principalities used Tammy to introduce; i.e., it was the PTL Electric CHurch translated into Middle East Languages that birthed THE WAR ON TERROR

m	Posted: July 28, 2007 11:52 PM

As for Tammy Fae and the fact that evangelical Christianity not being changed for her being there...C'mon honor her in her death honorably fo God's sake!!! She was placed on the earth for her time and with God's purpose. Many who have come to the Lord Jesus Christ would disagree that she did nothing to change evangelical Christianity. Conservative Protestant Movements they were not part of...Pentecostals and Charasmatics aren't known for conservatism so maybe the scholars have that right, but Her Existence was not for no avail.People may have critisized her haor make-up, but I take note that she most likely had fruit before God as spoken in John as God was her Vine and she was of the branches. That's the issue I would take with this article.

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