Last Thursday I had the opportunity to discuss my faith in front of a college class on World Religions. I sat on a panel with two Mormon missionaries, a Christian Science practitioner and a Unitarian Universalist minister (it was ‘misunderstood religions’ week). Each of us talked a little about the history of our movement and our own personal journeys of faith. With the exception of the Mormons, the overwhelming emphasis from each of the speakers was the inclusive, persistent and all-encompassing love of God, and how we try to allow that love to guide us in our daily lives.
Reflecting on the experience afterward, I jokingly referred to myself as ‘Tammy Faye’ to a friend. Tammy Faye… as in the better half of ‘Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’, the televangelists who built a religious empire on Christian broadcasting and a Christian-themed amusement park back in the 80s.
Tammy was (and is) recognized far outside Christian television circles for her wacky personality, big hair, heavy makeup and tear-filled gospel songs, and most of all perhaps for her boundless enthusiasm and warm-heartedness. She is even something of a camp icon. My friend was puzzled that I would make such a self-comparison. Yes, I do cry in church on occasion and there are days when the hair gets a little out of control, but I don’t wear makeup and I don’t look or sound like the gene-spliced offspring of Dolly Parton and Lucille Ball!
I’d seen Tammy numerous times on TV over the past couple of years. A few of these occasions were on CNN's Larry King Live, where she appeared both alone and with her ex-husband (and former convict) Jim Bakker. I later saw the movie, ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’, in a gay video store, and felt I just had to rent it and see if I could learn what drives her. Roger Ebert, when he reviewed this movie, gave it three out of four stars. ‘In terms of broadcast hours,’ he noted, ‘she lived more of her life on live TV than perhaps anyone else in history. She was like Jim Carrey in “The Truman Show”--only in on the secret.’
And what an interesting, amazing and resilient woman she turns out to be. Not a word of condemnation of others in all she’s been through. And she went through a lot, including addiction, losing her husband to prison and scandal, divorce, exile and ridicule. When Jim's financial problems began to mount and it became evident he was defrauding his viewers of millions, she lost everything including her home, husband and career. They were both crucified by the Christian right, particularly by Jerry Falwell who used the situation as an opportunity have the Bakkers thrown off the board of their own TV network. More recently she has survived battles with lung and colon cancer.
Judging by his blog, her ex-husband Jim (now out of prison and back in the pulpit) appears to be somewhat obsessed with the second coming of Christ. But with Tammy you get a strong sense that what matters to her most is sharing the gospel of God's love just about any way she can. Tammy genuinely cares for all kinds of people that conservative religious folks would rather see rot in hell. When AIDS was being welcomed as God’s wrath against gays by all the other televangelists, the Bakkers openly accepted and affirmed the God-given dignity of GLBT people and ministered to those living with HIV/AIDS, without ever passing judgment. In this they stood apart from the evangelical Christian ‘mainstream’.
In a recent interview with Larry King, she said about the gay community, 'Oh, yes. They're so kind to me. They always go around, thumbs up, you can make it. And I feel we're all, especially the ones that have AIDS, I feel we're all fighting basically the same battle.' She adds, 'I think they love someone who loves them, and I think that they -- I really do. I think they know the sincerity in my heart when I say I love you and I don't judge you.'
Ebert, in his review of the movie, refers to Tammy as ‘a woman of great generosity of spirit.’ I saw this again when she appeared in The WB’s ‘The Surreal Life’ TV show. But it was particularly poignant when I came across her personal web site a few days ago and watched an interview she gave last month on TBN to Paul Crouch Jr. Christian TV must have changed a bit since I last watched it, because they didn’t edit out the more raucous pieces. She got away with making jokes about butts and boobs (yes, ‘boobs’). She got so excited at one point in wanting to describe God that she referred to God as a ‘loving dog’ before quickly correcting herself. Lots of laughs, quite a few tears. She talked about surviving cancer and what her belief in healing means to her. When asked what message she would like to give viewers, she simply replied that she felt strongly that it was time for Christians to stop judging people and to look at their own sin and begin dealing with that.
Amen to that. And which brings me back to my starting point. I felt a bit like Tammy Faye, standing up in front of that group of strangers, talking about a faith that is for me so personal and yet by the nature of my life itself such a very public issue. And I felt OK about it, like I was meant to do it.
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