Tammy Faye Bakker

Legendary card · No. 1095

Tamara Faye Messner (previously Bakker, née LaValley; March 7, 1942 – July 20, 2007) was an American evangelist. She co-founded the televangelist program The PTL Club with her then-husband Jim Bakker in 1974. They had hosted a puppet-show in local television programming, in the early 1960s; she also had a career as a recording artist. In 1978, she and Jim Bakker built Heritage USA, a Christian theme park. During her career she was noted for her eccentric and glamorous persona, as well as for moral views that diverged from those of many mainstream evangelists, particularly her advocacy for LGBT persons and reaching out to HIV/AIDS patients at the height of the AIDS epidemic. She released three autobiographies during her lifetime, I Gotta Be Me in 1978, Tammy: Telling It My Way in 1996, and I Will Survive and You Will Too! in 2003. Jim Bakker was exposed for sexual and financial misconduct and was indicted, convicted, and imprisoned on numerous counts of fraud and conspiracy in 1989, resulting...

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