Husband and wife televangelist team Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker became a prominent part of American popular culture in the late 1980s when their vast PTL ministry was hit by scandal and accounts of fraud. The Bakker affair—and the activities of other TV preachers in the news at the time—inspired a popular reaction against TV preachers, and, fairly or unfairly, the Bakkers were seen as the embodiment of eighties materialist excess and Elmer Gantry-like religious hypocrisy. A country song by Ray Stevens summed up the popular feeling with the title "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex on His Television Show?"

Raised in Michigan, Jim Bakker received religious training at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis. There he met fellow student Tammy Faye LaValley, who, like Bakker, was raised in the Pentecostal tradition. The two were...