TAMMY FAYE BAKER-MESSNER: THE FIRST LADY OF CHRISTIAN TELEVISION by Roberts Liardon

By Roberts Liardon

TAMMY FAYE BAKER-MESSNER


THE FIRST LADY OF CHRISTIAN TELEVISION


by Roberts Liardon


 In October 2006 I had the privilege of spending one week with the amazing Tammy Faye Baker-Messner at her North Carolina home for a private interview.  During this week I sat in her front living-room, by her bed-site and carried her oxygen tank for her as she moved around the house.  


It was a most open and candid interview in which we discussed her call to the ministry, her marriages, the PTL/Jessica Hahn scandal, and the reinvention of herself.  I also was able to interview her husband Roe Messner and her son Jay Baker who was visiting his mother while being filmed for a TV reality show.  


Tammy Faye was the First Lady of Christian Television.  She and her former husband, Jim Baker, build the largest Christian TV network as well as the third most visited team park (Heritage USA) in our country.  


They were invited on more than one occasion to the White House and their influence was such that they had a private phone line at their office that connected them directly to the secretary of the President of the United States of America.  


Tammy was a true pioneer and the first well-known Christian to cross over church traditional lines.  For instance, she was the first one to interview a man with Aids on national television.  It was at a time when there was still little known about the disease and most people were afraid of Aids let alone talk about it in public.  Not to mention the fact that she was talking with a gay man on a Christian TV program.  


            She truly was one of God's Generals and I will dedicate a chapter to her in one of my God's Generals books.  Some of the most amazing and unforgettable things to be said about Tammy are the following:  


1)     HER ABILITY TO SURVIVE EVERY SITUATION AND COME OUT ON TOP!  She won back the respect of most of the Christian community and mainstream America.  Even after her last Larry King interview (hours before her death) people commented on her positive and even cheerful attitude.  


2)     HER ABILITY TO LOVE PEOPLE NO MATTER WHAT THEY HAD SAID OR DONE TO HER.  I asked Tammy some very hard questions about Jerry Falwell, Jessica Hahn, and others.  I brought up people that were "agents of pain" in her life.  She looked straight at me and said: "I have the right to forgive and love whether people ask for it or not and I refuse to live in a prison of which I have the key to free myself from through forgiveness."  


The kind of love that Tammy Faye exhibited is very rare in the world we live in today.  She was a tremendous help to me personally as I worked through some of my own unforgiveness toward people who hurt me. 


             As a friend, I've often wondered why such a beautiful child of God should suffer from such a horrible disease as cancer.  I don't claim to have the answers to that question but I do firmly believe that the stress the church and media put on Tammy during and after the PTL scandal caused enormous havoc on her physical body.  


            I know that some people are not going to like what I have to say but I think that the church is partly to blame for Tammy's health problems.  The church did nothing to help a sister in need and abandoned one of her own during that person's time of greatest need.  At the time Tammy was a mother with two young children and a husband who was sentenced to jail for 40+ years.  When Jim Baker was taken away to prison, Tammy was left without a husband and her children without a father.  Yet the church did nothing to support Tammy or her children.  I can't believe that this is what Jesus would have done, can you?   


The Word of God tells us that God is a Father of the fatherless and a JUDGE of widows (Psalm 68:5).  This verse tells us that God is a judge on behalf of those who have lost their husbands.  God was judging us, the Christian church, when we chose to look the other way while a "widow" and her children suffered.  James 1:27 says that PURE and UNDEFILED religion is to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.   


It is my hope and desire that the church will recognize what she did wrong by the way she treated the Baker family.  None of us are perfect and life provides many opportunities to mess up.  The good news is that God never gives up on us.   He is a gracious and merciful God!  


With the passing of Tammy Faye we lost a great woman of God who was a shining example of God's love and grace.  May we all follow her example!  


                                                                        Roberts Liardon

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