When I was researching my 2017 book, “PTL: The Rise and Fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Evangelical Empire,” I interviewed dozens of former staffers and supporters of PTL, the ministry, television and theme park empire that the Bakkers built starting in the 1970s.
Time and again, I heard the same thing. PTL – sometimes known as “Praise the Lord” or “People That Love” – was both the best and worst thing they ever did.
