Televangelists’ son finds own path to redemption

Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, December 12, 2006

NEW YORK – He was born into the glare of televangelist parents Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. Then the “Praise the Lord” empire collapsed in scandal. His father went to jail for fraud.

Jay Bakker spent his teens in the darkness, rebelling and bent on self-destruction including alcohol and drugs.

But now, with his 31st birthday next week, this tattooed, multi-pierced pilgrim is on a righteous path: preaching God’s grace to a flock of young, downtrodden and disillusioned parishioners.

Jay Bakker is the focus of “One Punk Under God: The Prodigal Son of Jim &Tammy Faye,” a reality series about the back-to-basics church he calls Revolution, which, notwithstanding his decade-long sobriety, holds services in an Atlanta bar.

Keeping the faith while keeping Revolution going will prove to be a challenge for Jay Bakker.

“I think Revolution is kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place,” he muses in the first episode (airing at 9 tonight on Sundance Channel). “With some groups we’re too Christian, and with the Christians we’re not Christian enough.”

But Bakker has other concerns as the six-episode series unfolds.

His mom is gravely ill from cancer; Bakker will be traveling to her North Carolina home for tender visits. His dad, now remarried and with a new TV ministry, is estranged from him – a rift Jay will make great strides repairing. And after several years’ devotion to his church, he will be uprooted when wife Amanda is accepted by New York University for its doctoral program in psychiatry.

In short, 2006 is eventful for Jay Bakker – far more than he imagined when “One Punk Under God” began filming in February.

He was initially reluctant to sign on, even camera shy, he said during a recent interview.

“I feel like I’m just a guy who has a church with 15 people that meets in a bar,” said Bakker, who left the Atlanta church in another minister’s care to start a new branch that meets in a Brooklyn pub.

He has no wish, he adds, to leverage his TV exposure into an ongoing video pulpit, as his parents had on such a grand scale with “The PTL Club,” which at its peak reached some 13 million cable households.

“If anything, I’d like to write more books,” Bakker said.

Five years ago, his first book, “Son of a Preacher Man: My Search for Grace in the Shadows,” testified to his troubled past and deliverance from it.

Now “One Punk Under God” finds Bakker continuing a mini-crusade for an alternative to the God he could never make peace with: a wrathful God who hated him for all the flaws he hated in himself.

“God loves us for who we are,” Bakker contends, explaining that it comes down to “grace”: “God’s love for all people, and his unconditional love.

At the end of “One Punk Under God,” Bakker’s life remains full of challenges: his mom’s worsening condition; the new city for him and Amanda to navigate; a new congregation to forge. He even speaks hopefully of kicking cigarettes.

Then he shares his foolproof plan.

“You put one foot out in front of the other and you say, ‘OK, this is what I believe, this is what I’m seeing in the word.’” He smiles. “It’s a struggle. But what have I got to lose?”