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Posted by David (Member # 1) on :

Tammy Faye Messner: Epitomized the showbiz-ification of Christianity
McClatchy-Tribune News Service

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_6452702

The following editorial appeared in the Dallas Morning News on Tuesday, July 24:

It's tempting to dismiss Tammy Faye Messner, who died last week, as nothing more than a vivid eccentric. But that wouldn't do justice to what she stood for.

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, who passed away this year, represented one of the most important developments in American cultural life of the past generation: the entrance of evangelical Christians into the political mainstream. Tammy Faye was not political, but she exemplified another extraordinarily important contemporary religious trend: the showbiz-ification of American Christianity, combined with the explosive growth of "prosperity gospel" Pentecostalism.

She was born into a poor Pentecostal family in small-town Minnesota and met first husband Jim Bakker at Bible college. God became their ticket to fame and fortune as they worked as Christian broadcasting pioneers in the 1970s. The Bakkers' PTL Club crashed in 1987, amid sexual and financial scandal. The ebullient Tammy Faye, with her enthusiasm for cosmetics and opulent lifestyle, became a national punch line. It never appeared to faze her.

Though she would find a second husband - and, thanks to the 1999 documentary "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," an improbable second act as a campy gay icon - she never apologized for the posh lifestyle that once got her dubbed "the Imelda Marcos of American Pentecostalism." As she wrote in her 1996 memoir, "If you have a diamond ring, that diamond ring isn't going to keep you from loving the Lord."

Regrettably, Tammy Faye Bakker's downfall discredited neither the prosperity gospel - which holds that God wants you to get rich and that wealth is a sign of favor - nor the burlesque style of televangelism, which continues to, well, prosper. Diamonds, like the Almighty, are forever.
In the end, not even her wigs, wealth, spackle and relentlessly upbeat personality could mask the pain of mortality. The cancer-ravaged Messner looked and sounded like a wraith in her poignant CNN interview that aired hours before she died. The power of positive thinking was no defense against the grave's assault on her gaudy artifice. The gruesome final television moments of the prosperity gospel's giggly paragon ironically revealed the grim truth in Flannery O'Connor's line: You can't be any poorer than dead.

Posted by David (Member # 1) on :

Video:

Tammy Faye Messner, the former televangelist and Christian singer who battled drug addiction and later inoperable cancer, died Friday morning, CNN's Larry King said Saturday night. He said the family had asked him to make the delayed announcement.

She was 65.

Messner was a guest on "Larry King Live" on Thursday. She told him she couldn't swallow food, and weighed only 65 pounds.

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/07/21/tammy.faye/#cnnSTCVideo

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/07/21/tammy.faye/#

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Posted by Good NewsforAll (Member # 6156) on :

Even though the Christian community is ready to judge Tammy Faye with her garish appearance, the secular communtiy recognized a sincerity uderneath it all that can't be faked.

Hard-nosed anchor and agnostic, Larry King, said of Tammy Faye,"I truly admired the woman. She shall be missed deeply."

MSNBC Reporter, Alex Johnson -" She was never a hypocrite. She was always sincere, in her faith and in herself."

We can't judge her for the failings of her ex-husband, Jim Bakker. By the way, he has since confessed and asked for forgiveness. That should be considered a closed door, because when God forgives, our sins are buried in the deepest sea.