Tammy Faye

In modern American, where television is an immensely popular and effective means of transmitting ideas, it is only natural that religion would progress to the airwaves. The Protestant subculture had a history of using religious entertainment as a means for spreading their message. Dwight Moody created and mastered the theatrical urban revival complete with songs and stories often performed in an auditorium or tent. Televangelism grew out of this tradition which attempted to evangelize the world by exploiting secular culture.

Early evangelics such as Oral Roberts and Billy Graham mark the transition of the religious campaign to the new medium. "Television was at first, and still is, used in much the same way as the land lines: as a device for taking the crusade meeting to those who cannot come to it" (Bruce 34). Fundamentalists, evangelicals, and Pentecostals attempting to spread their message have dominated America religious television. The late seventies and early eighties was marked by the entrance of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and their Pentecostal PTL movement to televangelism.

Tammy Faye LeValley was born in 1942 in International Falls, Minnesota. One of eight children born into a life of poverty, her family lived in a "hillbilly" shack in which there was no indoor bath. Tammy Faye came from a deeply religious background in the Central Assemblies of God church. Her conservative, Pentecostal faith restricted her from such things as the movies and wearing make-up. In her house there was "never enough money, never enough praying, never enough spiritual torment to satisfy the demands of her faith" (James 55).