Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, November 7, 1993                   TAG: 9311070233
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: 8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Reviewed by KENNETH LOCKE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

RINGSIDE AT THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF BAKKER

Some men are born to greatness, some men achieve greatness and others have greatness reluctantly thrust upon them.

Hunter James was so reluctant to accept greatness that he all but ran in the opposite direction. Forced by an insensitive and uncaring (his description) master at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, James groggily awoke one morning and embarked on a quest of Stanley-Livingston proportions: the search for the elusive "Falwell Exclusive" interview about the shenanigans at Heritage USA.

Unfortunately for him, the original one-interview assignment became a months' long attempt to chronicle the fall of the House of Bakker.

I say unfortunate because it is clear that James never did relish this assignment and that he spent as much time as possible trying to placate his editors while also not exactly having anything to do with PTL. And so it is not surprising that in the process he obtained seats for every side-show at the great Bakker/PTL carnival but somehow never got admitted into the big tent of a genuine Bakker interview.

James provides us with rich, humorous details of the vaudeville acts surrounding the demise of PTL: those who tried to brand Falwell and Jessica Hahn as Druids; the supposed efforts of the illuminate to steal the PTL satellite dish and give it to George Bush; the day spent prowling the woods looking for the thousands of Tammy Faye albums Falwell had supposedly dumped; the night his bed at Heritage USA collapsed from too much weight and too much gin; James' efforts to storm Bakkers enclave by row boat; fighting off the BBC when they tried to muscle in on his precious Falwell Exclusive; and on and on and on.

Two of his best memories are not even connected with PTL.

They describe his visit to an Oral Roberts meeting in the 1960s and the time Pope John Paul II came to South Carolina.

James is ever before the reader in the best "new journalism" style. The book is his "I Was There" recounting of the downfall of one of the most successful televangelism empires in America, complete with wry anecdotes and anti-fundamentalist humor. His wit, skepticism, descriptions of what he saw and ear for gossip and innuendo make for an entertaining read.

- Kenneth Locke is a Radford pastor.