Most of you know the story of PTL (Praise the Lord) ministries, Jim and Tammy Faye Baker‘s television ministry that collapsed under a sex scandal and subsequent revelations of accounting fraud. Jim ended up in jail. He and Tammy Faye got divorced. Tammy Faye started making appearances on television reality shows. Jim remarried and returned to television, albeit briefly. Tammy Faye also remarried. She passed away in 2007.
I recently learned that University of Missouri historian John Wigger is writing a book about the whole thing.
One of the pieces of the PTL empire was Heritage USA, a Christian theme park in South Carolina. Have you even wondered what happened to this complex? Emily Johnson has. Over at Religion & Politics she has a very interesting essay about the “ruins” of PTL. (Time also did a piece on the ruins back in 2011).
Johnson teaches religion at the University of Tennessee. Here is a taste of her piece:
To see what remains of the park today, interested explorers can take exit 90 off I-77 in South Carolina. Driving southeast on Carrowinds Boulevard for a mile, you will pass subdivisions and townhouses that have sprouted up on much of Heritage USA’s former 2,300 acres, courtesy of a local real estate developer. Pass by the refurbished golf course and stop a moment to notice the brass-capped pyramid that once held PTL’s main offices as well as the PTL World Outreach Center. It is now the U.S. headquarters of Welsh textile company Laura Ashley, a fully owned subsidiary of the Malaysian MUI Group.
You will eventually come to a crumbling parking lot, with the still-unfinished Heritage Grand Towers ahead of you and the remains of Heritage USA on your left, bordered by a chain-link fence and overgrown with weeds. If you peer through the fence, you can see the lake that sat at the center of the park and you can make out the island on which the Heritage USA waterpark stood. You are unfortunately too late to see the fiberglass “King’s Castle” that had become emblematic of the park’s excesses. Intended by Jim Bakker to be the world’s largest Wendy’s restaurant, it was eventually repurposed as a go-cart track but was demolished last year.
Good piece by Johnson. Of course, if one never got to visit Heritage USA, now you can visit the “Holy Land Experience” – built by the Bakker's televangelist rivals, TBN. http://www.holylandexperience.com/exhibits/exhibits.html
Jim Bakker is still on t.v. with a religious show on which he also hawks wares for surviving the end times.