As a teen-ager growing up in Muskegon, Mich., Jim Bakker was forbidden from dancing by his strict fundamentalist religion. Instead, he became the disk jockey at school sock hops, chattering into his microphone as he spun the hits of the 1950's.
''Jim loved the limelight,'' said William J. Harrison, a teacher who kept up with his former student over the years. ''I have often thought, had I been a promoter, I could have turned that boy into a rock star.''
But Jim Bakker, the slight, shy son of a factory worker, went on to use his microphone to preach rather than to sing. He moved south and, with his wife, Tammy Faye, parlayed their natural telegenic innocence into a Christian broadcasting empire that eventually reached 13 million viewers a day, brought in $129 million in revenues and helped build Heritage USA, a 2,500-acre Christian resort near Fort Mill, S.C. Taking Refuge
But in the last two months, much that the Bakkers created has come crashing about them, the result of financial and sexual scandals that forced them to flee their ministry and take refuge behind the walls of their $600,000 mansion in Palm Springs, Calif.
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