The Bakkers' glitz and glamour, and their seemingly requisite flipside of drugs, booze, infidelity, tax problems, and prison -- wouldn't be so shocking if they'd been rock stars; the public expects such tawdriness from them. But as ministers of the Assemblies of God church, the Bakkers were supposed to be righteous, devout shepherds of the flock. So effective were the Bakkers at beaming their Sunday School image into millions of homes, that their sheep beamed millions of dollars back. Before long, these jetsetters for Jesus had so much power, money, and magnetism that they could play God. And if you want to know what becomes of people who try to be God, read Isaiah 14:15 -- they become Leif Garrett.

In "Son of a Preacher Man," the Bakkers' son, Jay, chronicles the 10-year lifespan of the Praise The Lord (PTL) empire, contrasting its initial success with his fizzling family life. In some ways, the book is a tell-all: Jay recounts -- albeit filtered through a child's naive perception -- Tammy Faye's drug hallucinations, Jim's quickie with Jessica Hahn, and his own alcoholism and drug abuse. But more interesting is how Jay, now 25 and a minister, groped his way through spiritual disillusionment, and eventually found his calling -- a ministry that reaches fellow misfits through punk rock, not promise rings.

Initially, televangelism was a fledgling enterprise, limited to a few broadcast channels. But with the growth of cable television and other changes in FCC law, the airwaves opened to the electronic pulpit, and by one Nielsen estimate, 13 million viewers were tuning into televangelists' programming at least once a week.

The Bakkers' ministry paralleled televangelism's ascent. In 1966, they debuted their puppet show on Pat Robertson's small network. Within 10 years the Bakkers launched their own Praise the Lord channel from Charlotte, N.C., where they preached their prosperity theology to millions of viewers on 1,200 cable systems.

Although Jay contends the "gospel of my parents was flattened to emphasize material riches," and that many of the Bakkers' good deeds -- helping the homeless, aiding pregnant girls, starting a nationwide prison ministry --- have been overlooked, prosperity theology was the centerpiece of Bakkers' ministry. The problem with prosperity theology -- the belief that God grants people riches because they are good -- is that inverse is often assumed to be true: if you're poor, it must be because you're wicked.

Yet, prosperity theology worked for the Bakkers, who used it as a defense for their lavish homes, Rolls Royces, and the $11,000 jacuzzi they had installed in the PTL studios.

Jay started his life on Christian TV, and spent his childhood getting gussied up to appear on his parents' show. In 1980, when Jay was 5, his father, assuming the role of God the urban planner, opened Heritage USA, a Eden-like Christian retreat whose opulence rivals any of Michael Jackson's imaginary worlds: swimming pools, carrousels, a farm, petting zoo, shopping malls, hotels, and restaurants.

Despite the appearances of a happy family life, Jay and his sister Tammy Sue were primarily raised in a surreal world by bodyguards and maids, as their parents were too busy negotiating cable contracts and embarking on shopping sprees to tuck them in at night. Yet Jay idolized his parents, and thought of his dad as a "hero." As for his mother, "I was so in love with her when I was a little boy. If I was good I'd get a new toy or go to Pizza Hut." By junior high, Jay felt spiritually void, and worried that he couldn't measure up to the standards his parents preached from the PTL pulpit.

Finally, Bakkers' PTL collapsed. To fund Heritage USA, Jim had to raise a million dollars every other day, Jay recalls, and "he had to feed the monster or risk losing it." After a series of investigations by the IRS and FCC, Jim went to trial and was convicted on 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy. Jim went to prison in 1988. Jay was 13.

Jay spent his teen years on a meandering spiritual quest that was hindered by his parents' divorce, and his own alcoholism and drug problems After Jay lobbied for his father's parole, which was granted in 1994, Jim sent the wayward youth to Master's Commission, a boot camp for kids who want to get started in the ministry. But the Masters' Commission proved to be as dogmatic as the PTL.

"The one thing about which I was still certain was that something was missing from what the church was offering people like me," Jay wrote. "Watered-down or turn-or-burn versions of what had been preached in decades past were being tendered but most preachers weren't really reaching kids with a message of hope or grace. Few had done the hard work of changing the message to touch today's youth, especially today's disenfranchised youth."

Jay and his disaffected friends left the commission and started Revolution, a punk rock ministry reaching out to spiritually lost kids whom mainstream Christianity has alienated: the pierced and tattooed, leather-clad and jackbooted, drug-addicted and homeless.

Revolution's progressive, less judgmental view of religion, Jay says, doesn't try to mold kids into a faux-Christian image. "...Misinterpretation of the scriptures is turning a whole generation away from God. While people are hurting, some ministers point fingers at parents working all day, video games and Marilyn Manson, instead of looking at how religious closed-mindedness and tradition have contributed to the problem."

In "Son of a Preacher Man," Jay doesn't succeed in extracting sympathy for his parents' misdeeds. While Jay doesn't excuse them for their sexual indiscretions, he remains convinced that their financial sleights of hand were mere misunderstandings on the part of the Internal Revenue Service. But his arguments aren't persuasive -- it's hard to believe that the Bakkers "made nothing from Heritage USA after expenses" when they were riding the Concorde and importing $9,000 in truffles from Brussels.

Yet Jay's more reasonable and realistic view of Christianity is refreshing. His ministry has shed the dogmatism that saddles much of mainstream religion: "...so much of the church has made up rules that are nowhere to be found in the Bible or taken the scriptures our of context and turned them into traditions. Meanwhile, the Christian Right's legalistic militancy has created an ideal that's impossible to live up to."

Although Jay's ministry doesn't reach as many people (and thus, isn't as well-funded) as his father's, this son of a preacher is connecting with followers by acknowledging the truth is rarely black and white, but rather in shades of gray.