Wundry Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American scandal early and ad free right now.

Join Wundry Plus in the Wundery app or on Apple Podcasts. It's February 1983 in the offices of the Charlotte News, a newspaper based in Charlotte,

North Carolina.

29-year-old reporter Terry Mattingley is at his desk reading through an article about a

wealthy preacher named Jim Baker. Mattingly covers religion, but he's been at the paper for less than a year,

so he's looking for a big story to make a name for himself and the recent

reporting from their sister paper the Charlotte Observer has caught his

attention a reporter there Alan Cohen has been investigating Baker and the empire he's built using little more than folksy

charm in a brand of faith known as the Prosperity Gospel.

Baker teaches his followers that God wants good Christians to achieve wealth and success.

He even encourages true believers to live beyond their means and make generous donations

to Baker's ministry as proof of their faith that God will provide for them later.

Depending on how you look at it, the philosophy is either positive and optimistic or

delusional and dangerous.

Mattingly hasn't quite made up his mind, but one thing he's sure of, Jim Baker clearly practices what he

preaches.

The minister is a mogul with multiple cars and homes, and based on what Mattingly's been reading any time

Baker's prosperity gospel is on the verge of backfiring he seems to escape

unscathed. It happened just last year. In late December 1982 the FCC closed a years long

investigation of Baker and his televangelis company PTL short for praise the Lord.

The agency had accused Baker of misappropriating funds that were supposed to go to

opening Christian TV studios overseas and after countless hours of hearings PTL finally agreed to sell the one TV station it owned in the U.S.

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