T. D. Jakes

America's New Preacher

Shayne Lee

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9780814752821
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Biographies

T.D. Jakes has emerged as one of the most prolific spiritual leaders of our time. He is pastor of one of the largest churches in the country, CEO of a multimillion dollar empire, the host of a television program, author of a dozen bestsellers, and the producer of two Grammy Award-nominated CDs and three critically acclaimed plays. In 2001 Time magazine featured Jakes on the cover and asked: Is Jakes the next Billy Graham

T.D. Jakes draws on extensive research, including interviews with numerous friends and colleagues of Jakes, to examine both Jakes’s rise to prominence and proliferation of a faith industry bent on producing spiritual commodities for mass consumption. Lee frames Jakes and his success as a metaphor for changes in the Black Church and American Protestantism more broadly, looking at the ramifications of his rise—and the rise of similar preachers—for the way in which religion is practiced in this country, how social issues are confronted or ignored, and what is distinctly “American” about Jakes's emergence. While offering elements of biography, the work also seeks to shed light on important aspects of the contemporary American and African American religious experience.

Lee contends that Jakes’s widespread success symbolizes a religious realignment in which mainline churches nationwide are in decline, while innovative churches are experiencing phenomenal growth. He emphasizes the “American-ness” of Jakes’s story and reveals how preachers like Jakes are drawing followers by delivering therapeutic and transformative messages and providing spiritual commodities that are more in tune with postmodern sensibilities.

As the first work to critically examine Bishop Jakes’s life and message, T.D. Jakes is an important contribution to contemporary American religion as well as popular culture.

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Humble Beginnings

I have lived on both sides of the track, and my shoes have walked down shanty-town streets and sidewalks paved with gold. I know that hard work and determination can overcome humble beginnings.

—T.D. Jakes

Rising to the top of any institutional structure generally involves navigating through a series of predictable junctures on the way. For example, one sees Harvard, Stanford, Duke, and Kellogg and Wharton business schools as recurring alma maters on the résumés of senior executives in Fortune 500 companies. Similarly, prestigious law firms scout for graduates from prominent universities, and universities like to hire Ivy League graduates. Whether competing as a professional athlete, playing for a Philharmonic, dancing for Alvin Ailey, becoming a United States senator, or rising up the clerical ranks, most positions of great privilege involve passing through a number of conventional steps before one can reach the top.

But every once in a while, chance and talent produce improvisational greats like computer moguls Michael Dell and Steve Jobs or music stars Jewel and Eminem who defy conventional routes by crafting their own blueprints for success. Now and again, an elite scholar like Aldon Morris begins his academic career as a student in a community college. Not often, a parent like Richard Williams raises two daughters, Venus and Serena, outside of the contours of privileged tennis networks to dominate the game. And on rare occasions, a country preacher like Thomas Dexter Jakes rises from humble beginnings to become a dominant figure in American Protestantism.

Jakes’ ascent veered from the conventional course followed by contemporaries such as Charles Blake, a popular African American pastor of a large church in California. Blake is the son of a prominent pastor, while Jakes is the son of a janitor. Blake was part of a sophisticated religious structure that provided blueprints for success, while Jakes navigated through obscure Pentecostal networks in West Virginia. Thus, Blake followed a predictable path while Jakes had to evolve under the radar; and when Charles Blake surfaced as a prominent spiritual leader, few were surprised; but when T.D. Jakes emerged on the national scene, everyone wondered from where he came. Jakes’ lack of strategic networks provided room for the self-invention that contributes to his mass appeal. Like the vagaries of inner-city life developed the toughness and indomitable spirit in Venus and Serena Williams that would one day help them take over the tennis circuit, young Tommy Jakes’ early life experiences brought forth the American traits that would later propel him to prominence.

Vandalia and Childhood Complexities

Jakes grew up on Vandalia Hill, a working class community in Charleston, West Virginia, situated on top of a mountain overlooking the city. The Vandalia that young Tommy Jakes knew was the type of mythic neighborhood where residents took responsibility for all the children in the community. It was the kind of environment where everyone knew everyone else and made frequent visits to one another’s homes, especially during the holidays. If there was a funeral, people from all over brought food and made sure that the bereaved were supported with love and concern. As one former resident recalled, “We prayed together, we laughed together, we cried together.”

Vandalia was a homey kind of town where people addressed each other with playful nicknames. Jakes’ brother Ernest was “June,” his neighbor Mary Booker was “Pudgy” and her daughter was “Libby,” his longtime friend Wes Womack was “Booby,” Martha Saunders was “Sweatpea,” James Mosely Jr. was “Bimp,” Jakes’ ace Carol Boddie was “Cuzzie,” and Jakes himself was known to many as “Tommy from the Hill.” Although Vandalia was racially mixed, blacks and whites lived in separate sections, and Jakes lived in the heart of the black section. Most residents suggested that Vandalia had some racial problems, but for the most part blacks and whites interacted peacefully. The schools were integrated, but the churches were not, and for most black residents, “everything pretty much evolved around the church,” according to Libby Booker.

Jakes and some of his friends and neighbors offer different snapshots of his childhood. One area involves his self-confidence. On several occasions Jakes has recalled his early struggles with a lisp and his lack of confidence because of his weight. On the other hand, he impressed his family and friends as an alert four-year-old who could recite all the words to James Weldon Johnson’s classic anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” His childhood buddy Bimp described Tommy as confident and articulate with much to say. Jackie Bruer offered that most people in Vandalia knew there was something very special about him, and Jakes’ neighbor Eleanor Hacker remembered him as an outspoken boy who was unafraid to talk to adults and strangers.

Jakes and others often give the impression that he did not have much of a childhood and that circumstances forced him to grow up quickly. As Jakes once stated in Ebony magazine, “I grew up in an adult world. I had never ridden a bicycle. I was forced to be responsible and deal with issues that relate to life and death” (Starling 2001). Libby Booker noted, “Tommy was kind of an old soul, always focused, always motivated,” and another peer added, “I never remember Tommy being involved in Boy Scouts and all that stuff.” One family friend suggested that Tommy may have been more comfortable around adults than children his own age.

Jakes and his friends, however, paint a picture of a less somber Tommy full of energy and mischief. Paul Lewis, a longtime friend of Jakes, claimed, “We had a normal childhood; we were just kids and we got into lots of stuff.” Paul lived four blocks from Jakes and everyday they trekked through the woods together to make their one-mile journey to elementary school. Paul reminisced about Tommy charming the cafeteria lady to give him extra portions of macaroni and cheese, and he revealed a legendary incident in junior high school when Tommy, in a fit of anger, lifted up his small gym teacher and placed him on a coat hook. Mary Booker remembers Tommy frequently coming over to her house to play with her daughter Libby and two sons, Jeff and Jim. Tina Dean, one of Jakes’ closest childhood friends, added that Tommy was ingenuous and did not wait for fun to come to him. Tommy and Tina enjoyed hiking through the woods and cooking together.

Tommy spent many carefree childhood summers south of Charleston visiting his aunt, who supplied him with fresh pecans from her yard. On many occasions, Tommy and his siblings entertained one another by performing talent shows for their parents. Bobbie Tolliver, Jakes’ next-door neighbor and longtime family friend, remembers Tommy as a brilliant and fun kid with a lot of questions and even more mischief. Tommy and Tolliver’s son, Wyatt Jr., were responsible for many rascally acts in the neighborhood. Tommy had a good sense of humor and was known for his many childhood pranks on family friends. He lived with Bobbie Tolliver for a month while his parents visited Ohio for medical treatment, and she received many calls from school reporting his roguish antics. Although Tolliver has fond memories of hearing young Tommy preaching from his living room, she admitted to being surprised by his decision to enter the ministry because she thought he would be a businessman.

Libby Booker remembered him as a cordial friend whom everyone loved, while a former neighbor recalled a more petulant Tommy who would sass adult neighbors and intimidate his peers. Jakes recently admitted that he was spoiled because, “After all, I was the baby of the family and I usually ended up getting what I wanted” (Jakes 2003b:35). Tommy gave his mother some gray hairs. As a first-grader, he “borrowed” his mother’s diamond ring and gave it to Elvira, the girl down the street, as a token of his love, for which he received a rare spanking from his mother upon its return. Tommy once violated his mother’s curfew by stuffing pillows under his covers and sneaking out of the house, only to be filled with guilt the next morning for disobeying and deceiving her. Tommy’s tremendous guilt and reflection after violating his mother’s trust demonstrated his early desire to walk the straight and narrow.

On occasion, Tommy and Tina would skip school and go to Tina’s house to cook meals. Tina claims Jakes still makes the best upside-down pineapple cake she has ever eaten. Sometimes Tommy excelled in the classroom, other times he was in trouble, and as Jakes put it, “One day it seemed I was destined for success, and the next my mother would wonder how I would end up” (Jakes 2000:88). Overall, he was a bright young kid with good days and bad, triumphs and trials, visible talents, secret struggles, and low self-esteem. Most agreed with Libby Booker’s statement that “Tommy had the discipline and focus early enough in life to fulfill his destiny.”

In his books and sermons, Jakes also provides a complicated portrayal of his family’s socioeconomic status during his youth. He paints a picture of early financial struggle, exemplified by his embarrassment in bringing his lunch to school in a greasy brown paper bag because his parents could not afford the fancy Snoopy or Mickey Mouse lunchboxes carried by many of his peers. In his book Maximize the Moment, Jakes recalled his family’s long Sunday drives as the only amusement they could afford. Jakes’ older sister, Jacqueline, mused that “Momma had a knack for budgeting and she stretched her grocery money by fixing us affordable and nutritious food” (J. Jakes 2002:181).

Contrary to these accounts, Jakes often depicts his mother running small businesses and his father as a man who transcended poverty to reach considerable success. Libby Booker mentioned Jakes’ family as one of the first to own a brick house, and Jakes often discusses how his father turned a one-man cleaning operation into a janitorial business with fifty-two employees, three offices, and ten trucks. It is difficult to assess how the janitorial empire is juxtaposed with the long car rides in the rusty 1957 Chevy and the greasy brown paper bags in place of lunch boxes—all happening before Tommy’s tenth birthday, when Ernest Sr.’s business began to dissolve after he suffered a debilitating illness.

Tenacity and Entrepreneurial Spirit

“Those Jakeses were some selling fools,” exclaimed one former neighbor in jest. Vandalia was the type of community where “people worked hard for what they had and most owned their own homes and did everything possible to make ends meet,” according to Eleanor Hacker. It was usual for parents to have a couple of jobs, and Ernest Sr. spent almost every waking hour working, as his daughter Jacqueline confirmed in her book (J. Jakes 2002:133). In addition to janitorial duties at local grocery stores and at the West Virginia capitol building, Ernest Sr. sold all sorts of things from the back of his green truck, including fish and frog legs. His wife, Odith, a grade-school teacher, sold Avon products in her spare time. Tommy helped his parents with their endeavors and established his own entrepreneurial agenda cutting grass and selling vegetables.

Ernest Sr. contributed to his son’s entrepreneurial drive, but Jakes attributes his faith and tenacity to his mother. Though Jakes has fond memories of the playful hand of his father brushing his forehead and telling him stories, Ernest Sr. worked so many hours that Odith practically raised her three children alone, teaching them how to cook, sew, and clean. Odith learned persistence and hard work from her mother, who took in laundry from neighbors to finance her return to college at the age of fifty and embarked on a new career as a schoolteacher. Tommy’s grandmother passed her grit and discipline to Odith, who entered Tuskegee when she was fifteen and completed her degree when she was eighteen.

Odith created an atmosphere in the home where self-actualization was inevitable for her children. She taught Jacqueline, Ernest Jr., and Tommy to express themselves freely, and she motivated them toward excellence in all of their endeavors, as she discussed in the foreword of one of Jakes’ books:

I taught them to shoot for the top. I taught them to be all they could be. I remember telling them, “If you become a street sweeper, be the best one on the road. If you become a teacher, be the best one in the school.” (Jakes 1996c:xi)

Tommy hung around his mother when she keynoted luncheons and banquets for her sorority. After one particular speaking engagement, the precocious six-year-old was prescient: “Today, I travel with you and listen while you speak, but the time will come when you will travel with me and I will speak” (Jakes 1994b:26). Odith played an integral role in fastening Tommy’s entrepreneurial initiative by driving through snow to help him deliver newspapers.

To understand Jakes’ current business enterprises, we must look back to the pesky entrepreneurialism in his youth. Tommy emulated his parents’ sense of industry as an eight-year-old, selling vegetables from his mother’s garden. His neighbor Bobbie Tolliver remembered that little Tommy strolling down the street with bags of vegetables in each hand was a common sight in Vandalia. During the harvest season he was out hustling every day, and the weight of dragging those heavy bags up and down West Virginia’s hills often hurt his back. Those bags of greens were early lessons that taught him how to press toward his goal with relentlessness stronger than the rudeness he sometimes faced from neighbors when offering his wares. Whether he was cutting his neighbor Minerva Coles’ grass, rising early every morning to deliver newspapers, or selling Avon cosmetics and Amway products throughout high school, Jakes showed early flashes of the doggedness that would later help him become a business mogul. His industrious family legacy and early life experiences bestowed upon him the talent and tenacity he would later use to turn his message and ministry into a multimillion dollar empire.

Family Tragedy

Young Tommy’s entrepreneurial activity came to an abrupt pause when his father was diagnosed with a debilitating kidney disease. Ernest Sr.’s chronic kidney ailment necessitated dialysis to remove waste and excess liquid from his blood. Almost daily, Tommy and siblings watched their father’s blood being transported through tubes to a dialyzer that cleaned and transported the blood back to his body. Tommy played his part by mopping up blood from around the dialysis machine. This experience had a profound impact on Tommy’s psyche.

Jakes rarely discusses how he felt watching his three-hundred-pound father deteriorate into “a little wisp of a man,” as a neighbor described him. Jakes seldom mentions the numerous hospital visits and the times he cried himself to sleep. He never publicly discusses his parents’ separation and divorce, which stemmed from the vicissitudes of Ernest Sr.’s fight for his life. But handling his father’s ailment did not quench Tommy’s entrepreneurial drive. While his peers were dating and enjoying their first years in high school, Tommy was aggressively selling Avon products in tandem with picking up the pieces of his tattered family life.

Tommy’s experience of caring for his invalid father helped him to mature quickly and become a sympathetic teenager. He spent many days and nights in a hospital with other kids and parents dying around him, learning to convey compassion at an early age. Jakes now admits that his father’s illness had everything to do with instilling in him the sensitivity and uncanny ability to speak to people’s pain, a talent that would differentiate his future ministry as shepherd to the shattered.

In 1972, Ernest Jakes Sr. passed away at the young age of forty-eight after a six-year battle with kidney disease. His death taught Tommy that the gulf between living and dying was shorter than most realized and that he must make good use of every moment while alive. This truism of maximizing each moment would later serve as an integral theme in Jakes’ ministry. Ernest Sr.’s death also intensified Tommy’s Christian commitment and inspired him to find solace in the church.

Grace and Power

Many of Tommy’s spiritual discoveries occurred when he was alone. Ernest Sr. had a Methodist background, Odith was Baptist, and neither was particularly dogmatic during the early development of their children. Though Tommy’s parents taught moral scruples, principles of healthy living, and a strong faith in God, they were not religious in the sense of being active in the church and creating a spiritual environment in the home. This provided Tommy much room to carve out his own spiritual path.

Tommy first attended First Baptist Church of Vandalia, “a little Baptist church in the hills of West Virginia on the side of a mountain in prayer meetings with little old ladies who sang old songs that you don’t remember anymore,” as he later recalled at AZUSA 2000, a conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tommy’s peers gave him the moniker “Bible Boy” because he carried a Bible during many of his travels. Like many impressionable young products of the black church experience, young Tommy made his backyard his cathedral and squirrels his early congregants. He preached his first sermons in the wind, and his spirit and fervor were often heard by neighbors.

Tommy exemplified an interest in spirituality at a young age. While other kids were playing in the Vandalia Recreational Center, Eleanor Hacker remembers Tommy making frequent visits to her home to read scriptures with her father, Robert Hutchinson. As a teenager, Tommy was into music and exhibited leadership skills as the director of a choir consisting of eight or nine of his peers. When Tommy took over the choir he made the music more contemporary, demonstrating his early fondness for innovation. He played the piano, sang, and was a hard taskmaster with tremendous dedication and focus.

The early years at First Baptist Church of Vandalia introduced Tommy to an emphasis on God’s grace and a respect for human frailties—principles he still holds dearly—but there was a craving in his young heart to experience what he later described as “the fullness of the Holy Spirit.” One night as a teenager, Tommy accompanied his choir to sing at a small Pentecostal church called Greater Emanuel Gospel Tabernacle. As Jakes recalled, Greater Emanuel was filled with large black women wearing white dresses, prayer caps, and no makeup. During the service, Tommy realized they were emphasizing the presence of the Holy Spirit and he cried out saying, “Lord, if it is real then let it happen to me,” and then he began speaking in tongues, a manifestation that Pentecostals teach is the evidence of a new spiritual experience of God’s power.

Although he came back periodically to help out with the music, Tommy left First Baptist Church of Vandalia to join Greater Emanuel in 1972. In contrast to the emphasis on God’s grace and human frailty he learned at First Baptist, Tommy quickly became acclimated to the Pentecostal experience of church mothers calling on the name of Jesus, and preachers offering sermons such as “Get Right or Get Out!” and “Holiness or Hell.” Norman Jones, then a deacon at Greater Emanuel, described those early days when Tommy joined:

It was a tongue-talking, fire baptized church that we lived in holiness and holiness was a way of living. It seemed like everybody was on fire for the Lord. It was a church that had a lot of energy and songs and dance and it was an exhibit of lifestyle going out to help other people. (Interview)

Tommy’s initial years at Greater Emanuel involved intense struggles with depression and feelings of inadequacy because he was a teenager surrounded by devout Pentecostal Christians who rarely showed vulnerability. This left him questioning his own imperfection:

I was young and so impressionable. Secretly suffering from low self-esteem, I thought that the Christians around me had mastered a level of holiness that seemed to evade me. I groaned in the night; I cried out to God to create in me a robot-like piety that would satisfy what I thought was required of me. (Jakes 2001:89)

This was a difficult time for him because none of the believers at his church shared with him that they had also experienced battles before they obtained victories. Much stress and guilt also came from the fact that Tommy, a heavy smoker since elementary school, was now attending a church with pious Pentecostals who viewed cigarette smoking as a sin against the body, which the Bible teaches is God’s temple. Tommy soon became weary of using breath mints and spraying himself down with air freshener before coming to church to avoid the condemnation of his fellow worshipers. His relief finally came in a Watch Night Service when he fell on his knees and cried out to God for deliverance. He never smoked another cigarette.

Tommy’s early battles in a community of “invulnerable” saints left an indelible mark on his life and future ministry because those inner conflicts fashioned a disdain for self-righteousness in the church. Like Protestant reformer Martin Luther, Tommy grew to believe that God’s power does not negate human frailty and that God’s merit comes only through faith in Ch...