IT SHOULD come as no surprise that Jay Bakker, the twenty-five-year-old son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, bears a greater resemblance to Henry Rollins than to Oral Roberts. If anyone had anything to rebel against, it was Bakker. By the time Jay was born, the Bakkers had established themselves as the first family of Christian America, first with popular television shows on Pat Robertson's Trinity Broadcasting Network (Jim Bakker was the original host of the 700 Club), then with the launch of their own television ministry, Praise the Lord, or PTL. By 1978, PTL had purchased its own satellite network and Heritage USA, a small North Carolina theme park that the Bakkers planned to convert into a sort of Christian Disneyworld, and Jim Bakker was devoting an ever-increasing amount of airtime to fundraising.

Less than a decade later, the Bakker empire, built on television, crumbled in the most public manner imaginable. In 1987 Bakker admitted -- on his own television show, accompanied by a weeping Tammy Faye -- to a "fifteen-minute affair" with Jessica Hahn, the secretary who accused him of rape. He stepped down as PTL president for ninety days, until the controversy abated. Jerry Falwell took the helm temporarily; then refused to give up the post and began calling Bakker a "cancer on the body of Christ." Two years later, Bakker was indicted on twenty-four counts of fraud and conspiracy: people who had donated money to PTL, ostensibly in exchange for free trips to the never-completed Heritage USA, complained that Bakker hadn't fulfilled his agreements with them. Images of Bakker, handcuffed and sobbing, were broadcast nightly and plastered on the pages of every major periodical. In 1989 he was convicted and sentenced to forty-five years in prison.

Jay Bakker was a chubby kid on the cusp of adolescence during the PTL-scandal years. In his just-released memoir, Son of a Preacher Man, he explains how he began drinking the day after his father's sentencing, and didn't stop for a good seven years. Though he'd heard nothing but Bible-talk from the moment he left the womb, it wasn't until a friend suggested he begin a twelve-step program that he found God. Today Bakker operates an Atlanta ministry called Revolution. His message is simple: contemporary Christianity focuses too much on good works and too little on the universal love Christ advocated. Revolution operates under a larger, interdenominational Protestant church -- led by the Harley-driving Phillip Bray -- called Safehouse, which also serves as a homeless shelter. Bakker, who has almost no formal education, emphasizes serious study of the Bible; rather than preaching on Sundays, he leads Bible-study classes in which he suggests that his students study Greek and Hebrew in order to fully understand the scriptures. He teaches kids who look very much like his pierced and tattooed self, kids who would normally feel more at home in a mosh pit than in a Bible-study session -- even if that study session is held in a room decorated with lava lamps and Judas Priest mirrors.

Bakker and his wife, Amanda, spoke to me in the lobby of their New York hotel, a glitzy midtown affair filled to capacity with businessmen who tried not to stare at Amanda's chin stud and Jay's pierced lip. Though Jay made an effort to direct our conversation toward his current endeavors and his ruminations on the Bible, he seemed more at ease with his past than one might imagine. He does not consider himself a rebel, and describes his parents as entirely supportive of his chosen path. Most intriguingly, he views his ministry as a venture spiritually akin to PTL.