Tammy Faye on Larry King

Tammy Faye Messner will be interviewed on CNN's Larry King Live, Thursday, July 19 at 9 p.m. ET.

This may be her last public appearance, because Tammy Faye is fading away. King's promotional blurb says cancer has gotten her "down to 65 pounds."

She was diagnosed with colon cancer in the mid-'90s, it spread to her lungs in 2004 and is now inoperable. Treatment was stopped in May.

Her appearance on the show is sure to offer a fascinating and poignant study in how a Word-Faith, name-it-and-claim-it teacher confronts the paradox of her own deteriorating physical health.

As late as March of this year she was claiming healing:

Everyday I claimed “I AM GETTING WELL”! And I BELIEVED that with all my heart! P.S. I will not use the word remission! It’s a doubt word! That, in my opinion, says the cancer could come back. I say the cancer is GONE! I have NO MORE cancer. I refuse to give it permission to come back!

Since the scandals of the late 1980s, when former husband Jim Bakker was sent to prison and their PTL Club empire collapsed, Tammy Faye has become a more sympathetic character. The Eyes of Tammy Faye, a film in theaters in 2000, portrayed her as a "flawed but sincere and well-meaning -- and, in her own way, gifted -- woman whose endless tribulations, flamboyant makeup ...and affection for the gay community has more recently made her something of a gay icon," according to a review in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "A kind of Bible-thumping Auntie Mame."

A followup documentary that aired in 2005, Tammy Faye: Death Defying, chronicled her battle with the cancer. As one reviewer put it, "it’s impossible not to be charmed by a woman so in love with life that after her death she wants to be cremated and her ashes put in maracas."

We'll join her fans in praying for her healing-- not as something she has a "right" to "claim," but as a grace gift from God... as it always is.

UPDATE: Tammy Faye died July 20.

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