Concerned citizen Matt Baab forwarded the following item from CNN.com about what sounds like the most awkward thing to hit reality TV since Gene Simmons’ son found out there was already a band called Chrome.

Jay Bakker spent his teens in the darkness, rebelling and bent on self-destruction from alcohol and drugs. But now, with his 31st birthday next week, this tattooed, multi-pierced pilgrim is on a righteous path: preaching God’s grace to a flock of young, downtrodden and disillusioned parishioners most any other church would turn away.


Jay is the focus of “One Punk Under God: The Prodigal Son of Jim & Tammy Faye,” a reality series about the back-to-basics church he calls Revolution, which, notwithstanding his decade-long sobriety, holds services in an Atlanta bar.

Keeping the faith while keeping Revolution going will prove to be a challenge for Jay.

“I think Revolution is kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place,” he muses in the first episode (airing Wednesday at 9 p.m. EST on Sundance Channel). “With some groups we’re too Christian, and with the Christians we’re not Christian enough.”

He was initially reluctant to sign on, and even camera shy, he insists during a recent interview.

“I feel like I’m just a guy who has a church with 15 people that meets in a bar,” says Jay, who left the Atlanta church in another minister’s care to start a new branch that meets in a Brooklyn pub.

Though I realize there’s no shortage of information about Bakker’s work in print and online, I would be very disillusioned if we got to the end of the series and found out this was just a character played by David Cross.