Televangelist Jim Bakker dies at 86

Jim Bakker, the televangelist who built a Christian television empire with his first wife, Tammy Faye, before a sex scandal and fraud conviction brought it down, died Monday at 86. His second wife, Lori Bakker, announced his death. She did not disclose a cause.

“He was a pioneer of Christian television, but to me, he was my husband, my best friend, and the man I was honored to walk beside through so many seasons of life and ministry,” she said.

At its peak in the mid-1980s, the Bakkers’ “The PTL Club” drew up to 13 million nightly viewers, according to CBS News. Their ministry also operated Heritage USA, a Christian theme park and hotel in Fort Mill, South Carolina. NBC News reported that donations from believers helped build the ministry’s multimillion-dollar empire and theme park.

Born in Muskegon, Michigan, Bakker met Tammy Faye at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis. They married in 1961 and began a traveling ministry. According to CBS News, they launched a children’s show on Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network in 1965, and Bakker was hosting “The 700 Club” by 1966. He left the network in 1972 and formed the PTL Satellite Network two years later, with “The PTL Club” as its signature show.

The program mixed interviews and Christian entertainment with Bakker’s upbeat preaching and Tammy Faye’s singing. The couple became known beyond their religious audience for their emotional on-air style, lavish lifestyle and Tammy Faye’s heavy makeup. Their ministry grew into a multimillion-dollar operation.

It began to unravel in 1987 after The Charlotte Observer reported that PTL had paid $287,000 to Jessica Hahn, a church secretary with whom Bakker had a sexual encounter years earlier, according to NBC News. Bakker acknowledged the encounter but told the newspaper he had been “wickedly manipulated by treacherous former friends and then colleagues who victimized me with the aid of a female confederate.” The Bakkers resigned from PTL.

An investigation of PTL’s finances led to Bakker’s conviction on fraud and conspiracy charges in 1989. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison; CBS News reported that the sentence was later reduced to eight years. He was paroled in 1994, after serving just under five years. Tammy Faye divorced him in 1992. She died of cancer in 2007.

Bakker married Lori in 1998, and they launched “The Jim Bakker Show” in 2003. His later broadcasts emphasized apocalyptic themes and survival products rather than the prosperity message associated with his earlier ministry. In 2021, Bakker and his church settled a Missouri lawsuit accusing him of falsely claiming that a supplement called Silver Solution could cure COVID-19. CBS News reported that the settlement called for $156,000 in refunds to people who paid money or made contributions to obtain the product.

Bakker’s son Jay, who became an evangelist with more liberal Christian views than his father, confirmed the death. “We had a very complicated relationship and he was also my father and a grandfather and I need to mourn in my own time,” he wrote on Facebook.