Jim Bakker, PTL Televangelism Empire Builder, Dies at 86
Jim Bakker, the televangelist who built the PTL Club into a sprawling Christian broadcasting and theme park empire that drew up to 13 million nightly viewers before collapsing in a sex and financial scandal, has died. He was 86.
Bakker died Monday, Oct. 5, his second wife, Lori Bakker, announced. His cause of death was not immediately disclosed. “It is with a broken heart that I share that my beloved husband, Jim Bakker, went home to be with the Lord this evening,” she said in a statement. “For 66 years, Jim gave his life to preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
At its mid-1980s peak, Bakker’s ministry was one of the most powerful forces in American evangelical media. Co-hosting The PTL Club with his first wife, Tammy Faye, he presided over a televised empire that also included Heritage USA, a 2,300-acre theme park and hotel complex in Fort Mill, South Carolina, that some dubbed Christian Disneyland, according to The Post and Courier.
From traveling preachers to televised empire
Born in Muskegon, Michigan, Bakker attended North Central Bible College in Minneapolis, where he met Tammy Faye. They married in 1961 and dropped out to launch a traveling ministry, with Bakker preaching and his wife singing and playing accordion at churches and tent revivals across the country.
They caught the attention of televangelist Pat Robertson and in 1965 launched a children’s show on his Christian Broadcasting Network. By 1966, Bakker was hosting The 700 Club, NPR reported. He left CBN in 1972 and two years later formed the PTL Satellite Network, with The PTL Club — PTL standing for Praise the Lord — becoming its signature show.
The program blended chat with Christian entertainers, upbeat sermons and Tammy Faye’s singing. Most episodes were taped at the ministry’s sprawling complex near Charlotte, North Carolina. The couple became cultural icons, frequently parodied by late-night comedians for their lavish lifestyle and Tammy Faye’s trademark heavy mascara.
By the mid-1980s, the empire encompassed the 501-room Heritage Grand Hotel, an indoor shopping complex, a skating rink, an amphitheater and a 400-unit campground, according to The Post and Courier. The ministry was drawing millions of dollars annually from followers.
Scandal, prison and a fall from grace
The crack came in March 1987, when Bakker admitted to a sexual encounter with church clerk Jessica Hahn, then 21, reported to have occurred in 1980. He was forced to resign from his own ministry, turning over operations to pastor and broadcaster Jerry Falwell. The Assemblies of God denomination dismissed him for what officials described as conduct unbecoming to a minister.
Hahn later said the relationship was abusive, while Bakker maintained in his book I Was Wrong that the encounter was consensual. According to Hindustan Times, the Charlotte Observer published a report describing the encounter, and Playboy later ran an interview and photo spread with Hahn.
The financial reckoning followed. From 1984 to 1987, Bakker had sold lifetime memberships to donors who paid $1,000 in return for an annual three-night hotel stay — thousands of memberships, far exceeding the hotel’s capacity, The Post and Courier reported. In 1988, he was indicted for mail fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy. Convicted on 24 federal counts, he was sentenced to 45 years in prison, though the sentence was vacated in 1991 and ultimately reduced to eight years.
Tammy Faye divorced Bakker in 1992 while he was still imprisoned. He served nearly five years and was released on parole in 1994. Heritage USA had closed in 1989.
A second act in Branson
Bakker married Lori in 1998, and the couple launched The Jim Bakker Show from Branson, Missouri, in 2003 on the PTL Satellite Network. He suffered a stroke in May 2020 and took a sabbatical from the show.
A late-career legal battle echoed his earlier troubles. In June 2021, Bakker and Morningside Church Productions Inc. settled a lawsuit accusing him of falsely claiming the health supplement Silver Solution could cure COVID-19, agreeing to $156,000 in refunds. The lawsuit said Bakker and a guest made the claim during 11 episodes in February and March 2020, NPR reported.
Bakker’s finances in his final years stood in stark contrast to his ministry’s peak. According to Celebrity Net Worth, cited by Hindustan Times, he was worth roughly $50,000. He had seven children across his two marriages, including five adopted with Lori in 2002. Tammy Faye died of colon cancer in 2007 at age 65.
A symbol of an era
Bakker’s rise and fall came to represent the excesses and contradictions of 1980s American religious broadcasting. An expert on the couple told ABC News that what Bakker really wanted to do was create a Christian version of The Tonight Show. His downfall was widely seen as a symbol of the greed and hypocrisy of the era.
The Bakkers’ story was retold in the 2021 film The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and their lives were long a staple of late-night comedy and Saturday Night Live parody.
Lori Bakker said her husband remained devoted to his calling to the end. “Even in his final days, his heart was still for the work of God and for the Gospel to continue reaching the world,” she said. “Jim finished his race with faith. His voice, his vision, and his legacy will never be forgotten.”
What’s next
As friends and family grieve, the physical remnants of Bakker’s empire still stand in Fort Mill. The Heritage USA property is now home to Morningstar Fellowship Church, and a partly built, roughly two-dozen-floor hotel tower remains the subject of an ongoing dispute between the church and York County over its fate, The Post and Courier reported. For many observers, the unfinished tower serves as a fitting monument to a ministry that rose spectacularly and collapsed just as dramatically.