Jim Bakker, the pioneering televangelist who built one of America’s biggest Christian television empires before his career collapsed in scandal and later staged an unlikely comeback, has died at 86.
Bakker’s second wife, Lori Bakker, announced his death Monday in an emotional social media post.
“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 wrote on the Facebook and Instagram pages of her husband’s latest television ministry.
She remembered Bakker as a “pioneer of Christian television.”
A cause of death was not immediately disclosed.
Bakker became one of the most recognizable Christian broadcasters in America during the 1970s and 1980s, building a massive audience through “The PTL Club.”
PTL stood for both “Praise The Lord” and “People That Love.”
At its height, Bakker’s ministry reached roughly 13 million viewers across 200 television stations and brought in as much as $129 million annually.
He and his first wife, Tammy Faye Bakker, also built Heritage USA, a sprawling 2,300-acre Christian resort and theme park in South Carolina that employed thousands of people.
Bakker’s friendly, conversational preaching style helped set him apart from other televangelists of the era.
But his empire unraveled in the late 1980s amid a sex scandal and federal fraud investigation.
Bakker stepped away from the PTL ministry in 1987 after revelations of a 1980 sexual encounter with former church secretary Jessica Hahn and a $265,000 payment made with ministry funds in an effort to keep the matter quiet.
He was later defrocked.
In 1989, Bakker was convicted in federal court on 24 fraud and conspiracy charges tied to fundraising for Heritage USA.
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Prosecutors accused him of defrauding followers by selling lifetime vacation packages the ministry could not fulfill and using millions of dollars to support an extravagant lifestyle.
Before sentencing Bakker, Judge Robert Potter sharply rebuked him.
“Those of us who do have a religion are sick of being saps for money-grubbing preachers and priests,” Judge Robert Potter told Bakker before sentencing him.
Bakker was initially sentenced to 45 years in prison, although that term was later reduced.
“I have sinned,” Bakker told the court. “I have made mistakes. But never in my life did I intend to defraud anyone.”
He ultimately served about four and a half years behind bars before being released in 1994.
Tammy Faye stood by him during his trial but later divorced him in 1992 while he was still in prison. She died of cancer in 2007.
After prison, Bakker publicly rejected the prosperity gospel he had once preached and wrote a book titled “I Was Wrong.”
He later described his release from prison as a second chance.
“I’ve had a second chance at life. And I have a beautiful wife who loves me,” Bakker told CNN in 2000, referring to his second wife, Lori, who he married in 1998.
Bakker and Lori returned to Christian television in 2003.
By 2008, they were filming “The Jim Bakker Show” from Morningside, a large development near Branson, Missouri, that echoed some of the ambitions of Heritage USA.
His later ministry again mixed Christian teaching, political commentary and fundraising appeals.
Bakker also emerged as an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump and became increasingly vocal about politics and what he viewed as threats to conservative Christians.
His later years were not without fresh controversy.
In 2020, state and federal officials scrutinized products promoted on his program as treatments for COVID-19.
Still, Bakker remained on television and maintained a loyal following decades after the collapse of his original ministry.
Born James Orson Bakker on Jan. 2, 1940, in Muskegon, Michigan, he grew up in a strict Christian household and later met Tammy Faye LaValley at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis.
The two married in 1961 and left school to become traveling evangelists.
Their breakthrough came in 1964 when televangelist Pat Robertson aired their children’s religious puppet show on his young television network.
Bakker later struck out on his own and used the emerging cable and satellite television industry to build a Christian media empire that made him one of the most famous televangelists in the country.
His life ultimately spanned extraordinary success, public disgrace, prison and a second act in Christian broadcasting.
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