Jim Bakker, who transformed televangelism, dies at 86

James Orsen Bakker, who transformed Christian evangelism via television, died Oct. 5 at age 86.

Bakker and his first wife, Tammy Faye Bakker, were hosts of the daily TV show The PTL Club and built a Christian vacation village in Fort Mill, S.C. Although Tammy Faye divorced Jim in 1992 and died in 2007, Jim Bakker carried on with various forms of televangelism despite the bankruptcy of the PTL empire and prison time for fraud.

The couple bore two children — Jay and Tammy Sue — who appeared frequently on the PTL Club in the 1970s and ’80s. Tammy Sue works as a producer on her father’s current broadcast, The Jim Bakker Show. Jay, while somewhat estranged from his father, became a well-known next-gen evangelist preaching a much-less conservative theology than his father.

Jay Bakker posted on Facebook today: “Hello everyone, my father passed away today and it’s very difficult. We had a very complicated relationship, and he was also my father and a grandfather, and I need to mourn in my own time. I need the freedom to feel anger and feel loss and not have other people add their two cents. Please respect this time for me and my family.”

PTL and Heritage USA

Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker were best known for the PTL Club broadcast and the Heritage USA village they created just across the South Carolina state line from Charlotte. Remnants of Heritage USA remain today, including a hotel and prayer room and a multi-story residential building that never was completed and stands open to the wind. The Christian-based theme park — the third-most-successful theme park in the U.S. at the time — has been demolished.

What made PTL revolutionary was its use of cable TV and satellite TV in an emerging media market.

Jim Bakker learned the ropes at Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network, where he hosted Roberton’s then-new flagship show, The 700 Club. He and Tammy Faye also hosted a children’s show called Come on Over.

They later co-founded the Trinity Broadcasting Network with Paul and Jan Crouch but left after only eight months due to disagreements.

Those early experiences prepared the Bakkers to create their own version of televangelism that became transformational and far surpassed Robertson or the Crouches.

The PTL Club employed a talk show format with both Jim and Tammy Faye hosting. They interviewed guests, featured Christian music and talked about Pentecostal theology and prophecy. Unlike Oral Roberts or Robert Schuller, the Bakkers wove preaching into a talk show rather than offering up traditional sermons or worship.

Jim Bakker famously said in the heyday of this ministry, “I believe that if Jesus were alive today, he would be on TV.”

In the early days of Contemporary Christian Music, an appearance on The PTL Club ensured album sales and recognition. CCM stars launched on the show include BeBe and CeCe Winans, Doug Oldham, Gary McSpadden and Sue Ellen Dodge.

Viewer contributions were estimated to exceed $1 million a week, which by today’s measure would be $4 million a week. The entire PTL enterprise became one of the most financially successful Christian ministries in modern history.

With aggressive on-air fundraising and the lure of visiting Heritage USA, Jim and Tammye Faye became high rollers in the business of Christian ministry.

Controversy and collapse

The Bakkers took in so much money that they began to live lavishly — a sign of God’s blessing in Pentecostal theology.

They occupied a 3,000-square-foot penthouse at the Heritage Grand Hotel that featured gold-plated swan-shaped bathroom fixtures.

One PTL executive at the time described the penthouse suite as “early Imelda Marcos.” The Bakkers also had an air-conditioned doghouse, Rolex watches and a fleet of luxury cars.

The PTL Club was health-and-wealth televangelism with a lighter touch. The daily broadcast reached an estimated 12 million viewers, many of whom were devout Baptists and Methodists and evangelicals other than Pentecostals.

It was money and sex that brought down the PTL empire.

In 1979, Jim Bakker and PTL came under investigation by the Federal Communications Commission for allegedly misusing funds raised on the air. A 1982 FCC report said Bakker raised $350,000 that he told viewers would go toward funding overseas missions but that was instead used to pay for part of Heritage USA. The report also charged the Bakkers used PTL funds for personal expenses.

However, after the Bakkers sold the only traditional TV station they owned, their work no longer could be regulated by the FCC. Bakker called the investigation a “witch hunt” and used it to raise more money.

But in 1987, Jim Bakker was accused of sexual misconduct by church secretary Jessica Hahn, which led to his resignation.

Although separate, this closely ties to a financial problem. In 1985, an Internal Revenue Service investigation found $1.3 million in ministry funds had been used for the Bakkers’ personal benefit from 1980 to 1983. The report recommended that PTL be stripped of its tax-exempt status, but no action was taken until after the Jessica Hahn scandal broke.

Soon after, it became known that Jim Bakker had paid Hahn $279,000 for her silence. However, Hahn alleged that Bakker and former PTL Club co-host John Wesley Fletcher drugged and raped her.

The alleged middleman in that payoff was Roe Messner, the contractor who built much of Heritage USA and who, years later, married Tammy Faye.

Jim Bakker allegedly kept two sets of books to conceal accounting irregularities that were uncovered by reporter Charles Shepard of the Charlotte Observer.

When the payoff to Hahn became public on March 19, 1987, Bakker resigned from PTL. He acknowledged a sexual encounter with Hahn in a Florida hotel room but denied he raped her. Bakker also was the subject of other stories of alleged sexual misconduct, which he denied.

Jerry Falwell and prison

When Jim Bakker resigned, he chose televangelist Jerry Falwell as his successor, thinking that would be a temporary fix until he could return. However, a month later, Falwell banned Bakker from returning to PTL.

Amid all the scandal, contributions declined. Falwell raised $20 million to keep Heritage USA open and promised to ride the theme park’s water slide in a suit if the goal were met. He followed through on that promise, creating one of the most iconic photographs of the era.

Despite Falwell’s efforts, a bankruptcy court determined it was not possible to salvage the ministry. Much of the content of the Bakker empire was auctioned off.

Amid all this, the investigation by the Charlotte Observer led to criminal charges against Jim Bakker. He and associates had sold $1,000 “lifetime memberships” that entitled buyers to a three-night stay once a year at a luxury hotel at Heritage USA. However, the tens of thousands of memberships sold could not reasonably be fulfilled with the one 500-room hotel on the site.

Rather than building another hotel, Bakker used the money to pay operating expenses and to enrich himself.

Jim Bakker was indicted in 1988 on eight counts of mail fraud, 15 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy. In 1989, a jury found him guilty on all 24 counts. Judge Robert Daniel Potter sentenced Bakker to 45 years in federal prison and imposed a $500,000 fine.

Bakker’s fraud and conspiracy convictions were upheld on appeal, but his sentence was reduced to eight years. He was paroled in July 1994 and released from Federal Bureau of Prisons custody on Dec. 1, 1994, after serving almost five years of his sentence.

He still owed $6 million to the IRS.

Reinvented televangelist

Bakker initially spent time at a halfway house in North Carolina, then renounced the prosperity gospel. In 1996, he published a confessional book, I Was Wrong, in which he apologized for his past.

He later relocated to Los Angeles and volunteered with inner-city outreach programs at the Dream Center. And in 1998, he married his second wife, Lori Graham, a youth minister.

By 2003, Jim and Lori launched a new daily broadcast focused on apocalyptic themes. They also hawked survivalist products and controversial supplements via The Jim Bakker Show. He wrote another book, Time Has Come: How to Prepare Now for Epic Events Ahead.

In early 2020, Bakker promoted a coronavirus cure called “End Time Solution Silver Solution” he said could cure COVID-19 within 12 hours.

The state of Missouri filed a lawsuit against Bakker and his ministry for consumer fraud. His production company eventually filed for bankruptcy, and a settlement was reached requiring the ministry to stop selling the product as a treatment for illnesses.

The Jim Bakker Show continues online and on some cable TV providers.