US televangelist Jim Bakker died on October 5 at age 86. The news was announced by his second wife, Lori Bakker, on the social media pages of "The Jim Bakker Show." No cause of death or further details were disclosed. "He was a pioneer of Christian television," Lori wrote, "but to me, he was my husband, my best friend."
Born James Orsen Bakker on January 2, 1940, in Muskegon, Michigan, he met Tammy Faye LaValley at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis; they married in 1961, dropped out, and made a living as traveling evangelists with a puppet show. Bakker later joined Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network as the first host of "The 700 Club." In 1974 he struck out on his own, founding PTL — "Praise The Lord" — and co-hosting "The PTL Club" with Tammy Faye. At its peak the show drew 13 million nightly viewers, and the couple built Heritage USA, a Christian theme park and resort in South Carolina. The empire spanned television, real estate and tourism, and became a fixture of 1980s American pop culture.
In 1987, reports surfaced that Bakker had a sexual encounter with former church secretary Jessica Hahn and paid her $279,000 to stay quiet. Bakker resigned from PTL and was expelled by the Assemblies of God for "conduct unbecoming to a minister." Two years later, he was convicted in Charlotte, North Carolina, of defrauding followers in a scheme involving vacation packages at Heritage USA. "Those of us who do have a religion are sick of being saps for money-grubbing preachers and priests," the judge told him at sentencing. Bakker received 45 years in prison and served about four and a half.
After prison, Bakker relaunched in 2003 with "The Jim Bakker Show," filmed in Branson, Missouri, alongside Lori, whom he married in 1998. He suffered a stroke in 2020. In his later years he became a staunch supporter of Donald Trump. Tammy Faye divorced him in 1992 and died in 2007; the couple's turbulent lives were dramatized in the 2021 film "The Eyes of Tammy Faye."
Bakker's life reads as a condensed history of American televangelism: from pioneering Christian television to a cautionary tale of greed and scandal. His death closes the book on the televangelist frenzy that swept America in the 1980s.