Jim Bakker, the pioneering televangelist who built one of America’s biggest Christian television empires before his career collapsed in a sensational sex scandal and federal fraud case, has died at 86.
Bakker died Monday, October 5, according to his wife, Lori Bakker, who announced his death in an emotional statement shared through his ministry.
“It is with a broken heart that I share that my beloved husband, Jim Bakker, went home to be with the Lord this evening,” Lori said.
A cause of death was not immediately disclosed.
Lori remembered her husband as a man who spent more than six decades preaching Christianity and helping transform religious broadcasting in America.
“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.
She added that even during his final days, Bakker remained focused on his ministry and spreading the Gospel.
Bakker’s death closes the book on one of the most dramatic careers in the history of American televangelism — a story filled with enormous success, public disgrace, prison and an unlikely television comeback.
Born in Muskegon, Michigan, in 1940, Bakker met his first wife, Tammy Faye, while attending North Central Bible College in Minneapolis.
The pair married in 1961 and began traveling the country as evangelists before finding their way onto television.
Bakker became involved with Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network during the 1960s and was among the early hosts of “The 700 Club.”
He later launched what would become his signature program, “The PTL Club,” with Tammy Faye.
PTL stood for “Praise the Lord.”
By the 1980s, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker were among the most recognizable religious personalities in America.
“The PTL Club” reportedly reached as many as 13 million viewers at its peak, while their ministry generated tens of millions of dollars a year.
Their growing operation also included Heritage USA, a sprawling Christian resort and theme park near Charlotte, North Carolina, complete with hotels, entertainment attractions and religious facilities.
For a time, the Bakkers appeared to have created an evangelical media empire unlike almost anything that had come before it.
Then everything unraveled.
Bakker resigned from the PTL ministry in 1987 after revelations surfaced about a sexual encounter years earlier with church secretary Jessica Hahn.
Hahn said she had been sexually assaulted by Bakker and another preacher in a Florida hotel room in 1980. Bakker maintained that his encounter with Hahn was consensual.
The controversy grew after it emerged that Hahn had received a $265,000 settlement connected to the incident.
The scandal immediately placed Bakker’s ministry, finances and lavish lifestyle under intense scrutiny.
His troubles soon went far beyond the controversy involving Hahn.
Federal prosecutors accused Bakker of defrauding supporters by raising huge sums of money through “lifetime partnerships” that were supposed to provide donors with lodging at Heritage USA.
Prosecutors argued that far more memberships were sold than the resort could accommodate and that money raised through the program helped finance Bakker’s extravagant lifestyle and ministry expenses.
A federal jury convicted Bakker in 1989 on 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy.
He was initially sentenced to 45 years in federal prison.
An appeals court later threw out the sentence while leaving his convictions intact, and Bakker was eventually resentenced to eight years.
He ultimately spent roughly four and a half years behind bars before being released on parole in 1994.
The scandal also destroyed his marriage.
Tammy Faye divorced Bakker in 1992 while he was still incarcerated. She later married building contractor Roe Messner and remained a prominent television personality until her death from cancer in 2007.
Bakker attempted to rebuild his life after leaving prison.
He eventually returned to preaching, met Lori Graham and married her in the late 1990s.
The couple later settled in Missouri, where Bakker launched “The Jim Bakker Show” in 2003 and began rebuilding an audience.
His second act on television increasingly focused on religion, biblical prophecy, politics and emergency preparedness.
But controversy followed him again.
During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Bakker’s program promoted a product called Silver Solution while a guest made claims suggesting it could eliminate strains of coronavirus.
Missouri’s attorney general sued Bakker and Morningside Church Productions, accusing them of deceptively marketing the product as a potential treatment for COVID-19.
The case ended in a 2021 settlement that provided approximately $156,000 in restitution for consumers and prohibited Bakker and his ministry from marketing Silver Solution as a product capable of diagnosing, preventing, treating or curing disease.
Bakker did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement.
He had also suffered a stroke in 2020, temporarily stepping away from his television program while recovering.
Despite the controversies surrounding him, Bakker remained on television and continued preaching well into his 80s.
His career ultimately spanned more than six decades and coincided with the explosive growth of evangelical television in the United States.
To supporters, Bakker remained a preacher who survived extraordinary personal failures and returned to ministry after prison.
To critics, his name became synonymous with the financial excesses and scandals that damaged the reputation of televangelism during the 1980s.
Both sides of that legacy followed him for the rest of his life.
Bakker and Tammy Faye had two children together, including son Jay Bakker. Jim and Lori later adopted five children.
Following his death, Lori focused her tribute not on the scandals that repeatedly made national headlines, but on the man she knew privately and his commitment to his faith.
“Jim loved people deeply,” she said. “He loved this ministry, and he loved the friends and partners who stood with him throughout the years.”
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