Jim Bakker obit

Jim Bakker, Televangelist and PTL Founder, Dies at 86, Wife Lori Bakker Announces

 

He was not on the list.

Televangelist Jim Bakker, a longtime Christian broadcaster and founder of the PTL television ministry, has died at 86, according to an announcement from his wife, Lori Bakker.

The Jim Bakker Show announced his death Monday evening, sharing a statement from Lori Bakker about her husband’s passing.

It is with a broken heart that I share that my beloved husband, Jim Bakker, went home to be with the Lord this evening.

For 66 years, Jim gave his life to preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 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.

Jim loved people deeply. He loved this ministry, and he loved the friends and partners who stood with him throughout the years. Even in his final days, his heart was still for the work of God and for the Gospel to continue reaching the world.

Our family is grieving and we ask for your prayers and privacy during this time.

Jim finished his race with faith. His voice, his vision, and his legacy will never be forgotten.

— Lori Bakker

Bakker became one of the most recognizable figures in Christian television through “The PTL Club,” which he launched with his former wife, Tammy Faye Bakker, in the 1970s.

Bakker would go on to host “The Jim Bakker Show” alongside Lori, where he continued discussing faith, biblical prophecy and current events.

In her statement, Lori Bakker said her husband remained focused on ministry and spreading the Gospel even in his final days.

The family is asking for prayer and privacy as they grieve.

Additional details surrounding Bakker’s death were not immediately announced.

Bakker, the televangelist who built a multimillion-dollar evangelical broadcasting empire before a sex scandal and fraud conviction led to his public downfall, died on Oct. 5. He was 86.

His wife, Lori Bakker, announced his death on his official Instagram account. She did not elaborate on where he died or disclose a cause of death.

Jim Bakker rose to national prominence as a pioneer of Christian television and, alongside his then-wife Tammy Faye, built a vast ministry that attracted millions of viewers and supporters.

After meeting at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis, Jim Bakker married Tammy Faye in 1961. They gained national exposure in 1965 when they developed a puppet show for evangelist Pat Robertson's television program, Reuters previously reported.

Jim Bakker founded the PTL organization, also known as "Praise The Lord" or "People That Love," in 1974. Through PTL and its television programs, the couple became household names and among the most recognizable figures in evangelical media.

But Jim Bakker's career unraveled amid scandal. The televangelist, who pursued an opulent lifestyle while leading his evangelical empire, was disgraced by a sex scandal, a fraud conviction, and his subsequent divorce from Faye.

His South Carolina-based Christian theme park, Heritage USA, closed in 1989 in the wake of a scandal that triggered the collapse of his Praise the Lord Ministries and its "PTL" television show. In 1987, allegations became public that Jim Bakker had raped his former New York church secretary Jessica Hahn. He said the encounter was consensual.

Not long afterward, Jim Bakker was dismissed from the Assemblies of God denomination for what church officials described as "conduct unbecoming to a minister," according to previous reporting from the Springfield News-Leader, part of the USA TODAY Network.

Two years later, he was convicted on 24 federal counts of fraud and conspiracy related to his ministry's fundraising practices. His original 45-year sentence was vacated in 1991, and Jim Bakker ultimately served nearly five years in prison.

While Jim Bakker was in prison, Tammy Faye divorced him and later married his former friend Roe Messner. Tammy Faye died in 2007 after a long battle with cancer. She was 65.

In announcing his death, Lori Bakker highlighted his decades of religious work and his role in the growth of Christian television.

"For 66 years, Jim gave his life to preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ," she wrote. "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 Jim Bakker remained committed to his ministry until the end of his life.

"Even in his final days, his heart was still for the work of God and for the Gospel to continue reaching the world," she wrote.

Lori Bakker said the family was grieving and asked for prayers and privacy.

"Jim finished his race with faith,” she wrote. “His voice, his vision, and his legacy will never be forgotten.”

After being divorced by Tammy Faye in 1992, Bakker married Lori Beth Graham in 1998, and together they adopted five children. Early in his career, Bakker worked at Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network, helping to grow the network and hosting shows including The 700 Club and a children’s program. He later co-founded the Trinity Broadcasting Network with Paul and Jan Crouch, but left after a short partnership due to disagreements, eventually establishing his own ministry, PTL (Praise The Lord), and the PTL Satellite Network.

Bakker later remarried and returned to televangelism, founding Morningside Church in Blue Eye, Missouri, and reestablishing the PTL ministry.

Bakker sold colloidal silver supplements that he advertised as a panacea. In March 2020, the office of the Attorney General of New York ordered Bakker to cease making false medicinal claims about his supplements' alleged ability to cure the 2019–2020 strains of coronavirus, and the Federal Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration also sent a warning letter to Bakker about his claims regarding the supplements and coronavirus.

Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt and Arkansas attorney general Leslie Rutledge filed lawsuits against Bakker for allegedly pushing the supplements as a treatment for the virus.

 In the state lawsuit against him, Bakker was represented by former Missouri governor Jay Nixon, who argued for the suit to be dismissed. Nixon said that the allegations made in the lawsuit are false, stating: "Bakker is being unfairly targeted by those who want to crush his ministry and force his Christian television program off the air."

In April 2020, prohibited from receiving credit card transactions, Bakker disclosed to his viewers that his ministry was on the brink of filing for bankruptcy and urgently petitioned them for donations.

The following month, GEB America and World Harvest Television dropped Bakker's program from their networks after DirecTV owner AT&T asked channels to reconsider airing the show. AT&T made the request of its channels in response to a deplatforming campaign from the liberal Christian group Faithful America.

After a 16-month federal grand jury probe, Bakker was indicted in 1988 on eight counts of mail fraud, 15 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy. In 1989, after a five-week trial which began on August 28 in Charlotte, North Carolina, 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. At the Federal Medical Center, Rochester in Rochester, Minnesota, he shared a cell with activist Lyndon LaRouche and skydiver Roger Nelson.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld Bakker's conviction on the fraud and conspiracy charges, voided Bakker's 45-year sentence and $500,000 fine and ordered a new sentencing hearing in February 1991. The court ruled that Potter's sentencing statement about Bakker, that "those of us who do have a religion are sick of being saps for money-grubbing preachers and priests", was evidence that the judge had injected his religious beliefs into Bakker's sentence.

Bakker's sentence was reduced to eight years at a hearing on November 16, 1992. In August 1993, he was transferred to a minimum-security federal prison in Jesup, Georgia. Bakker was paroled in July 1994, after serving almost five years of his sentence. His son Jay spearheaded a letter-writing campaign to the parole board advocating leniency. Celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz acted as Bakker's parole attorney, having said that he "would guarantee that Mr. Bakker would never again engage in the blend of religion and commerce that led to his conviction." Bakker was released from Federal Bureau of Prisons custody on December 1, 1994, owing $6 million to the IRS.