Jim Bakker, televangelist who built a $129 million-a-year ministry and fell in a fraud scandal, dies at 86

Jim Bakker, the American televangelist whose Praise the Lord ministry grew into a broadcasting and real-estate empire before a sex and fraud scandal destroyed it, has died at 86.¹² His second wife, Lori Bakker, announced the death on a Monday.¹ She made the announcement through the Facebook and Instagram accounts of the television ministry he had recently led.² No cause of death was given.¹

Bakker and his first wife, Tammy Faye, started The PTL Club in 1974.¹ The letters PTL stood for either Praise the Lord or People That Love.² At its height, the ministry aired on 200 television stations and collected $129 million every year.² The organization employed 2,000 people and operated the 2,300-acre Heritage USA complex in Fort Mill, South Carolina.¹ That annual income of $129 million and the reach of 200 stations show how large the PTL ministry had become, far beyond a typical local church broadcast.² The 2,000 workers and the 2,300-acre Heritage USA complex in Fort Mill, South Carolina, indicate that the Bakkers' operation extended well past television into a substantial real-estate and employment enterprise.¹

The Bakkers lived in a style that matched the scale of the ministry: a private jet, luxury cars, several homes, jewelry, and even an air-conditioned dog house.¹ That spending became central to the legal case that followed.² The contrast between the ministry's $129 million annual intake and the Bakkers' personal luxuries would later be used by prosecutors to argue that followers' money had funded the couple's lifestyle.¹²

In 1987, Bakker resigned from PTL after it became known that he had had a sexual encounter in 1980 with Jessica Hahn, a church secretary.¹ Hahn received a $265,000 payment from ministry funds to keep quiet about the encounter, and the payoff cost Bakker his ministerial credentials.¹ Hahn said the encounter was a sexual assault; Bakker insisted it had been consensual.¹ The $265,000 hush-money payment came directly from ministry funds, meaning that donations intended for religious work were used to silence Hahn, a fact that led to Bakker losing his ministerial credentials.¹

Two years later, in 1989, a federal jury in Charlotte, North Carolina, convicted Bakker on 24 counts of mail fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy.¹ Prosecutors said he had taken $158 million from followers by promising them annual lifetime vacations, and that he had redirected $3.7 million of that money to support his personal lifestyle.² Judge Robert Potter first sentenced him to 45 years in prison, a term that was later cut down.² Richard Dortch, Bakker's top aide, pleaded guilty and testified against him; he served 18 months of an eight-year sentence.² The 24 federal counts covered mail fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy, and the $158 million taken from followers through promised annual lifetime vacations dwarfed the $3.7 million that prosecutors said Bakker diverted for himself.¹² The initial 45-year sentence from Judge Robert Potter was later reduced, and Bakker's top aide, Richard Dortch, received an eight-year term of which he served 18 months after pleading guilty and testifying against Bakker.²

Tammy Faye was never charged with a crime, remained with Bakker through the trial, and divorced him in 1992 while he was still in prison.² The two had been married for at least 18 years before that divorce.¹ She died of cancer in 2007.¹ Tammy Faye faced no criminal charges, stood by Bakker during the trial, and filed for divorce in 1992 while he was imprisoned; the couple had been married for at least 18 years before the split.¹²

Bakker left prison in 1994, having served about four and a half years of his sentence.¹² He wrote a book called I Was Wrong and turned his back on the prosperity gospel he had once preached.² In 1998, he married Lori.¹ His roughly four and a half years behind bars, from the 1989 conviction to the 1994 release, were far shorter than the original 45-year sentence, and his book I Was Wrong marked a public rejection of the prosperity gospel he had championed.¹²

The couple began a new television ministry in 2003 and started taping The Jim Bakker Show in 2008 at the Morningside complex near Branson, Missouri.² In 2020, state and federal officials went after Bakker for promoting a product that he claimed would treat Covid-19 but that did not work.² Three years earlier, in 2017, he had warned that Christians would start a civil war if Donald Trump were impeached.² The new ministry, launched in 2003 and recorded from 2008 at the Morningside complex near Branson, Missouri, kept Bakker on television decades after his fraud conviction.² In 2020, both state and federal officials targeted him for marketing an ineffective Covid-19 remedy, and in 2017 he had warned that Christians would trigger a civil war if Donald Trump were impeached.²