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| Jim Bakker and First Wife, Tammy Faye |
Jim Bakker, the televangelist who with his first wife Tammy Faye built one of the largest Christian media empires of the 1980s around “The PTL Club,” then lost it in a sex scandal and federal fraud conviction, died Monday. He was 86.
His second wife, Lori Bakker, announced the death in a statement. The cause was not immediately clear. Bakker had suffered a stroke in 2020.
“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,” Lori Bakker said.
The couple lived near Branson, Missouri, where since 2003 they had produced “The Jim Bakker Show,” a smaller successor to the broadcast that once made the Bakkers household names.
At its peak in the mid-1980s, “The PTL Club” drew as many as 13 million viewers a night and helped fund Heritage USA, a Christian theme park and hotel complex in Fort Mill, South Carolina. The ministry collapsed after revelations that Bakker had paid hush money to church secretary Jessica Hahn following a sexual encounter, and after federal prosecutors charged him with overselling lifetime partnerships at the park. He was convicted of fraud and conspiracy in 1989 and served about five years in prison. Tammy Faye divorced him in 1992; she died in 2007.
The couple’s heavy makeup, lavish lifestyle and tearful on-air appeals made them fixtures of late-night comedy and “Saturday Night Live” parody. A feature film about them, “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” was released in 2021.
Bakker was born in Muskegon, Michigan, and met Tammy Faye LaValley at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis. They married in 1961, left school and began a traveling ministry in which he preached and she sang and played accordion at churches and tent revivals.
Televangelist Pat Robertson hired them in 1965 for a children’s program on the Christian Broadcasting Network. By 1966 Bakker was hosting “The 700 Club.” He left CBN in 1972 and in 1974 launched the PTL Satellite Network — PTL standing for “Praise the Lord” — with “The PTL Club” as its flagship.
Most episodes were taped at the ministry’s complex south of Charlotte, North Carolina. Bakker delivered upbeat sermons; Tammy Faye, known for heavy mascara, sang and interviewed guests. Viewer donations brought in millions of dollars a year before the scandals ended the enterprise.