Televangelist Jim Bakker, who built an empire based on faith before resigning amid scandal, has died at 86

Televangelist Jim Bakker, who rose to national prominence in the 1970s and 1980s before leaving his ministry amid scandal, has died. He was 86 years old.

“It is with a broken heart that I share that my beloved husband, Jim Bakker, has gone home to be with the Lord this evening,” according to an announcement from his wife, Lori Bakker, shared on The Jim Bakker Show’s Facebook Monday evening.

“For 66 years, Jim dedicated his life to preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. He was a pioneer in Christian television, but to me he was my husband, my best friend and the man I had the honor to walk with through so many seasons of life and ministry,” she wrote in her statement.

“Jim loved people deeply. He loved this ministry and he loved the friends and partners who supported him throughout the years,” she wrote. “Even in his final days, his heart was always focused on the work of God and the continuation of the Gospel in the world. »

The statement did not include a cause of death or details of the circumstances.

During his rise to fame, Bakker and his then-wife, the late Tammy Faye Messner, ran the evangelical “Praise the Lord” or PTL empire – and eventually their own theme park – from suburban Charlotte, North Carolina, for about 15 years.

The couple hosted “The PTL Club,” one of the best-known Christian television programs of its time. Messner, who divorced Bakker in the 1990s and later remarried, died in 2007.

Bakker resigned from the PTL ministry in 1987 amid a financial and sex scandal involving a secretary, Jessica Hahn, whom he had paid to keep quiet.

Two years later, Bakker was charged with fraud and sentenced to 45 years in prison, although he served just under five.

“I wanted people to believe in my dream, and my dream became more important than the people,” Bakker told CNN’s Larry King in 2000. “When the dream of a Christian community becomes more important than the community, that’s when it becomes sin.”

Jim and Tammy Faye met at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis, she told CNN in a 2003 interview. They married in 1961.

Their path to television fame began with puppet shows in a church. Televangelist Pat Robertson, who owned a new television station in Portsmouth, Virginia, asked Bakker to host the show on television. Bakker agreed, on the condition that they could eventually launch a “Tonight”-type program for Christians, Messner told CNN.

From 1966 to 1973, the Bakkers hosted the “700 Club,” broadcast nationwide.

“It snowballed on us,” Tammy Faye said.

After about eight years with Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network, the Bakkers parted ways with the network. The move, Tammy Faye said, came after Robertson began cutting back on the number of nights their show performed.

In 1974, they moved to Charlotte to create Inspiration Network and “The PTL Club.”

Four years later, the Heritage USA theme park opened at the network’s headquarters across the border in Fort Mill, South Carolina. The Heritage USA Grand Hotel was added in 1984, and a water park joined the resort in 1986. That year, more than 6 million people visited the park, making it the third most popular attraction in the country after Walt Disney World and Disneyland.

At its peak, PTL grossed more than $128 million a year and aired on 1,300 cable networks with 12 million subscribers.

“Looking back on it, you know, I had a tiger by the tail,” Bakker told CNN’s Larry King in 2000. “The budgets kept growing, and it got to the point where you had to, you know, raise money or go bankrupt. And so, you kept raising money.”

Jim and Tammy Faye brought a casual, conversational style to their show, similar to today’s daytime talk shows – but with a Christian slant.

“Welcome home,” Jim Bakker said at the start of a 1981 episode, which opened with the couple sitting in a group with a view of Lake Wylie behind them. “It’s nice to see you. It’s nice to see you, Tammy Faye.”

“It’s nice to see you, Jim,” Tammy Faye said.

But off camera, a scandal was growing and on March 19, 1987, Jim Bakker resigned from PTL after paying a secretary, Jessica Hahn, to keep silent about his affair with her. Hahn received a one-time payment of $115,000 and monthly interest payments from a $150,000 trust fund.

The following month, PTL filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Also in 1987, Tammy Faye Bakker, whose thick mascara became her trademark, was treated at the Betty Ford Center for prescription drug abuse.

In December 1988, Jim Bakker was indicted for fraud and conspiracy to defraud church congregants of $158 million. Tammy Faye Bakker is not named in the indictment.

In 1989, Heritage USA and the Grand Hotel closed, and Jim Bakker was convicted of 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy and sentenced to 45 years in prison.

Bakker told CNN in an interview that his affair with Hahn was a mistake.

“God’s forgiveness is the only thing. And, you know, I take full responsibility for the adultery. It was my fault,” Bakker said. “And, you know, no matter what happens, man has to take responsibility, and I do.”

After more than 30 years of marriage, Tammy Faye Bakker divorced Jim while he was in prison, marrying Christian construction magnate and former PTL contractor Roe Messner in 1993. She died at age 65 of inoperable cancer that had spread to her lungs.

They later became the subject of both the big screen and documentary.

Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield portrayed the couple in 2021’s “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” — starting in 1960 and following them into the ’90s — adopted from a 2000 documentary of the same name.

Jim Bakker was paroled in December 1994. Four years later, Bakker met Lori Graham while working in the downtown ministry of the Dream Center in Los Angeles, according to his official biography. They got married the same year.

“I am made whole by my faith in Jesus Christ,” Bakker told CNN in the 2000 interview. “He forgives everyone. And if I don’t receive his forgiveness, how can I teach anyone else that God will forgive them?”

He returned to television in the 2000s with “The Jim Bakker Show,” this time filmed from Branson, Missouri, with Lori as co-host.

Bakker faced controversy again in early 2020.

In a February 2020 episode of his show, Bakker and a guest discussed a product, “Silver Solution,” that they said could eliminate the coronavirus from the body within hours — long before vaccines or any approved treatments.

The Missouri Attorney General sued Bakker and his production company for falsely representing “Silver Solution” as a cure for the coronavirus.

“Anyone who purchased ‘Silver Solution’ from the ‘Jim Bakker Show’ should know that it cannot cure or treat coronavirus,” the Missouri Attorney General’s Office said in a statement.

In May 2020, Lori Bakker announced that her husband had a stroke and would be taking a sabbatical from their television show.

Working non-stop had taken a “huge” toll on her husband’s health, she said.

Two years earlier, in 2018, Bakker returned to North Carolina for the funeral of the Rev. Billy Graham, the evangelist from an earlier generation who grew up in Charlotte.

“Billy Graham walked into my prison when I was there,” Bakker told CNN affiliate WBTV. “He put his arms around me when I was a mess, I was cleaning the toilets at the time and I was at a very low point in my life. Billy Graham came in and threw his arms around me and said ‘Jim, I love you.’

“The whole Graham family loved me and I had to come say goodbye, but he’s in heaven,” Bakker said. “We’re going to walk with him one day.”