Televangelist Jim Bakker dies at 86
Jim Bakker, the controversial televangelist who once owned one of the most popular theme parks in the United States but later went to prison for his financial misconduct, has died at age 86.
Lori Bakker, Jim Bakker’s second wife, posted a statement on the Facebook page of "The Jim Bakker Show" announcing that her husband had died Monday night.
“For 66 years, Jim gave his life to preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” Lori Bakker stated. "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.”
Pastor Jay Bakker, the liberal Christian son of Jim Bakker, posted a statement on Facebook in which he said that he and the famed televangelist “had a very complicated relationship" but that "he was also my father and a grandfather and I need to mourn in my own time.”
“I need the freedom to feel anger and feel loss and not have other people add their two cents please respect this time for me and my family. I have turned off all my notifications and all my social media,” Jay Bakker wrote. “Please do not link me to anything or send me anything about him [at] this time. I just need some time to let this settle in and make what peace I can. Thank you for understanding.”
During the 1970s, Jim, along with his first wife, Tammy Faye Bakker, became national celebrities through their television program, “The PTL Club,” short for “Praise the Lord.”
In 1978, Bakker opened Heritage USA, a 2,300-acre Christian theme park and hotel resort in Fort Mill, South Carolina, that at one point drew millions of visitors a year.
Bakker’s ministries earned around $100 million a year, and his TV program was watched by as many as 13 million homes by the mid-1980s, noted Paul Matzko in a 2018 piece published by The Gospel Coalition.
“Some of that funded an increasingly extravagant lifestyle for the Bakkers and their key lieutenants. But much of it was channeled into building Heritage USA,” he wrote. “The campus, located on the North Carolina-South Carolina border, contained a waterpark with wave pool, a petting zoo, a ridable [sic] miniature railroad, a covered shopping mall (including the ‘Heavenly Fudge Shoppe’), the world’s largest Wendy’s restaurant housed in a turreted castle, and a 500-room hotel.”
However, by the late '80s, Bakker was embroiled in a series of financial and sex scandals that ultimately led to his arrest in 1988 and then being imprisoned from 1989 to 1994.
After his incarceration, Bakker had an autobiographical book published titledI Was Wrong, in which he detailed his decline from popular televangelist ministry to prison.
In 1992, Bakker and his wife, Tammy Faye, divorced. Bakker remarried in September 1998 to Lori Beth Graham, an ordained minister in the Assemblies of God whom he had met earlier that year.
He and Lori eventually launched “The Jim Bakker Show,” a daily religious broadcast filmed at the property of Morningside USA in Blue Eye, Missouri.
The show was often criticized and mocked for its views, with Bakker promoting products that he claimed could heal people. Like many broadcasters and podcasters, he also sold food prep supplies.
“Watching Bakker’s show today feels at times like watching a Christianized version of QVC, as Bakker hawks tons of preserved food for those preparing for the apocalypse,” wrote Matzko in 2018. “He hosts a wide variety of guests, including gold hoarders, doomsdayers warning of an EMP device blasting America back into the Stone Age, and those worried that proponents of Sharia law in America will eventually unleash an Islamic crusade to purge America of Christians.”
In March 2020, the Missouri government sued Bakker and his ministry for promoting a product on his show that a guest claimed could cure people of some strains of COVID-19.
Bakker was defended by former Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, who argued that the televangelist was “being unfairly targeted by those who want to crush his ministry and force his Christian television program off the air.”
“The video recording of the Jim Bakker Show clearly shows the allegations are false. Bakker did not claim or state that Silver Solution was a cure for COVID-19. This case is about religious freedom,” Nixon argued.
Bakker later reached a settlement in June 2021, agreeing to pay $156,000 in restitution while not officially admitting any wrongdoing.
In May 2020, amid the litigation, Jim’s wife Lori announced on Facebook that he had recently suffered a stroke, labeling it “the most vicious attack that he has ever experienced.”
“Under the guidance of medical professionals and our Board of Directors, Jim will be taking a sabbatical from the show. Jim will be back,” she stated. “He is still dreaming and hearing from the Lord, and he already has a powerful word to deliver when he returns to the air.”
In July 2020, Bakker appeared on his show, sending a video message from his home with his wife Lori by his side, explaining that the stroke was more severe than previously assumed.
“I missed you all very, very much. I live to do this show. I live to be in your homes and that’s what I live for. That, and my wife and my grandchildren and my kids, because it’s just amazing,” he explained.
In May, an 85-year-old Bakker implored viewers to donate around $1 million to his ministry, warning that if he failed to raise that much money soon, his program would go under.
“I believe if everyone who watches this program will give a thousand dollars, we'll be able to pay our bills and stay on the air,” said the televangelist at the time. “Otherwise, we’ve got about another month, I don’t know, to stay on the air. We’re at the end. God doesn’t have an end. He’s the same yesterday, today and forever.”
