Jim Bakker, the Michigan-born preacher who rose from tent revivals to command one of the most-watched religious broadcasts in American history before a sex scandal and financial crimes brought his ministry crashing down, has died. He was 86.
His death was announced Monday by his second wife, Lori Bakker, who described her husband in a statement as a groundbreaking figure in religious broadcasting. "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. The cause of death was not immediately disclosed.
At the height of his influence in the mid-1980s, Bakker's ministry reached an audience that most preachers could only dream of. "The PTL Club," the flagship program of his PTL Satellite Network, drew as many as 13 million viewers on a nightly basis. The initials stood for "Praise the Lord," and the show turned Bakker and his first wife, Tammy Faye, into household names — figures so deeply embedded in the popular culture of the era that they were routinely mocked by late-night comedians and parodied on "Saturday Night Live."
The couple's reach extended well beyond television. Their ministry also operated Heritage USA, a Christian-themed amusement park and hotel complex in Fort Mill, South Carolina, that became a destination for devoted followers and a symbol of the empire the Bakkers had assembled. A theatrical film about their lives, "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," was released in September 2021, reintroducing their story to a new generation.
Bakker's path to prominence began far from the television studios. Born in Muskegon, Michigan, he enrolled at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis, where he met Tammy Faye. The two married in 1961 and abandoned their formal education to launch a traveling ministry, with Bakker preaching while his wife sang and played the accordion. They crisscrossed the country, appearing at churches and tent revivals, building a following one service at a time.
That grassroots work brought them to the attention of televangelist Pat Robertson. In 1965, the couple launched a children's program on Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, and by 1966 Bakker had graduated to hosting "The 700 Club," a Christian talk show that became a cornerstone of the network's programming. His time at CBN gave him the production experience and on-camera polish that would define the rest of his career.
Bakker departed CBN in 1972, and two years later established the PTL Satellite Network. "The PTL Club" quickly became its signature offering, mixing conversation, music, and appeals to viewers in a format that proved enormously successful. By the 1980s, the program was pulling in millions of viewers and generating the donations that funded the ministry's expanding ambitions.
The empire's collapse was as dramatic as its rise. A sex scandal and financial crimes stripped the Bakkers of the organization they had built, turning the couple from celebrated religious leaders into cautionary tales about the dangers of mixing faith, fame, and money. The fall was chronicled exhaustively in the press, and the Bakkers' tribulations became a defining story of the era's televangelism scandals.
Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker remained cultural touchstones long after their ministry folded. The comedians who had skewered them in the 1980s and 1990s never entirely let go, and the 2021 film gave their saga an extended afterlife in popular entertainment. Their story became a lens through which Americans debated the relationship between religious authority, media power, and personal accountability.
In his later years, Bakker settled near Branson, Missouri, an entertainment town in the Ozarks, where he and Lori filmed "The Jim Bakker Show." The program launched in 2003 and continued production there for years. In 2020, Bakker suffered a stroke, a health setback that marked one of the final chapters in a life lived largely in public view.
Lori Bakker's statement framed her husband's legacy around his role in the development of Christian television, a medium he helped shape from its earliest days. "He was a pioneer of Christian television," she said, before adding that her primary memory was personal rather than professional — that of a spouse and companion rather than a public figure. The statement underscored how the man who once commanded a nightly audience in the millions was, in his final years, defined at least as much by family as by fame.
The obituary of Jim Bakker is inseparable from the larger history of American televangelism. He came of age in a moment when religious broadcasting was moving from local stations and tent revivals onto national satellite networks, and he positioned himself at the center of that transformation. The same instincts that made him an effective communicator — showmanship, emotional appeal, an intuitive feel for what audiences wanted — also contributed to the excesses that undid him.
His death closes a chapter on a figure whose influence extended far beyond the chapel. The parodies, the movie, and the persistent cultural references testify to how thoroughly the Bakkers entered the American imagination, even for people who never watched a single episode of "The PTL Club." Few religious broadcasters of his generation achieved both his reach and his notoriety.
He is survived by Lori Bakker, his wife since the late 1990s, and by the legacy of a career that spanned traveling preacher, network host, theme-park impresario, and — after the fall — a persistent figure in the ongoing debate over how faith is packaged and sold on television. Bakker was 86.
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