Jim Bakker, the televangelist who rose from itinerant preaching to preside over a multimillion-dollar ministry built around the "PTL Club" television program, has died at age 86, his family confirmed. His second wife, Lori Bakker, announced the death in a statement, saying he passed on Monday. No cause of death was immediately provided.
In her statement, Lori Bakker described her husband as a groundbreaking figure in religious broadcasting while also emphasizing his personal role in her life. "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 couple had made their home near Branson, Missouri, an entertainment destination in the Ozarks, where they produced "The Jim Bakker Show" beginning in 2003.
Bakker's later years were marked by health challenges, including a stroke he suffered in 2020. Even so, he remained a recognizable figure in charismatic Christian circles, hosting a program that mixed preaching with commentary on current events and selling various products to viewers.
His death closes a life that traced the outer limits of American televangelism's boom years — a trajectory that took him from a small traveling ministry to nightly audiences in the millions, and then to disgrace, prosecution and prison.
Bakker was born in Muskegon, Michigan, and enrolled at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis, where he met Tammy Faye, who would become his first wife and an enduring pop-culture personality. The two married in 1961 and left college before graduating to launch their own traveling ministry. He handled the preaching while she sang and played the accordion as they moved across the country, appearing at churches and tent revivals.
Their work drew the attention of Pat Robertson, the prominent religious broadcaster and future presidential candidate. In 1965, the young couple launched a children's program on Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. Within a year, Bakker was hosting "The 700 Club," a Christian talk show that would become one of the flagship programs of religious television.
Bakker departed CBN in 1972. Two years later he established the PTL Satellite Network, and "The PTL Club" — with PTL standing for "Praise the Lord" — became its signature offering. The show's mix of preaching, talk and music proved a powerful draw, and by the 1980s it was reaching a vast audience and generating enormous revenue.
At the ministry's peak in the mid-1980s, the Bakkers' enterprise extended well beyond television. Their program attracted as many as 13 million viewers on a nightly basis. The ministry also operated Heritage USA, a Christian-themed theme park and hotel complex in Fort Mill, South Carolina, that became a destination for followers and a symbol of the empire's ambitions.
The couple became cultural icons of a distinctly 1980s variety, celebrated by devotees and mocked by skeptics in roughly equal measure. Late-night comedians frequently targeted them, and "Saturday Night Live" parodied their ministry. Decades later, their story received the Hollywood treatment in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," a theatrical film released in September 2021.
But the empire unraveled amid scandal. A sex scandal and financial crimes brought down the ministry, stripping the Bakkers of the platform they had built over years of broadcasting. The collapse became one of the most widely covered stories of the era of televangelist excess, and it reshaped public perception of religious fundraising.
Jim and Tammy Faye divorced, and she later remarried. She died in 2007. Jim Bakker eventually remarried Lori, who remained with him through his later ministry and was at his side in Missouri.
For observers of American religion and media, Bakker's career illustrates both the reach and the fragility of broadcast ministry. He helped pioneer a model in which a charismatic host, a loyal audience and a satellite signal could produce a national institution — and he became the model's most prominent cautionary tale when that institution collapsed.
His story also reflected broader shifts in evangelical culture, from the tent revivals of the mid-20th century to the polished studios and theme parks of the 1980s, and finally to the niche streaming-era programs that kept figures like him in front of dedicated audiences long after their mainstream moment had passed.
The ministry he led for years left a complicated legacy: a pioneering presence in Christian broadcasting, a sprawling physical plant that drew pilgrims to South Carolina, and a scandal that became shorthand for the risks of mixing faith, fame and money.
Bakker is survived by his wife, Lori, and by the broader community of viewers who followed his program across six decades. Funeral arrangements were not immediately announced.
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