The US televangelist Jim Bakker, who built a multimillion-dollar empire and lived in opulence before being disgraced by a sex scandal, a conviction for defrauding followers and divorce from his television co-host Tammy Faye, has died aged 86. The death of Bakker, whose journey from the TV pulpit to a prison cell in the 1980s inspired comparisons to the corrupt character of the fictional preacher-huckster Elmer Gantry, was revealed on social media by his second wife, Lori Bakker. She paid tribute to Bakker as a “pioneer of Christian television”.
The cause and circumstances of his death were not revealed. Bakker revived his career as a television preacher after prison with a new wife and new television show in 2003, later becoming a staunch supporter of Donald Trump. Bakker had been among the most popular of the Christian preachers who thrived on US television in the 1980s, achieving fame on the show The PTL Club.
PTL stood for “Praise the Lord” and “People That Love”. Detractors, pointing to his unabashed daily exhortations to viewers for donations to his ministry, said PTL should have stood for “pass the loot”. Bakker spent four and a half years in prison after being convicted in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1989 of defrauding followers in a scheme involving holidays at his Heritage USA Christian theme park and resort.
Prosecutors painted him as a selfish and petty conman driven by greed and lust for power. Bakker had quit the PTL ministry in 1987 after revelations of a 1980 sexual encounter with Jessica Hahn, a former church secretary who later posed nude in Playboy magazine, and a subsequent $265,000 payoff with ministry funds to gain her silence. Bakker was later defrocked.
Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, his first wife, had started with a small TV ministry and eventually created a multimillion-dollar operation with 2,000 employees and the 2,300-acre (930-hectare) Heritage USA complex in Fort Mill, South Carolina. At its peak, the PTL ministry drew 13 million viewers on 200 TV stations and raked in $129m a year. With his working-class upbringing, the affable Bakker related well to common folk.
He did not deliver fire-and-brimstone sermons like other televangelists, instead offering a friendly Christian message – although it was larded with requests for money donations. Tammy Faye was more much more flamboyant, with her enthusiastic singing and penchant for tears that left her heavy makeup smeared on her face. Bakker was convicted after a six-week trial in federal court on all 24 fraud and conspiracy charges brought against him.
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