Jim Bakker Dead at 86: The Rise, Fall, and Comeback of the PTL Televangelist

Jim Bakker, the televangelist who turned“The PTL Club”into one of the biggest religious broadcasts in America, died Monday at 86. His second wife, Lori, announced the death, and no cause was immediately given. At its mid-1980s peak, the ministry pulled up to 13 million nightly viewers and expanded into Heritage USA, a theme park in South Carolina.

The empire collapsed in 1987 when Bakker resigned after admitting a sexual encounter with church clerk Jessica Hahn. Jerry Falwell took over PTL in the aftermath, and in 1988 Bakker was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 45 years, later reduced to eight. After prison, he rebuilt his life with Lori, married her in 1998, and launched“The Jim Bakker Show”from Branson, Missouri, in 2003. That show kept him in headlines again in 2021, when he settled a lawsuit over false COVID-19 cure claims for $156,000 in refunds.

His story is inseparable from the 1980s televangelism boom, and from Tammy Faye, his first wife and co-host, who famously stood in front of microphones after his conviction and sang“On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand.”Love it or judge it, that era of broadcasting doesn’t exist without him. What do you remember most about the PTL years?