Jim Bakker

Jim Bakker (born January 2, 1940, Muskegon, Michigan, U.S.) is an American televangelist, best remembered as the cohost, with his wife Tammy Faye Bakker, of the television talk show The PTL Club (also called The Jim and Tammy Show). He began his career in the 1960s as part of Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) before moving to Charlotte, North Carolina, and launching the PTL network. By the mid-1980s he and Tammy Faye Bakker had built a $125 million empire, including a religious theme park, and they were often criticized for their luxurious lifestyle. Jim Bakker resigned in 1987 in the midst of a sex scandal and was imprisoned on fraud and conspiracy counts two years later. He and Tammy Faye Bakker divorced in 1992. In 2003 he returned to televangelism, launching The Jim Bakker Show.

Jim Bakker was born to Raleigh Bakker, a machinist at a local piston ring plant, and Furnia Lynette Irwin, a former stenographer. The Bakkers were members of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God church and, as such, were strict Christian fundamentalists who forbade their children from dancing and drinking. Nevertheless, young Bakker became the disc jockey at local sock hops in the 1950s, where he became acquainted with public performance. In 1959, after graduating from high school, he left Muskegon, Michigan, for Minneapolis, Minnesota, to attend North Central Bible College (now North Central University). It was there that he met Tammy Faye LaValley. After three dates, the couple was engaged. Given that North Central prohibited its students from marrying during the school term, the couple dropped out of college to be wed on April 1, 1961.

Jim Bakker began his preaching career in the early 1960s, working as a youth minister at the Minneapolis Evangelistic Auditorium. Soon afterward he and Tammy Faye Bakker left Minnesota to work as itinerant preachers in the Bible Belt. In 1965 the Bakkers settled in Portsmouth, Virginia, to work for Pat Robertson’s CBN. The couple hosted a one-hour children’s show called Come On Over. Later, as CBN grew, Robertson made Jim Bakker the host of The 700 Club, the network’s talk show. Bakker was a skilled fundraiser, but he began to clash with Robertson as the decade wore on. In 1972 the Bakkers were accused by CBN executives of using network funds for personal expenses. They left the ministry soon after the accusations.

After leaving CBN, Jim Bakker helped launch California’s Trinity Broadcasting Network. The couple had two children: Tammy Sue (born 1970) and Jamie Charles (“Jay”) (born 1975). In 1974 the Bakkers returned to the South, settling in Charlotte, where he founded the PTL (“People That Love” or “Praise the Lord”) network. The cable network’s flagship offering was The PTL Club, which was later renamed The Jim and Tammy Show. At its peak in the mid-1980s the show reportedly reached up to 13 million households, and it eventually became the highest rated religious show in the United States. Although beloved by their viewers, the Bakkers were often criticized for their lavish spending and the prosperity gospel they preached. In 1978 they opened the 2,300-acre (930-hectare) Heritage USA theme park and retreat near Fort Mill, South Carolina, which, at its height, was the third most popular theme park in the country, trailing only the Walt Disney World Resort and Disneyland.

Jim Bakker was first investigated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1979 for the misappropriation of viewer donations, allegedly using funds raised for foreign missions to pay for the development of Heritage USA and personal expenses. Though such a misuse of donations would have violated federal wire fraud law, no action was taken against the ministry. In the mid-1980s Bakker came under investigation again, this time by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The IRS found that he had been taking home a salary nearly five times the expected amount for a nonprofit minister. Furthermore, a 1985 report concluded that between 1980 and 1983 the Bakkers had used $1.3 million in ministry funds for personal expenses. Despite a preponderance of evidence, Bakker was not prosecuted, perhaps because of the Reagan administration’s hesitance to alienate its Evangelical base.

In 1987 it came out that Bakker had paid an ex-employee, Jessica Hahn, $279,000 of ministry money to remain quiet about a 1980 sexual encounter. In addition, it was alleged that the televangelist had had homosexual encounters with another employee. Bakker was widely condemned by his fellow televangelists after the scandal broke. In March 1987 he resigned from PTL and was replaced by fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell, the founder of the Moral Majority.

In 1988 Bakker was indicted by a grand jury on 24 counts of fraud. According to the indictment, he had promised annual stays at Heritage USA hotels in exchange for costly “lifetime partnerships.” Bakker sold well over double the number of partnerships Heritage USA could have actually sustained, and he pocketed more than $3 million of the money raised. In October 1989 he was convicted on all 24 counts, having bilked followers out of $158 million, and sentenced to 45 years in prison. His sentence was later reduced by an appellate judge to 8 years, and Bakker was released on parole in 1994 after having served less than 5 years. While her husband was in prison, Tammy Faye Bakker, who had never been implicated in the crimes, filed for divorce.

Four years after his release Jim Bakker married Lori Graham, a Pentecostal minister, and the two launched a new television ministry out of Branson, Missouri. On The Jim Bakker Show, he has abandoned the prosperity gospel and begun preaching about the apocalypse he believes is coming. He has also made headlines with outlandish claims of prophecy in recent years. In 2020 he was sued by the state of Missouri for pushing Silver Solution dietary supplements as a preventative or cure for COVID-19.