Jim Bakker, the televangelist who built a Christian broadcasting empire around the PTL Club and then watched it collapse amid fraud charges and a sex scandal, has died at 86. His wife, Lori Bakker, announced his death on Monday evening, writing that he had gone home to be with the Lord.
Bakker died on Oct. 5, 2026, according to his wife's statement, which was reported by the New York Post. Lori Bakker said her husband gave his life to preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and called him a pioneer of Christian television whose voice, vision and legacy will never be forgotten. She asked for prayers and privacy for the family in the wake of his death.
Bakker's television career stretched back more than six decades, long before the scandals that came to define his public image. In 1966 he helped launch and originally hosted The 700 Club while working for Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, according to CBS News. Seven years later, he and his first wife, Tammy Faye Bakker, co-founded Trinity Broadcasting Network with Paul and Jan Crouch in California, hosting the signature program Praise the Lord before a power struggle pushed the couple out roughly a year later, per the Los Angeles Times.
From Charlotte Pulpit to National Phenomenon
After leaving TBN, the Bakkers moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, and launched PTL, where Jim and Tammy Faye co-hosted the PTL Club from 1974 to 1987, per the Post's reporting. The show grew into a sprawling media and entertainment empire that included the PTL satellite network and the Heritage USA theme park, which drew millions of visitors annually.
By 1986, Heritage USA covered 2,300 acres in Fort Mill, South Carolina, and attracted nearly 6 million visitors a year, making it the third most-visited theme park in the country behind Disney World and Disneyland, according to Islands. The resort, which opened in 1978, featured a 501-room hotel, a water park and broadcasting facilities before financial scandals and Hurricane Hugo forced its closure in 1989.
Hush Money, Resignation, and a Fraud Conviction
The empire unraveled in 1987 after revelations that Bakker had made a $279,000 hush-money payment to church secretary Jessica Hahn, who accused him of raping her in 1980. Bakker admitted to having sex with Hahn but insisted the encounter was consensual, and he resigned from PTL as the fallout spread, with Jerry Falwell taking over the organization, per the Post. Bakker said he had resigned from the Assemblies of God.
A federal investigation followed, and Bakker was ultimately found guilty on 24 counts of fraud. Prosecutors showed he had sold 68,412 so-called lifetime partnerships, each promising four days and three nights of annual hotel lodging for $1,000, despite building capacity for only 25,000 partners, the Los Angeles Times reported. The scheme raised about $158 million in partnership revenue, with funds diverted to the PTL general fund. Investigative reporting by Charles Shepard and Elizabeth Leland at The Charlotte Observer, which helped expose the hush-money payment and PTL's financial improprieties, won the newspaper the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Gold Medal Public Service, according to Facing South.
A 45-Year Sentence, Then a Reversal
Bakker was initially sentenced to 45 years in federal prison in October 1989 by U.S. District Judge Robert Potter. A federal appeals court threw out that sentence in February 1991 after Potter was found to have made inappropriate comments about money-grubbing preachers, and the sentence was reduced to 18 years that August and later to 8 years in December 1992, per the Los Angeles Times. U.S. District Judge Graham Mullen cited Bakker's remorse and his hospice work in prison when granting the reduction. He ultimately served five years and was paroled in 1994.
Bakker and Tammy Faye divorced in 1992 after 31 years of marriage; the couple had two children together. Tammy Faye Bakker died in 2007. Jim Bakker married Lori Bakker in 1998, and the couple adopted five children.
A Second Act in the Ozarks, and Renewed Legal Trouble
In 2003, Bakker returned to full-time televangelism by launching The Jim Bakker Show at Morningside Church, a complex in Blue Eye, Missouri, near Branson, where his broadcasts centered on apocalyptic end-times ministry and emergency survival gear, according to CBS News. The second act brought fresh regulatory scrutiny decades later: in March 2020, the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission issued a joint warning letter ordering Bakker and his show to immediately stop selling a product called Silver Solution with claims it could kill or deactivate coronaviruses, citing February 2020 broadcasts in which a guest claimed the colloidal silver supplement eliminated the virus within 12 hours.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced a consent agreement in June 2021 requiring Bakker and Morningside Church Productions Inc. to pay $156,000 in restitution to consumers and permanently banning them from advertising Silver Solution as a treatment or cure for any disease, according to Click Orlando. The civil lawsuit had noted that cure claims aired across 11 episodes in February and March 2020, though Bakker admitted no wrongdoing under the terms of the settlement.
Bakker's death closes out a broadcasting career that helped define modern televangelism even as it became a cautionary tale about financial oversight in religious media. Lori Bakker's statement framed his legacy in spiritual terms, describing a man who, in her words, finished his race with faith.
