Televangelist Jim Bakker, the pioneer of Christian television whose ministry rose to 13 million nightly viewers before collapsing in one of the most infamous scandals in American church history, died on Monday, October 5, 2026. He was 86.
The announcement came from his second wife, Lori Bakker, in a statement posted to the Facebook and Instagram pages of The Jim Bakker Show on Monday evening. No cause of death was disclosed, and the family has asked for privacy as it grieves.
“It is with a broken heart that I share that my beloved husband, Jim Bakker, went home to be with the Lord this evening,” Lori wrote.
“For 66 years, Jim gave his life to preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 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 added that “he finished his race with faith.”
The Rise: From Traveling Evangelist to 13 Million Viewers
James Orsen Bakker was born in Muskegon, Michigan, and believed from a young age that he was called to “make Jesus real” to the world. He met Tammy Faye LaValley at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis; the two married in 1961, dropped out of college, and hit the road as traveling evangelists — he preaching, she singing and playing the accordion at churches and tent revivals across the country.
Bakker felt drawn to television as the vehicle for his message. He joined Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network in the 1960s, becoming the first host of “The 700 Club.” After eight years, he left to launch his own television ministries, eventually settling in Charlotte, North Carolina.
In 1974, Jim and Tammy Faye founded the PTL Club — “Praise The Lord” — a Christian talk show they co-hosted for 13 years. At its peak in the mid-1980s, the ministry was a cultural phenomenon: the nightly broadcast drew up to 13 million viewers, and the Bakkers built Heritage USA, a sprawling Christian theme park and resort in Fort Mill, South Carolina, complete with hotels, a water park, and a vision of a Christian vacation destination for families.
For a time, the Bakkers were among the most recognizable figures in American religious life — beloved by millions, and parodied by late-night comedians and “Saturday Night Live” in equal measure.
The Fall: Scandal, Prison, and Divorce
The empire unraveled with stunning speed. In 1987, allegations became public that Bakker had a sexual encounter with Jessica Hahn, a former church secretary, and had arranged a $279,000 payment to keep her quiet. Bakker resigned from PTL amid the scandal and was dismissed from the Assemblies of God denomination for what church officials described as “conduct unbecoming to a minister.”
Two years later, federal prosecutors charged Bakker with fraud and conspiracy, accusing him of bilking followers through the sale of “lifetime partnerships” — vacation lodging at Heritage USA that was oversold many times over. In 1989, a Charlotte jury convicted him. The judge sentenced him to 45 years in prison.
“Those of us who do have a religion are sick of being saps for money-grubbing preachers and priests,” Judge Robert Potter told Bakker at sentencing, in words that would be quoted for decades.
Bakker ultimately served about four and a half to five years before his release. While he was behind bars, Tammy Faye divorced him and later remarried; she died of cancer in 2007. Heritage USA closed in 1989, and the PTL ministry collapsed.
Years later, Bakker reflected on what went wrong. “I wanted people to believe in my dream, and my dream became more important than the people,” he told CNN’s Larry King in 2000. “When the dream of Christian community becomes more important than the community, that’s when it’s a sin.”
The Comeback: A Second Act Near Branson
Few expected Bakker to return to television. But in 2003, he launched “The Jim Bakker Show” with Lori near Branson, Missouri, preaching prophecy, end-times theology, and current events to a loyal audience that had never fully left him.
The second act brought its own controversies. Bakker became a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump. In 2020, he suffered a stroke. In 2021, he agreed to a settlement requiring $156,000 in refunds after marketing a “Silver Solution” product with claims it could treat COVID-19.
Through it all, the show continued — a smaller stage than PTL’s heyday, but one Bakker occupied until his final days. “Even in his final days, his heart was still for the work of God and for the Gospel to continue reaching the world,” Lori wrote in her statement.
The Friendship That Outlasted the Scandal
For all the headlines about PTL’s rise and fall, one of the most enduring chapters of Jim Bakker’s life was written far from the scandal — in the loyalty of two teenagers he once introduced to America.
In the early 1980s, a young BeBe and CeCe Winans sang with the PTL Club Singers. Bakker introduced them on the PTL broadcast in 1982 simply as “BeBe and CeCe.” Their first album, “Lord Lift Us Up,” was released on PTL Records, and Tammy Faye had the siblings sing a duet of “Up Where We Belong” — with the lyric changed to “God lifts us up where we belong.”
It was the launchpad for one of the most decorated careers in gospel music. But what makes the story remarkable is what happened after the cameras stopped and the empire fell: when much of the Christian world walked away from Jim Bakker, the Winans siblings stayed.
“To this day, Jim Bakker is one of our dearest friends,” BeBe Winans told the Washington Post. “And Tammy Faye became our mother.”
The friendship was not a quiet one. When BeBe and CeCe received their star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in October 2011, Bakker was there to introduce them at the ceremony. And BeBe once recalled: “When my sister and I were awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the first person I called was Jim Bakker.”
BeBe later made a surprise appearance on The Jim Bakker Show for Bakker’s 50th anniversary in ministry, singing “Safe From Harm” — a gesture of loyalty decades in the making.
Bakker, for his part, cherished the bond. “BeBe Winans is my friend, one that I can trust because his opinion of me doesn’t flow with the tides of public scrutiny,” he said.
CeCe Winans, reflecting on the Bakkers in a 2005 interview with Religion News Service, offered grace without excuses: “They were two great people who made great mistakes… They made theirs on television.”
As of this writing, fresh tribute statements from BeBe and CeCe Winans are still arriving. But their documented words across four decades already tell the story: a friendship forged in the PTL choir loft that survived prison, divorce, disgrace, and reinvention.
A Final Goodbye, One Week Apart
In a poignant detail reported by the New York Post, Bakker had mourned the death of his own sister, Donna, just one week before his passing. He wrote of her: “Because of Jesus, this is not goodbye. I’ll see you again.”
Days later, those words became his own farewell.
What Remains
Jim Bakker’s legacy will always carry two truths at once. He was a genuine pioneer — among the first to understand that television could carry the Gospel into millions of living rooms, and the builder of a ministry that, at its height, was unmatched in scale. He was also a convicted fraudster whose name became shorthand for televangelist excess, a fall so complete it inspired a Hollywood film about his first wife’s life, “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” (2021).
But perhaps the truest measure of the man is found in the people who knew him before the fall and stayed after it. BeBe and CeCe Winans — teenagers when he gave them their first national stage — never stopped calling him friend. In a life defined by crowds that came and went, that loyalty may be the most telling testimony of all.
He is survived by his wife, Lori; his children, including son Jay Bakker; and the millions whose lives were touched — for better and for worse — by the PTL years.
“He finished his race with faith.”
About the Author
