Rev. George Varughese (Shaji Karackal)
SPRINGFIELD, MO: Jim Bakker, the pioneering televangelist who helped reshape Christian broadcasting in America, has died at 86.
His wife, Lori Bakker, announced his death on October 5, 2026, late Monday: “It is with a broken heart that I share that my beloved husband, Jim Bakker, went home to be with the Lord this evening. 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.” For millions, Bakker was the familiar face of The PTL Club—a faith-and-television empire he built alongside his first wife, Tammy Faye. From 1974 to 1987, the program reached homes across the country through the PTL Satellite Network, blending preaching, testimony, fundraising and entertainment in a way that anticipated modern Christian media.
At the center of Bakker’s vision was Heritage USA, a Christian resort and theme park in Fort Mill, South Carolina. At its height, it drew huge crowds and symbolized the reach of the prosperity-oriented television ministry he helped pioneer.
But Bakker’s story was never only one of influence. It was also a story of scandal, collapse and consequence.
In 1987, he resigned from PTL after revelations involving hush money paid to church secretary Jessica Hahn, who said Bakker had sexually assaulted her. The following year, he was indicted over PTL finances. Convicted of fraud and conspiracy in 1989, he was sentenced to 45 years in prison and ultimately served nearly five years before being paroled in 1994.
His fall became one of the defining scandals in American televangelism—an enduring warning about unchecked power, celebrity faith and the dangers of turning ministry into an empire.
Yet Bakker did not vanish.
After prison, he returned to Christian broadcasting, eventually founding Morningside Church in Missouri and hosting “The Jim Bakker Show”. He rebuilt a public ministry around prophecy, preparedness and survival products, continuing to speak to audiences who saw in him not perfection, but redemption.
His legacy, therefore, cannot be reduced to either triumph or disgrace.
Jim Bakker helped bring religious broadcasting into the television age. He inspired devotion, built institutions and influenced generations of Christian media personalities. He also became a cautionary figure whose failures exposed the human cost of charisma without accountability.
His life leaves behind a difficult but important question: What should the world remember—a man who built a ministry, a man who lost it, or a man who spent the rest of his life trying to rebuild?
Perhaps the honest answer is all three. Jim Bakker’s life was a portrait of American faith at its most powerful, vulnerable and complicated: a journey from the spotlight to prison, from public disgrace to public ministry again.
He was never easy to summarize. And that may be why, decades after his rise and fall, people were still watching.
