In the halcyon days of television evangelists, when Jim Bakker stood shoulder to shoulder with fire-and-brimstone preachers like Jerry Farwell, Pat Robertson and Jimmy Swaggart, the collecting plate always seemed bottomless.
For Bakker, that meant a Christian theme park in a leafy suburb of Charlotte, N.C., a fleet of black Cadillac limousines, vacation homes, regular orders of truffles flown in from Brussels, a gold-plated bathtub, mink coats for his wife, Tammy Faye, and an air-conditioned doghouse at the family compound.
He told viewers of the popular television show “The PTL Club” that in return for your unwavering faith, God will bestow upon you great wealth and other blessings. And to get things going, just call the 800 number at the bottom of the screen, he added.
When everything came crashing down with a sex scandal and a fraud conviction, Bakker went to prison and took stock of his life. He abandoned the prosperity gospel he once preached, wrote a raw and heartbreaking biography about his missteps, and promised to work with the needy and most vulnerable when he was released.
But once free, he set up camp on a Christian settlement deep in the Ozarks, armed with a darker message. The End Times are approaching, he told viewers on his Born Again television show, and the signs are everywhere: terrorist attacks, epic storms, massive earthquakes, frayed relations between the world’s superpowers, a pandemic that refuses to break free from its grip.
To transport viewers to the Rapture he said was sure to come, Bakker sold buckets of freeze-dried food with a 30-year shelf life, fuel-free generators, doomsday guides, and the “Silver Solution,” a magic potion that could cure the coronavirus and other unpleasantries. “Imagine: The world is dying and you’re eating breakfast like a king,” he told the audience.
And as before, the authorities were after him.
Bakker, a man full of confusing contradictions, died on Monday, his wife announced on Instagram. He was 86 years old.
“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 alongside through so many seasons of my life and ministry,” Bakker’s wife, Lori Bakker, said in a statement. “Jim loved people deeply. He loved this service, and he loved his friends and associates who were there for him over the years.”
The baby-faced Bakker, with his darkly polished hair and oversized glasses, became a sunny alternative to the hellfire bombing of Swaggart and Falwell when he and his wife introduced themselves to America when “The PTL Club” was released in 1976.
The show, short for Praise the Lord, was breezy and chatty, patterned after a late-night talk show, performances by Christian musicians and never-malicious banter between Bakker and Tammy Faye, who frequently sang, tears dripping down her cheeks.
Together, the bakers talked about the souls saved and the challenges overcome by those who put their lives in the hands of the Lord. And he frequently reminded viewers that donations were needed to keep his campaigns moving forward. Before long, more than $1 million a week was flowing into the “PTL Club,” according to evidence presented in Bakker’s fraud case.
Leveraging their fame and fortune, the Bakkers opened Heritage USA, a Christian theme park complete with a $12 million water park, a hotel, nightly Passion games and a Disney-esque Main Street where guests can buy palm-sized Jesus dolls, 24-carat gold crosses and boxes of Heavenly Fudge. As guests arrived, developers built apartments and houses for those who wanted to live in such a place.
It was all confusing for Bakker, who often said he had few expectations when he was younger. Born on January 2, 1940, James Orsen Bakker grew up in Muskegon, Michigan, a commercial shipping port just across from Milwaukee. He said his parents were extremely religious and were so strict that even simple pleasures like singing were forbidden.
He met Tammy Faye LaValley at North Central University, a Minneapolis Bible college affiliated with the Assemblies of God. They married four months later, dropped out of school, and began careers in television evangelism as hosts of a children’s puppet show on Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network. They eventually set out on their own to develop “The PTL Club,” a show that paired church and pop culture.
By the mid-1980s, “The PTL Club” had a daily audience of approximately 5.7 million, with Heritage USA receiving more than 6 million visitors annually. But it would all quickly evaporate.
It all started with a date in a hotel room in Clearwater Beach, Fla.; here Bakker met church secretary Jessica Hahn; this sexual relationship was successfully kept secret for years, reportedly by paying him hush money. But when Swaggart received word of the meeting, he seized an opportunity to take down his rival and took the matter to the Assemblies of God, the church congregation to which both preachers belong.
Accused of “moral failure” by the Fellowship, Bakker resigned and Falwell replaced him as PTL’s president. Once there, Falwell examined the company’s books and realized he had a problem. Among other things, Bakker had offered approximately 160,000 people the opportunity to book a room at the 500-room Heritage Grand Hotel for $1,000 for three nights a year for life; This was mathematically impossible.
August 1989 photo of former PTL President Jim Bakker getting into his car during the lunch break at his hearing in Charlotte, NC
(Alan Marler/Associated Press)
Bakker was eventually sentenced to 45 years in prison and fined $500,000 after jurors found him guilty of 24 fraud and conspiracy charges accusing him of defrauding his followers of nearly $160 million and using much of that money to fund his lavish lifestyle. His sentence was later reduced to eight years.
“Please don’t do this to me,” Bakker said before being handcuffed and taken away.
His lawyer told The Times after his client’s conviction that Bakker suffered a nervous breakdown during the trial and suffered vivid hallucinations, imagining that those gathered in the courtroom were “frightening animals intent on destroying him.”
When Bakker learned from behind bars that Tammy Faye had filed for divorce, it was a final blow that made him question his faith, he later told Larry King. But ultimately, he said, he “learned more in prison than in Bible school” and read the entire Bible for the first time; He realized that in his pursuit of wealth he was leading “an arrogant lifestyle that does not believe in God.”
“You can worship money or worship God,” he told The Times after his release, when he moved into a small apartment in Burbank with his son. “But you cannot worship both.”
The apartment served as a base camp after he published his memoir “I Was Wrong” and planned a national book tour. He also did volunteer work at the Los Angeles International Dream Center, where he was warmly welcomed by impoverished families and troubled teenagers looking for a fresh start.
It was also here that he met Lori Beth Graham, who was a missionary at the center and spoke frequently. She described herself as a survivor of an abusive marriage and a hard partying lifestyle in her youth. Both were broke and Charlotte told the Observer she had to borrow a wedding dress when they married in 1988.
The newlyweds moved to rural Missouri just north of the Arkansas border and set up camp on 800 acres purchased by developer Jerry Crawford, a onetime PTL partner who credited Bakker with saving his failing marriage. Bakker quickly put down roots and established Morningside Church and a studio for “The Jim Bakker Show.”
In many ways, Morningside was a miniature version of Heritage USA, with a streetlamp-lined street called Grace Street, a faux town square with a 50-foot statue of Jesus, and old-timey shops like Grace Street Creamery and Morningside Beauty Salon. Guests were free to walk in while Bakker and his wife recorded their new show.
But if “PTL Club” tapped into the richer-better mentality of the 1980s, Bakker’s new show was filled with post-9/11 darkness and apocalyptic visions of what was to come. He claimed that hurricanes, train derailments, and mass school shootings were God’s will and predicted a second American civil war if President Trump was not re-elected.
Now with white hair, a neatly trimmed beard and sunken cheeks, Bakker’s once cheerful speech and playful repartee to guests had been replaced by a stern figure.
The soundstage where he and Lori Beth reached audiences was often filled with buckets of survival food: the Tasty Pantry Deluxe Bucket (buttermilk pancakes, black bean burgers and more) and Fiesta Pail (refried beans, taco-flavored plant-based meat and more), along with a sampler pack that he claimed was enough for 23,375 meals for a $2,500 donation. It promised it could feed a family of four for years.
Reviews of Bakkers’ food buckets were less than glowing, as this wouldn’t matter much during the depths of Armageddon.
“We couldn’t agree on which was worse—the thick potato soup that felt like eating wet cement, the strong chemical undertones in the chocolate pudding, or the disturbing radioactive orange color of the macaroni and cheese,” a team of NPR tasters wrote in 2015.
However, it was Silver Solution and Bakker’s claims that it was a cure for Covid-19 that caught the attention of the authorities. The Federal Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration sent him warning letters to stop making false medical claims, and the attorney general in Missouri filed a lawsuit alleging he deceived viewers by offering a bogus cure-all for the virus.
In response, his program was discontinued by World Harvest Television and GEB America Network, two of several networks airing his new program, and was cut by credit card companies. Under mounting pressure, he agreed to pay damages of $157,000 and stop selling the product.
He once again told the audience that he was on the verge of bankruptcy, urging viewers to save his ministry by sending him cash or a check.
“SOS, save our station, save our ship, help us stay on the air,” he said. “We need a miracle here”
Bakker is survived by his wife and two children, Tammy Sue and Jamie, also known as Jay. Tammy Faye Bakker died in 2007 while battling cancer.