Jim Bakker, the folksy televangelist whose blend of celebrity guests, revival-tent emotion and relentless fundraising turned "The PTL Club" into one of the most powerful Christian broadcasting empires in America — and whose sex and financial scandals brought it crashing down — has died at 86.

Obituaries published by NPR, Newser, Baptist News Global and other outlets confirmed the death of the man who, with his first wife Tammy Faye, helped invent the modern religious television industry. Born Jan. 2, 1940, Bakker spent more than four decades in the public eye, moving from children's puppet shows to prime-time preaching, from a federal prison cell to a Branson, Missouri, television studio where he sold survival food and end-times prophecy to a new generation of viewers.

The headline writers who chronicled his death captured the split personality of his legacy.

"Jim Bakker, who built 'PTL Club' televangelism empire, has died at 86," NPR wrote, adding that he "built an evangelical empire ... only to lose it all over a sex scandal and financial crimes."

"Jim Bakker, televangelist disgraced by sex and financial scandals, dies," read USA Today's framing, while Baptist News Global chose "Jim Bakker, who transformed televangelism, dies at 86."

From puppet shows to prime time

Bakker met Tammy Faye LaValley at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis, and the couple married in 1961. Their first television work came with Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, where they performed puppetry on a children's program before Bakker became a co-host of "The 700 Club." In the early 1970s they moved to Paul and Jan Crouch's Trinity Broadcasting Network, and in 1974 they launched "The PTL Club" — Praise the Lord, later rebranded People That Love — from Charlotte, North Carolina.

The show's innovation was format, not theology. Bakker borrowed the structure of the daytime talk show — warm lighting, celebrity drop-ins, musical acts, direct appeals to camera — and married it to the prosperity gospel. Donations poured in. At its height, PTL reached millions of households and generated revenue that funded an entire parallel world.

Heritage USA: a Christian Disney World

That world was Heritage USA, a 2,300-acre theme park and resort in Fort Mill, South Carolina, opened in 1978. It grew to include a water park, campgrounds, a television studio and the 500-room Heritage Grand Hotel. The ministry claimed it was among the most-visited destinations in the United States, drawing millions of guests annually.

The engine behind the expansion was the "lifetime partnership" — a roughly $1,000 donation that buyers believed entitled them to lodging and other benefits. Tens of thousands signed up. Investigators later concluded that the partnerships were oversold far beyond the resort's capacity, and that the money was used to cover operating deficits. MSN retrospectives of the couple's rise and fall put it bluntly:

"Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker had a Christian TV empire, until a sex and money scandal brought it crashing down."

Scandal, Falwell and a courtroom

The collapse began in March 1987, when the Charlotte Observer reported that church funds had been used to pay roughly $265,000 to Jessica Hahn, a former church secretary who said she had been sexually assaulted by Bakker in a Florida hotel room in 1980. Bakker resigned from PTL and handed control to fellow televangelist Jerry Falwell, who quickly took the ministry in a different direction and refused to return it. In the chaos, PTL filed for bankruptcy, and Heritage USA was shuttered by 1989.

Federal prosecutors in Charlotte charged Bakker with fraud and conspiracy. In October 1989 he was convicted on all 24 counts and sentenced to 45 years in prison and a $500,000 fine — a term widely criticized as excessive for a white-collar case. He ultimately served nearly five years before his release on parole in December 1994. Tammy Faye divorced him in 1992; she died of cancer in 2007. He married Lori Beth Graham in 1998.

A second act in Branson

Bakker reemerged in the 2000s with "The Jim Bakker Show," broadcast from a studio near Branson, and with a memoir pointedly titled "I Was Wrong." His message shifted to apocalyptic prophecy and preparedness — a format built around end-times warnings and the sale of food buckets, water filters and other survival supplies. The Register of background checks likely won't be missed. The ministry, Morningside Church Productions, cultivated an audience that had moved from charismatic revivalism to online prophecy watching.

That second act brought a second wave of legal trouble. In 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic spread, Bakker promoted a product he called "Silver Solution" as a treatment or preventive for COVID-19, drawing warning letters from the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission. Missouri's attorney general sued. A state judge later ordered Bakker, his wife and his ministry to pay roughly $156,000 in restitution to consumers, with additional civil penalties suspended on the condition that he stop the claims — a reminder that the pattern of mixing ministry with merchandise had never really ended.

How the story was told

• NPR emphasized the arc of triumph and ruin — the empire built and lost.
• USA Today foregrounded the disgraced-televangelist angle, placing scandal at the center of the obituary.
• Baptist News Global treated him as a historical force, crediting him with transforming televangelism itself.
• Newser offered a stripped-down announcement, while MSN and aggregator retrospectives focused on the Bakkers' marriage and the spectacular collapse of the 1980s.

Religious historians note that the PTL saga, arriving alongside Jim Bakker's fellow televangelist Jimmy Swaggart's 1988 sex scandal, permanently changed how American audiences viewed electronic church ministry. The years that followed produced a wave of evangelical financial-accountability bodies, tighter scrutiny of donor fundraising and a durable skepticism about prosperity preaching.

A complicated inheritance

Bakker remained a cultural reference point long after his fall. "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," a 2021 film starring Jessica Chastain as Tammy Faye, won an Academy Award and reintroduced the couple to audiences who knew them only as punchlines. Tammy Faye's embrace of LGBTQ Christians and her son Jay Bakker's progressive ministry complicated a story that had once seemed neatly moralistic.

Jim Bakker never stopped broadcasting. At 86, he died leaving behind the template he created — a pulpit that is equal parts ministry, marketing and entertainment — still operating at scale across cable, streaming and social media. His life demonstrated both the reach of that model and its capacity for self-destruction.