Jim Bakker, the pioneering televangelist who built one of the most powerful ministries in American Christian broadcasting history before it collapsed under scandal and a federal fraud conviction, died on October 5 at the age of 86. His second wife, Lori Bakker, announced his death in a statement; no cause of death was given.

Bakker rose to national fame in the 1970s and 1980s as the host of The PTL Club, the live Christian talk show he co-hosted with his first wife, Tammy Faye. Modeling the program after Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, Bakker gave Christian television a warmth and spontaneity it had never had. At its height, the program reached 14 million American homes and aired in 40 nations, according to Christianity Today.

Bakker was also a genuine innovator. He helped launch the original 700 Club before leaving Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, was present at the founding of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, and in 1978 his ministry launched the first private satellite network — a full year before ESPN.

The ministry's success funded an empire: Heritage USA, a 2,300-acre Christian theme park and ministry center near Fort Mill, South Carolina, complete with a 500-room luxury hotel, a television studio, and a waterpark. At its peak in 1986, Heritage USA drew six million visitors a year, second in America only to Disneyland and Disney World, and PTL's revenue reached $129 million.

Alongside the growth came the excess. Bakker embraced the prosperity gospel, writing in 1980 that “God wants you to prosper.” He lived lavishly on donor money: from 1984 to 1987, he and Tammy Faye drew $4.7 million in compensation from PTL while buying large homes, vacation properties, cars, boats, and jewelry.

The empire fell in 1987. The press revealed that Bakker had paid $265,000 to Jessica Hahn after a 1980 hotel encounter; Hahn said she was assaulted, while Bakker maintained the encounter was consensual. Bakker resigned from PTL, and what began as a sex scandal soon became a financial one. When Jerry Falwell took over, he found the ministry $65 million in debt and losing $2 million a month. PTL filed for bankruptcy.

In 1989, Bakker was convicted in federal court of mail and wire fraud tied to the fundraising operation and sentenced to 45 years in prison, though the sentence was reduced on appeal. He served less than five years behind bars.

After his release, Bakker said he had renounced the prosperity gospel. He and Lori launched a small ministry called Morningside near Branson, Missouri, centered on end-times teaching, and he returned to the airwaves with a vastly smaller audience. In 2021, he agreed to a $156,000 settlement after a lawsuit accused his ministry of marketing a product called Silver Solution as a cure for COVID-19.

Bakker is survived by his wife Lori, his daughter Tammy Sue, his son Jay, and five children he and Lori adopted. His story remains one of the starkest cautionary tales in American church history: a man who preached the gospel to millions, innovated the medium that carried it, and then lost it all to the very wealth his ministry had raised.

Read the original at Christianity Today.