Jim Bakker is dead.
He was 86 years old.
And apparently this is the part where everybody is supposed to lower their voice, rearrange their face into something appropriately solemn, and begin discussing his “complicated legacy.”
I am going to pass.
Not because death is funny. It isn't. Not because an 86-year-old man's family isn't entitled to grieve. They are. His wife, children, friends, and people who genuinely loved him have every right to mourn him privately and publicly. Human beings are rarely one thing to everyone.
But death does not operate a celestial reputation-laundering service.
A pulse stopping does not transform a lifetime of documented misconduct into a misunderstood journey. An obituary is not holy water. And I have never understood the peculiar social rule requiring us to suddenly become dishonest about somebody simply because that person is no longer around to enjoy the revision.
Jim Bakker died October 5, 2026, after spending decades as one of the most famous—and eventually infamous—figures in American televangelism. He and his first wife, Tammy Faye Bakker, turned The PTL Club into an enormous television ministry and built Heritage USA, an evangelical resort and theme park in South Carolina. At its height, PTL reportedly reached millions of viewers and generated staggering sums of money.
And then the empire came apart.
Not because secular America couldn't tolerate a successful Christian.
Not because Satan personally hired a forensic accountant.
Not because the news media woke up one morning and decided it had finally had enough of aggressively cheerful people wearing television makeup.
It came apart because behind the preaching, fundraising, religious language, promises, spectacle, and relentless appeals for money was conduct that eventually resulted in Jim Bakker being convicted on 24 counts involving mail fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy. Contemporary reporting described prosecutors accusing him of overselling accommodations at Heritage USA to supporters who had been persuaded to give money in exchange for promises the ministry could not fulfill.
That isn't persecution.
That's fraud.
There is an important distinction.
And it seems worth remembering now, because American culture has developed an incredible talent for turning disgraced public figures into vaguely lovable eccentrics once enough time passes.
We remember the hairstyle.
We remember Tammy Faye's makeup.
We remember the amusement park.
We remember the television sets, the accents, the crying, the gold furniture, the weirdness of 1980s televangelism.
Eventually the whole thing acquires a campy glow.
Everybody becomes a character.
Everybody becomes entertainment.
Everybody gets converted into nostalgia.
And somewhere along the way, the people who actually sent their money disappear from the story.
That's the part I refuse to forget.
The People on the Other Side of the Camera
When I think about Jim Bakker, I don't primarily think about television.
I think about the people watching it.
I think about somebody sitting at a kitchen table in 1984 with a checkbook.
Maybe she was 71.
Maybe her husband had died.
Maybe she lived alone.
Maybe religion was one of the few things that still made the world feel ordered and safe.
Maybe Jim Bakker appeared on her television every morning smiling, praying, talking about God, speaking directly into a camera with the manufactured intimacy television creates so effectively.
Maybe she trusted him.
That's what gets lost whenever these stories are reduced to tales about celebrity excess.
The essential ingredient in religious fraud is not stupidity.
It is trust.
And exploiting trust is particularly ugly when that trust is connected to someone's faith.
People give to religious organizations for deeply personal reasons. They give because they believe they are helping missionaries, feeding hungry people, spreading the Gospel, building something meaningful, earning nothing for themselves except the satisfaction of having contributed.
They aren't buying a refrigerator.
They aren't negotiating a car lease.
They aren't approaching the interaction assuming someone might be trying to fleece them.
They are deliberately making themselves vulnerable.
That vulnerability is precisely why religious leaders carry such an enormous ethical responsibility.
And when someone uses spiritual authority as part of the machinery for separating people from their money, I find it especially contemptible.
Bakker was convicted in 1989 after prosecutors said PTL had raised enormous sums through so-called lifetime partnerships tied to Heritage USA accommodations, despite the ministry lacking enough capacity to honor what had been sold. A federal jury found him guilty on all 24 counts in the indictment. He was initially sentenced to 45 years and fined $500,000; that sentence was later reduced, and he ultimately served roughly four and a half years.
Four and a half years.
Think about that.
The empire was huge.
The money was huge.
The betrayal was huge.
The consequences, by comparison, were remarkably survivable.
And eventually Jim Bakker returned to television.
Of course he did.
Because America is the undisputed world champion of the comeback story, even when nobody stopped to ask whether the comeback was something society actually needed.
Then There Was Jessica Hahn
Before the fraud conviction came the scandal involving Jessica Hahn.
Bakker resigned from PTL in 1987 after revelations concerning a 1980 sexual encounter with Hahn, who was a church secretary, and a subsequent payment intended to secure her silence. Reuters reports that $265,000 in ministry funds was used in connection with the payoff. Hahn maintained that she had been sexually assaulted; Bakker maintained that the encounter was consensual.
I am deliberately preserving that distinction because accuracy matters, especially when discussing allegations of sexual assault.
What is not disputed is ugly enough.
This was a married preacher presiding over an enormous religious institution whose public authority depended upon morality, trust, spiritual leadership, and the perception that he represented something better than ordinary human corruption.
Then came the sexual scandal.
Then came the hush-money revelation.
Then came the financial investigation.
Then the conviction.
It became almost biblical, except normally when biblical figures are tested by wealth, power, lust, and vanity, the lesson is supposed to be that these things can destroy you.
Bakker somehow seemed to read the warnings as a business plan.
And yes, I know human beings make mistakes.
I have made them.
You have made them.
Everybody has.
But at some point I think we need to stop using the word “mistake” as though it covers everything from forgetting an anniversary to systematically abusing people's trust.
A mistake is putting diesel into a gasoline engine.
A mistake is sending an embarrassing text to the wrong person.
A mistake is forgetting the oven is on.
Building an enormous fundraising operation around promises that result in a federal fraud conviction is not the same category of human error.
Neither is secretly paying money after a sex scandal when you have built your public authority around Christian morality.
Calling everything a mistake is how accountability gets slowly dissolved into vocabulary.
The Prosperity Gospel Was Always a Convenient Arrangement
Bakker became one of the defining faces of prosperity-oriented televangelism.
The formula was remarkably convenient.
God wants abundance.
You demonstrate faith through giving.
You give to the ministry.
The ministry becomes spectacularly wealthy.
The preacher lives spectacularly well.
And somehow the pipeline between God's blessings and the preacher's lifestyle never seems to malfunction.
Funny how that works.
I have always been fascinated by religious entrepreneurs who discover that the creator of the universe has surprisingly specific opinions about where viewers should mail their checks.
The address is never mysterious.
God may work in mysterious ways, but apparently accounts receivable prefers a street number.
At its peak, PTL reportedly generated about $129 million annually and operated the sprawling 2,300-acre Heritage USA complex.
That's not a church basement with folding chairs.
That's an industry.
And once religion becomes an industry, something changes.
The sermon needs ratings.
The ministry needs growth.
Growth requires fundraising.
Fundraising requires emotional urgency.
And emotional urgency is wonderfully profitable when the salesman can invoke eternity.
A normal salesman can tell you you're missing a limited-time discount.
A televangelist can suggest you're missing God's purpose for your life.
Try competing with that.
The ordinary marketplace at least admits what it is.
Nobody at Walmart tells me buying a toaster will demonstrate my faith.
Nobody at Costco asks me to plant a seed into the Kingdom before handing me the 48-pack of toilet paper.
Televangelism blurred those lines beautifully.
Religion became television.
Television became fundraising.
Fundraising became entertainment.
Entertainment became empire.
And the people supplying the money were told that generosity itself demonstrated spiritual commitment.
That power imbalance should make anyone uncomfortable.
Because the product being sold isn't really a hotel room, prayer cloth, commemorative Bible, survival bucket, or bottle of silver solution.
The product is trust.
Everything else is merchandise.
Prison Apparently Wasn't the Finale
Here's the part that fascinates me most.
After prison, Bakker returned.
He remarried. He published a book called I Was Wrong. He said he had reconsidered prosperity theology. And in 2003 he launched The Jim Bakker Show, beginning another long chapter in religious broadcasting.
Now, I'm a believer in rehabilitation.
I genuinely am.
People should be allowed to rebuild their lives after serving their sentences.
A person who has committed a crime should not necessarily be condemned to permanent economic or social exile.
But rehabilitation does not mean restoration to the exact position of trust you previously abused.
If a bank manager goes to prison for embezzlement, I can believe he deserves another chance at life without insisting we hand him the vault combination again.
If a surgeon repeatedly commits malpractice, compassion does not require returning the scalpel.
And if a televangelist becomes internationally notorious through financial scandal and is convicted of defrauding supporters, perhaps returning to television to solicit money from religious viewers is not the redemption arc I would have chosen.
There are thousands of ways to serve humanity quietly.
Soup kitchens exist.
Homeless shelters exist.
Prisons need chaplains.
Hospitals need volunteers.
Lonely people need companionship.
Communities need workers who will do useful things without cameras pointed at them.
Strangely, famous preachers who rediscover humility rarely seem drawn permanently toward ministries where nobody recognizes them.
There is always another microphone.
Another television studio.
Another mailing list.
Another audience.
Another opportunity to explain that this time everything is different.
Which brings us to 2020.
Because apparently the Jim Bakker story had not yet reached the section where the writers say, “This is getting unrealistic.”
Enter the Silver Solution
In February 2020, as Americans were beginning to confront the frightening emergence of COVID-19, The Jim Bakker Show promoted products containing silver while discussing their supposed effectiveness against coronavirus.
Federal regulators noticed.
On March 6, 2020, the FDA and FTC sent a warning letter to The Jim Bakker Show. The FDA said products including “Silver Sol Liquid” were being marketed in ways that established an intended use to mitigate, prevent, treat, diagnose, or cure COVID-19, even though they were unapproved drugs for those purposes. The agencies demanded that unsupported claims cease.
Just absorb that for a moment.
Here was a man whose name had already become synonymous with one of the most notorious financial scandals in American religious broadcasting.
He had gone to federal prison.
He had returned to television.
And when a terrifying new disease began spreading around the world, his program somehow ended up in trouble with federal regulators over the marketing of a silver product connected to coronavirus claims.
At a certain point, irony gets exhausted and goes home.
The FTC's own consumer guidance grouped The Jim Bakker Show among sellers warned about coronavirus-related products for which regulators said there was no supporting evidence for the treatment claims.
This was during the opening phase of a pandemic.
People were frightened.
Nobody knew exactly how bad the disease would become.
Families were worried about parents and grandparents.
Hospitals were preparing for disaster.
Scientists were racing to understand a new virus.
And somewhere in the middle of all that fear was Jim Bakker's television program selling Silver Sol.
If you're wondering why I have no interest in polishing this man's halo because he happened to live to 86, there you go.
That will do it.
“But People Can Change”
Yes.
They can.
And perhaps Bakker changed in some ways.
Human beings are complicated enough that I don't pretend to know everything inside another person's conscience.
Maybe he regretted things deeply.
Maybe prison changed him.
Maybe he genuinely believed some of what he preached afterward.
Maybe there were private acts of kindness nobody will ever know about.
All of those things are possible.
They also don't require me to pretend that the public record disappeared.
This is one of the strangest habits we have around famous people.
Whenever somebody dies, suddenly we're told to consider the totality of the person.
Interesting.
Where was that nuance when the person had power?
Where was the insistence on complexity when followers were sending checks?
Why does complexity so often arrive precisely when accountability becomes uncomfortable?
I am perfectly willing to acknowledge Jim Bakker's humanity.
He was human.
That is precisely the point.
He wasn't some supernatural villain.
He was a man.
A man capable of charm.
A man capable of persuasion.
A man capable of building something enormous.
A man capable of inspiring loyalty.
A man capable of convincing millions of people that they could trust him.
And a man capable of profoundly violating that trust.
You don't need monsters to produce exploitation.
Ordinary human beings do the job perfectly well.
Sometimes they do it while quoting scripture.
Tammy Faye Deserves Her Own Story
One thing I also refuse to do is flatten Tammy Faye Bakker into an accessory in Jim's story.
For years they were treated almost as a single cultural object: Jim and Tammy.
But Tammy Faye's later public image evolved in ways Jim's never really did. She became remembered by many people for displaying unusual compassion toward AIDS patients and LGBTQ people during a period when large parts of conservative Christianity treated both communities with hostility and fear.
Jim's legacy followed a different trajectory.
Their marriage ended while he was in prison.
Tammy Faye died in 2007.
Jim continued broadcasting.
And for anyone who remembers the two primarily as a matched set of mascara, television, and scandal, it is worth separating them.
Individuals deserve individual judgment.
Jim certainly does.
Why I Don't Think He Deserves More Recognition
When Lori Bakker announced his death, she described him as a pioneer of Christian television and said his legacy would not be forgotten. It is completely understandable that a wife would remember her husband lovingly. That is her relationship to him, and grief doesn't require objectivity.
The rest of us are under no such obligation.
I don't think Jim Bakker needs another cultural rehabilitation.
I don't think he needs documentaries searching desperately for the misunderstood genius inside the scandal.
I don't need a prestige miniseries where flattering lighting and a sympathetic soundtrack invite me to discover “the man behind the headlines.”
I know enough.
He became extraordinarily successful preaching Christianity on television.
He participated in building an empire fueled by donations.
His ministry collapsed amid sex and financial scandal.
He was convicted of federal fraud charges.
He went to prison.
He returned to television.
Decades later his show attracted federal regulatory action over unsupported COVID-related product claims.
That is quite enough legacy for one lifetime.
Call him influential.
He was.
Call him historically significant to televangelism.
He was.
Call him a pioneer of religious television.
Fine.
But significance isn't virtue.
Infamy is also a form of significance.
Charles Ponzi was significant to financial history. I don't think we're obligated to name an airport after him.
What bothers me is the assumption that longevity itself eventually earns absolution.
Live long enough after a scandal and cultural memory starts sanding down the edges.
The conviction becomes a “controversy.”
The victims become “critics.”
The scheme becomes “financial trouble.”
The disgraced preacher becomes a “colorful television personality.”
Thirty years pass and suddenly everybody is discussing his charisma.
No.
Words matter.
Jim Bakker was convicted of fraud.
That's not editorial hostility.
That's a court record.
Religion Wasn't the Problem. Exploitation Was.
I also don't want this turned into an indictment of Christianity.
That would be lazy.
Millions of Christians watched Bakker's career with embarrassment or disgust. Religious leaders criticized him. Ordinary believers were among the people harmed by the PTL collapse.
The scandal wasn't evidence that faith is fraudulent.
It was evidence that faith can be exploited.
And that distinction matters.
Any institution built around trust attracts people willing to misuse trust.
Finance attracts fraudsters because people trust financial professionals.
Medicine attracts quacks because people trust healers.
Politics attracts demagogues because people trust leaders.
Religion attracts spiritual opportunists because people trust those who claim moral authority.
The greater the trust, the greater the potential exploitation.
That's why institutions require skepticism.
That's why leaders require scrutiny.
And that's why anyone telling you that questioning them demonstrates insufficient faith deserves approximately three times the questioning.
Faith does not require gullibility.
Humility does not require obedience to a television personality.
Generosity does not require mailing money to someone whose furniture is more expensive than your automobile.
God, I suspect, can survive an audit.
So What Do We Say When Jim Bakker Dies?
We tell the truth.
That's it.
We don't celebrate suffering.
We don't torment his grieving family.
We don't invent crimes he didn't commit.
We don't exaggerate allegations.
We don't turn death itself into entertainment.
But neither do we participate in the strange ritual whereby death demands historical amnesia.
Jim Bakker lived 86 years.
During those years he became enormously famous.
He built one of the most recognizable religious broadcasting empires in America.
He helped turn televangelism into a mass-media industry.
He also became synonymous with hypocrisy, financial scandal, a federal fraud conviction, imprisonment, and—decades later—a television operation warned by federal regulators about unsupported coronavirus-related health claims.
That is the story.
Not the cleaned-up version.
Not the soft-focus memorial edition.
The story.
And personally, when I look at that record, I see a man who repeatedly occupied positions of extraordinary trust and gave the public very good reasons not to trust him.
If someone wants to call that harsh, fine.
I think exploiting believers is harsh.
I think taking advantage of frightened people is harsh.
I think preaching morality while your own conduct produces scandal after scandal is harsh.
The criticism seems comparatively mild.
Would I describe Jim Bakker as a scumbag?
Based on the documented public record, yes. In my view, absolutely.
Not because he preached Christianity.
Not because he became rich.
Not because he was weird on television.
Not because Americans enjoyed making jokes about televangelists.
Because character is revealed in what someone does when other people place their trust in him.
Jim Bakker was given enormous trust.
He was given money.
He was given attention.
He was given influence.
He was given a second chance.
Then another platform.
And another audience.
History can decide how important he was to television.
Religion scholars can analyze his influence on American evangelical media.
Sociologists can study the strange intersection of faith, celebrity, money, politics, and mass communication that made somebody like Bakker possible in the first place.
But I don't think the rest of us owe him another round of fame.
He had plenty.
More than plenty.
Maybe the most useful final lesson Jim Bakker can provide is not about Jim Bakker at all.
Maybe it is about us.
About how easily charisma becomes credibility.
How quickly visibility becomes authority.
How readily repetition becomes truth.
How dangerous it is when people surrender skepticism because someone speaks the language of their deepest beliefs.
And how often society confuses forgiveness with forgetting.
I don't believe we need to hate Jim Bakker.
Hatred gives people far too much real estate in the mind.
I don't believe we need to dance on his grave.
That turns criticism into spectacle, which is ironically the very medium in which he thrived.
I think something simpler is appropriate.
Remember what happened.
Remember the people who trusted him.
Remember why scrutiny matters.
Remember that religious language does not make a sales pitch sacred.
Remember that a second chance does not require a second blank check.
Remember that charisma isn't character.
Then move on.
Jim Bakker spent much of his life asking America to watch him.
We did.
We saw enough.
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