Jim Bakker Biography

Name at birth: James Orsen Bakker

Jim Bakker’s entanglement in money and sex scandals cost him a lucrative television show, a huge Christian theme park and a 30-year marriage to his ministry partner, Tammy Faye Bakker. The two wed in 1961 while teens at a Minneapolis Bible college and then traveled as evangelists who preached, sang, and a put on a puppet show. Perky and charismatic, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker rose quickly in the burgeoning field of viewer-funded televangelism, first as stars of Pat Robertson‘s Christian Broadcasting Network, then as co-founders of Trinity Broadcasting Network. Then came their North Carolina-based Praise the Lord TV show, which grew into a multi-faceted ministry called PTL. By 1978 it included a satellite network with 13 million viewers on 1,200 cable systems, and Heritage USA, a kind of religious Disneyland in Fort Mill, South Carolina, which eventually covered four square miles. Jim Bakker suddenly resigned from PTL in 1987 after admitting to a one-time 1980 sexual encounter with a Long Island church secretary, Jessica Hahn, and making subsequent hush-money payments. He was convicted of fraud in 1989 for over-promising Heritage privileges to more than 152,000 special contributors. Tammy divorced him while he served five years in prison. Jim Bakker then worked in a Los Angeles urban ministry, published the book I Was Wrong, and in 2006 started a new religious TV show with his second wife, Lori Graham Bakker, based in Branson, Missouri.