Jim Bakker, the televangelist behind The PTL Club, died on October 5 at age 86. Four weeks on, here is what the public record says about the television empire he built with his first wife, Tammy Faye, and how it ended.

THE RISE

Bakker formed PTL, short for “Praise the Lord,” in 1974. From Charlotte, North Carolina, The PTL Club grew into a satellite network that reportedly reached up to 13 million households. In the late 1970s PTL also began building Heritage USA, a 2,300-acre Christian retreat and theme park near Fort Mill, South Carolina. At its peak it drew more than six million visitors a year.

1987

In 1987 it became public that PTL money had been paid to a former church secretary after a 1980 sexual encounter with Bakker. He resigned in March, and the Rev. Jerry Falwell took over the ministry.

THE CASE

The criminal case was about money. A federal grand jury indicted Bakker in December 1988 on 24 counts of mail fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy. The charges centered on “lifetime partnerships” sold to viewers, which promised yearly lodging at Heritage USA.

The appeals court later summarized the trial evidence: PTL raised at least $158 million from about 153,000 such partnerships. Bakker had promised to limit one hotel’s partnerships to 25,000 but sold 66,683, and most of the promised buildings were never built. After a five-week trial in 1989, a jury found him guilty on all 24 counts. He was sentenced to 45 years and a $500,000 fine.

AFTER

In 1991 the Fourth Circuit upheld the convictions but threw out the sentence, ruling that comments by the sentencing judge had compromised the process. A different judge cut it to 18 years in August 1991. At that hearing Bakker said, “I ask all that I have hurt to please forgive me.” The same judge cut it again, to eight years, in December 1992. Bakker was paroled in 1994, after nearly five years in prison, and later returned to television with The Jim Bakker Show in Missouri.

Tim Funk, a retired Charlotte Observer reporter who covered PTL, calls Bakker “a cautionary tale” about preachers more interested in “your wallet than in your soul.” The verdict itself was narrower: fraud in how the partnerships were sold.

Photo: Heritage USA entrance sign near Fort Mill, S.C., by Toddbarwick. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

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