(COLUMBIA, MISSOURI) When I was researching my 2017 book, “PTL: The Rise and Fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Evangelical Empire,” I interviewed dozens of former staffers and supporters of PTL, the ministry, television and theme park empire that the Bakkers built starting in the 1970s.
Time and again, I heard the same thing. PTL – sometimes known as “Praise the Lord” or “People That Love” – was both the best and worst thing they ever did.
The worst has been recounted at length, sometimes tinged with schadenfreude: the financial fraud, sex scandals, federal trials and prison time that plagued Jim Bakker, who died on Oct. 5, 2026, at age 86.
But it’s also worth remembering PTL as a pioneering force in Christian broadcasting. Working with a dedicated core of energetic young believers, Jim and his wife, Tammy Faye, built PTL from scratch, demonstrating how religion could be fused with pop culture and entertainment to better connect with American Christians.
From Billy Graham to Little Richard
The Bakkers had a talent for recognizing cultural trends and tailoring their message accordingly. In 1974 they launched their television show, “The PTL Club,” from a former furniture store in Charlotte, North Carolina. Jim’s vision was to create a Christian version of “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” then at the height of its cultural influence.
“The PTL Club” existed at the nexus of evangelical Christianity and American pop culture. Everyone who was anyone among evangelicals – preacher Billy Graham, gospel singer Pat Boone, fellow televangelist Oral Roberts – appeared on the show. But the Bakkers also booked unlikely celebrities, including singer Little Richard, Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver and Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt.
On any given episode, viewers might learn about passages from the Bible alongside candid discussions about sex, marriage, parenting, substance abuse, diet and exercise, and dealing with depression.
It could also be hilarious. During one show, Jim brought a camel on set that peed all over the stage. The charismatic and spontaneous Tammy Faye earned a reputation for speaking her mind, sometimes in off-color ways, that brought her legions of fans. When Tammy Faye did an episode entirely on a merry-go-round, one of the cast members vomited in the dog costume he was wearing.
In addition to introducing the Christian talk show format, PTL was at the forefront of pioneering satellite television alongside Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network Satellite Service.
Satellite TV allowed television programming to be distributed across vast distances, bypassing the local broadcast stations and transmission infrastructure that had previously been needed to reach large audiences.
In 1978 – just three years after HBO began continuously transmitting via satellite and a year before ESPN went on the air – the Bakkers’ ministry started offering 24-hour Christian programming via the PTL Satellite Network.
The PTL network ended up reaching 14 million American homes, and its programs could be seen in 40 countries, turning Jim into an international celebrities and opening up new sources of fundraising.
‘God wants you to be rich’
In the “Greed is Good” atmosphere of the 1980s, Jim Bakker adopted what is often called the prosperity gospel: the Christian teaching that faith can bring material wealth, success and physical well-being.
“God wants you to be happy. God wants you to be rich. God wants you to prosper, even as your soul prospers,” he wrote in his 1980 book, “Eight Keys to Success.”
The Bakkers practiced what they preached. They used money earned from the PTL Satellite Network to buy a 10,000-square-foot (929-square-meter) home outside Charlotte and vacation homes in Florida; Palm Springs, California; and Gatlinburg, Tennessee. They purchased luxury cars, boats and finely tailored clothes. To many of Jim and Tammy’s supporters, this only proved that the prosperity gospel worked.
Had Bakker been satisfied with television, he might have still been at the helm of the PTL empire when he died. Instead, he used the television money to build Heritage USA, a theme park along the border of North and South Carolina. Long an admirer of Walt Disney, Bakker sought to build a Christian version of Disneyland.
Heritage USA was extravagant: It had a 500-room hotel, 5,000-seat television studio and US$13 million water park, along with a packed programming schedule of worship services, seminars, workshops, dinner theater and concerts.
But the enterprise cost far more than the television money could support. PTL was nearly always broke, leveraged to the point of collapse. As he struggled to keep the money flowing, Bakker fraudulently used funds raised for new projects to pay past debts.
It all falls apart
On March 19, 1987, The Charlotte Observer published an article that described Bakker’s December 1980 sexual encounter with a then-21-year-old church secretary named Jessica Hahn in a Florida hotel room. Reporters detailed how PTL had paid Hahn and her representatives $265,000 in hush money. By then, PTL was $65 million in debt, losing $2 million per month, and on the verge of bankruptcy.
Bakker resigned from PTL in disgrace, and was sentenced to 45 years in prison for fraud in 1989. As Jim and Tammy Faye departed the courthouse, they sang the hymn “On Christ the Solid Rock I stand.”
The Bakkers divorced in 1992, while Jim was still serving his prison sentence. He ended up serving nearly five years before his release. Tammy Faye died in 2007.
Nearly everyone I interviewed for the book felt that PTL’s initial aim was pure: Spread the gospel to as many people as possible, using cutting edge technology.
But along the way, money and fame appeared to become the goal, not a means to an end.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: John Wigger, University of Missouri-Columbia
Read more:
- Underneath all the makeup, who was the real Tammy Faye?
- Christian satellite TV has broadcast evangelical faith – and end‑times prophecies – into Iran for decades
- Jimmy Swaggart’s rise and fall shaped the landscape of American televangelism
John Wigger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
