For release: 10/08/26
Lessons from the death of Jim Bakker
By Cal Thomas
Tribune Content Agency
In the 1980s the media gave them the name “televangelists.” These were men (and a few women) who preached a “prosperity gospel,” which claimed that God would reward donors who gave money to their “ministries.”
Jim Bakker, who died Monday at age 86, was among the most successful of the group, if your standard for success is money and fame. Bakker spent four and a half years in prison after being convicted in 1989 of defrauding followers in a scheme involving holidays at his Heritage USA Christian theme park and resort.
I opposed his imprisonment, recommending the biblical standard of restitution. Putting him in prison, I said, did not help the people who had been defrauded. He wrote me a letter from his prison cell, thanking me.
When Bakker was released from prison I invited him to my home. I had met him on a few occasions and appeared once on his “PTL” TV show. “PTL” stood for “Praise the Lord,” or “People That Love,” which he used interchangeably. Bakker “loved” in an unbiblical way. A woman named Jessica Hahn claimed Bakker drugged and raped her when she was a 21-year-old church secretary. Hahn was given a $279,000 (equivalent to $790,663 in 2025) pay-off for her silence, which was paid with PTL’s funds to Hahn through Bakker associate Roe Messner. In a drama resembling a soap opera, Bakker’s wife, Tammy Faye, divorced him and married Messner.
When he came to my home, I said, “I think I know the answer to this question, but I want to hear it from you. When did you start to go wrong?”
Bakker replied, “When I surrounded myself with people who told me only what I wanted to hear.” That should also be a warning for politicians.
I told him that television was like a drug and he had been a heavy “user.” I advised him to stay off TV. He did for a while but went back in 2023 with a new wife (Tammy Faye had died) and a new show.
Religion can occasionally be as phony as politics. Both require lots of money and both have been guilty of sometimes not telling the truth.
Even some non-Christians may be familiar with the verse: “The love of money is the root of all evil.” (1 Timothy 6:10) It goes on to say, “Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” That was true of Bakker, as well as the late Jimmy Swaggart who was caught with a prostitute in a seedy motel, but managed to continue on TV, duping his declining number of followers.
It’s sad to see how so many people can be fooled into believing lies. I blame biblical illiteracy. In 2019, the Pew Research Center published a survey titled “What Americans Know About Religion.” When examining evangelical knowledge of the Bible, they found:
– Only 66 percent of evangelicals knew that Jesus was from Nazareth, while 86 percent knew that Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt.
– Only 69 percent of evangelicals knew that Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, while 91 percent knew that David killed Goliath with a stone.
– 25 percent of evangelicals thought the Golden Rule was one of the Ten Commandments.
And yet some of these same people want the Ten Commandments placed in public schools.
This one always makes me laugh: “Surveys by the Barna Research Group show that roughly 10% to 12% of Americans mistakenly believe Joan of Arc was the wife of Noah.”
After the laughter and “holier than thou” expressions recede, there is still the problem of TV evangelists ripping off decent, gullible people. Jim Bakker is gone, but others remain.
Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book “A Watchman in the Night: What I’ve Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America” (HumanixBooks).
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