The crazy has finally left the building. Disgraced televangelist, talk show host, potato soup monger, and all-around evangelical nutbag Jim Bakker passed away this week at the age of 86. Bakker was a "Prosperity Gospel" preacher who perfected the art of raising massive donations in the 1980's. A series of scandals sank his ministry and sent him to prison, and his ministry lost everything. After serving his time he returned to television, but never again reached anywhere near his previous viewership.
Jim Bakker, who along with his first wife Tammy Faye built an evangelical empire around the hugely successful "The PTL Club" TV show, only to lose it all over a sex scandal and financial crimes, has died. He was 86. Bakker died Monday, his second wife, Lori Bakker, said in a statement. His cause of death was not immediately clear.
"He was a pioneer of Christian television, but to me, he was my husband, my best friend, and the man I was honored to walk beside through so many seasons of life and ministry," she said. The pair lived near the Missouri entertainment town of Branson and filmed their TV show "The Jim Bakker Show" there since it launched in 2003. Bakker suffered a stroke in 2020.
But it was another evangelical program that made Jim and his first wife Tammy Faye Bakker cultural icons — so much so that they were often skewered in the 1980s and 1990s by late-night comedians and parodied on "Saturday Night Live." A theatrical movie on their lives, "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," was released in September 2021.
At its peak in the mid-1980s, the Bakkers' ministry included not only the TV show drawing up to 13 million nightly viewers but also the Christian-based Heritage USA theme park and hotel in Fort Mill, South Carolina.
Augoeides has covered some of Bakker's silliest hits from his latest program. In addition to his attempt to build a potato soup empire, he has sounded off on eclipses, neighbors eating babies, making fun of Donald Trump, phony virus treatments, and witches. So many witches. Barack Obama's "witch doctor army." And so much more!