RIP Jim Bakker

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!

Reading through all of those, I probably should have given Bakker his own tag here on the site but never got around to it. I may do that in the future for archival purposes. Let's just say that the man never met a weird religious conspiracy that he didn't like. His show also pandered to preppers and survivalists, with products like the infamous potato soup that was mysteriously not dehydrated and sold in a big 55-gallon drum that was completely impractical for actual prepping.

Suffice it to say that if Heaven is full of people like Jim Bakker, I hope I never go there. I'm joking, of course, since I don't believe in Heaven or Hell or the whole oversimplified Christian cosmology, really. In practical terms, Bakker's death means one less voice out there amplifying conspiracy nonsens about magicians, witches, Pagans, and really anybody who practices a religion other than Evangelical Christianity. We don't sit around conjuring flies or making plans to eat babies. It's ridiculous that anyone thinks otherwise.

I will give Bakker credit for one thing, though, and one thing only. After being released from prison, he claims to have read the entire Bible while encarcerated and come to the conclusion that the Prosperity Gospel was wrong. He may be the only Evangelical I have ever heard admit that, despite him raising millions preaching it.

His new show also revealed the other side of that point - Prosperity Gospel exists to make preachers rich. Without it, Bakker's show remained a niche program that never provided him vast wealth. Anyone considering donating to one of those ministries on the promise of God making them prosperous should keep that bit in mind.