Christian Conman Jim Bakker is Dead

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Transcript:

Before I start on today’s topic, I want to encourage you to stick around to the end of this video. I don’t take sponsorships, or even grants from dark money political groups or anonymous Russian oligarchs, so I rely for the most part on my Patreon to continue making videos. This month, Patreon is instituting some big changes, so I want to tell you about them in case you want to join now and get some perks before the changes go into effect.

But I won’t bore you with that stuff if you just came here to learn more about the terrible news of a godly man who has recently passed on. On Monday, October 5th of 2026, Jim Bakker “went home to be with the Lord,” according to this lovingly written, AI-generated Facebook update posted by his wife, Lori Bakker. If you already know who Jim Bakker is, then I don’t need to tell you why this is such awful, sad news, but I know that many people in this audience are younger and may not be aware of who he was. So, let me make it very clear: this is absolutely devastating to hear, because Bakker died at the age of 86 surrounded by family, but if a just God actually existed, he would have died 60 years ago from a freak puppet-related explosion that took out the entirety of Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network.

Okay, so remember the video I made a few weeks ago about the Tim Tebow-fronted scam that promised Christians financial success but really just sent them into bankruptcy? And remember how I said it wasn’t exactly a new concept? Well, it WAS a pretty new concept back in the middle of the 20th century when the Reverend Jim Bakker got his start fleecing flocks.

Of course, nothing in religion is ever NEW new. Religions tend to adapt and evolve over the years–even the ones that claim evolution is a lie. In the 1600s, England sent their most annoying Christians off to sea, and when they arrived here in the New World, they began a journey that would eventually birth a new era of uniquely American theology: namely, the idea that if you’re holy enough, the Lord will reward you with fat stacks of cash.

“Prosperity Gospel” really hit its stride in the 1950s, when preachers like Oral Roberts convinced Christians that any money they gave him would be returned to them by God sevenfold. It worked so well on his congregation that he decided to take his message to television, giving birth to the era of the televangelist.

Pat Robertson picked up the ball from there, launching the Christian Broadcasting Network and the 700 Club to take as much money from as many rubes as possible, while also forming political connections that would allow these scam artists to push their bigoted conservative ideology on the rest of the world.

Jim Bakker entered adulthood during this era, attending a Bible College in Minneapolis where he met Tammy Faye in 1960. He already had a fiancee back home, but he cheated on her with Tammy Faye, and they ended up getting married, graduating, and joining Pat Robertson’s CBN with a children’s variety show. Eventually they grew in popularity to the point that they split off with their own organization, PTL, or “Praise the Lord,” broadcasting their own shows and setting up a headquarters in South Carolina that grew to the point of containing a theme park with a waterslide that they famously sent Jerry Falwell down in a suit.

Falwell, as you may know, was one of the leaders of the political arm of these huxters, known as the “Moral Majority.” They basically controlled Ronald Reagan like a puppet, and are the reason why the United States today is led by fascists who are instituting the Religious Right’s agenda across every aspect of American life. 

As depressing as that is, I think you’ll find a bit of joy from the rest of this story, even though you know that Bakker doesn’t die for another 40 years, and also it includes one very dark turn. 

By the 1980s, these scammy assholes were on top of the world. They were raking in millions of dollars from their credulous Christian audience who wrote them check after check in the hope that it would result in a heavenly lottery win and the defeat of those evil Satanists like Jimmy Carter. Bakker and his fellow scammers told them the money was going to their ministries, but instead they were spending it on mansions and private jets and designer clothes and whatnot. They used their religion to avoid paying taxes on it, and they got away with it for years because they controlled the Republican party in charge. FCC, IRS, and Justice Department investigations all quietly went away as quickly as they appeared, and it seemed that nothing could bring them down.

Enter this queen/tragic figure: Jessica Hahn. Spoiler alert/trigger warning for sexual abuse, because this is where it gets dark. In 1980, Hahn was a 21-year old church secretary. In December of that year, Jim Bakker and another preacher, John Wesley Fletcher, drugged and raped her in a hotel in Florida.

Using two different financial books to conceal where the money went, Bakker paid Hahn $279,000 of PTL’s viewers’ donations to stay silent, which she did. Unfortunately for Bakker, in 1987, reporters at North Carolina’s Charlotte Observer conducted an investigation and did what the Reagan administration refused to do: they found proof that all this happened and they published it.

For those who weren’t alive back then, let me explain: wealthy theocrats controlled the federal government, but back then they did NOT control the press. Stories like this are exactly why they spent the past few decades focused on purchasing and/or neutering our most trusted news outlets.

This became an absolutely gigantic bombshell of a story, forcing the government to actually take action against Bakker. Not for the rape, of course, but for the fraud, for which he eventually served just under five years in prison.

But here’s where it gets amusing: when Bakker saw the media and authorities closing in on him, he drafted a plan to make sure that when he got out of prison or otherwise waited out the tsunami of public outrage, he would still have the money and power he had accumulated. And so, he decided to hand PTL over to his good friend, Jerry Falwell, with the understanding that Falwell would pass it back to him when the coast was clear.

Do you see where this is going? Have you heard of phrases like “no honor amongst thieves?” Because real talk: Jerry Falwell is just as much of a piece of shit as Jim Bakker, which is why they got along so well. And so after signing all the necessary paperwork, Jerry Falwell took over PTL and began hosting the flagship shows. After some time had passed, Bakker called Falwell up and said he was ready to have the empire back now, please.

Falwell said, “no.” Actually, he didn’t JUST say no. He said no and then called a press conference. CNN was there, broadcasting live, when Falwell told the world in detail exactly what he said to Bakker.

Look, I can’t say this enough: Jerry Falwell was a disgusting piece of shit. But I do have to admire all the digs he got in against Jim Bakker, live on CNN, while explaining exactly why he was 100% entitled to steal his multimillion dollar operation out from under him: starting with Bakker’s own version of the Hahn story that has him impotent and weeping, the “true” story that has him bragging about raping Hahn, and ending with the “also you’re gay” cherry on top. Three things that don’t quite all fit together but somehow leave the average evangelical Christian watching at home in 1987 convinced that Bakker is an actual demented freak.

By the way, I got that clip from an episode of Nightline recorded a few hours after the press conference, in which Ted Koppel plays that clip to Jim and Tammy Faye and has them react immediately to seeing it for the first time. Notably, Jim’s response is not to deny the rape, but to say “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Points for honesty, I guess, considering that Falwell was himself quite the sexual pervert. After all, he quite famously lost his virginity to his own mother after kicking the goat out because the outhouse was too cramped.

So yeah, Jerry Falwell stole Jim Bakker’s empire and humiliated him on live television, while Bakker faced down what was originally a 45-year prison sentence. But you really can’t count out a good con artist: Bakker hired one of the world’s best defense lawyers, a man by the name of Alan Dershowitz, who got the sentence reduced to just four years by promising the judge that “Mr. Bakker would never again engage in the blend of religion and commerce that led to his conviction.”

Twelve years later, Bakker once again engaged in the blend of religion and commerce that led to his conviction, launching The Jim Bakker Show out of Branson, Missouri, with the NEW Mrs. Bakker, Lori. He put the prosperity gospel behind him, saying that that was just a little mistake he had made because he hadn’t actually read the Bible. In prison, he said, he had time to actually read the thing, and in doing so he realized that what God really wanted him to preach was buckets.

Anyway, yeah, Bakker definitely lived longer than he should have, and he definitely died with more money than he deserved, but at least he did have to spend those years being a completely and utterly pathetic clown, and he’ll be remembered as nothing more than that. Rest in piss, bozo!

Okay, now let’s talk business. At the end of this month, Patreon is forcing me to switch my subscription model. For more than a decade, my patrons have pledged to support me for every video I publish, which is why in that time I have consistently made exactly eight videos every single month of every single year. Beginning on Halloween (because this is very spooky, to me), patrons will be charged a flat amount each month, regardless of how many videos I publish.

For current patrons, nothing will change for you and you don’t have to do anything. You’ll be charged the exact same amount that you’ve been charged for the past however many months or yeras you’ve supported me.

New patrons, however, will have new tiers to choose from. Those will come with some new perks, which is nice. Unfortunately, I do have to drop our lowest tier, which is $1. Right now, as of this recording, you can sign up to my patreon for $1 per video, set a limit to not be charged more than $1 per month, and you get all the basic perks, like getting to watch these videos early and ad-free. After October 30th, the new cheapest level will be $5.

I wanted to mention the change here in case any of you wanted to sneak in under the wire and get to access my Patreon for a single buckaroo. If you do, you’ll be able to stay at that level for however long you want, even after the subscription level changes.

So, that’s the update! If you aren’t on Patreon or interested in joining, that’s totally cool and I understand and appreciate you doing the whole watch/like/subscribe/comment thing here on YouTube. The only difference you might notice going forward is that maybe I’ll be making fewer videos. This change has made me realize that I don’t have any existential threat making me pump out two videos a week. I might just, like, go on vacation or something. Maybe have fewer opinions about things. Who knows? It’s a brave new world. Okay, enough of the business. Here’s Indy the dog.

Christian Conman Jim Bakker is Dead (YouTube)