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HISTORY IN CHRISTIAN BROADCASTING In the early 1960s, Bakker and his new wife Tammy , (whom he had met while the two were students at North Central University in Minneapolis, Minnesota , and were married from 1961 to 1992) began working with Pat Robertson at Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network , which at the time barely reached an audience of thousands. The Bakkers greatly contributed to the growth of the network, and their success with a variety show format (including interviews and puppets) helped make '' The 700 Club '' one of the longest-running and most successful televangelism programs ever. The "Jim and Tammy Show" was broadcast for a few years from their Portsmouth, VA , studio. It was aimed at young children, whom they entertained with such films as " Davey And Goliath ", a claymation Bible -story series for children. For the half-hour show the couple gathered 40 children whose parents were interested in Christianity and the media and told them when to applaud, for instance, by holding up an old sign saying "Go bonkers for Jesus!". At the end of the show the kids had the opportunity to win prizes such as Tootsie Rolls . The Bakkers then left for California in the mid-1970s. Teaming with Paul and Jan Crouch , the Bakkers created the "Praise the Lord" show for the Crouches' new Trinity Broadcasting Network in California . While that relationship lasted only about a year, this time the Bakkers retained the rights to use the initials PTL and traveled east to Charlotte to begin their own show, '' The PTL Club ''. This time, with the Bakkers fully in control, their show grew quickly until it was carried by close to a hundred stations, with average viewers numbering over twelve million, and the Bakkers had established their own network, ''The PTL Television Network (also known as PTL-The Inspirational Network)''. They attributed much of their success to decisions early on to accept all denominations and to refuse no one regardless of race, creed, sexual orientation, or criminal record. By the early 1980s the Bakkers had built Heritage USA (in Fort Mill , south of Charlotte), then the third most successful theme park in the US, and a satellite system to distribute their network 24 hours a day across the country. Contributions requested from viewers were estimated to exceed $1,000,000 a week, with proceeds to go to expanding the theme park and mission of PTL. Eventually, Jerry Falwell , with the backing of a $20,000,000 drive took control of the PTL.1 Between 1984 and 1987, the Bakkers received annual salaries of $200,000 each and Jim awarded himself over $4,000,000 in bonuses. Their assets at that time included a $600,000 house in Palm Springs , four condominiums in California , and a Rolls Royce . In their success, the Bakkers took conspicuous consumption to an unusual level for a non-profit organization. PTL once spent $100,000 for a private jet to fly the Bakkers' clothing across the country. It also once spent $100 for cinnamon rolls because the Bakkers wanted the smell of them in their hotel room . According to Frances FitzGerald in an April 1987 '' New Yorker '' article, "They epitomized the excesses of the 1980s; the greed, the love of glitz, and the shamelessness; which in their case was so pure as to almost amount to a kind of innocence." SCANDALS On March 19 , 1987 , following threats of the revelation of the payoff to former secretary Jessica Hahn , whom Bakker's staff members had paid $265,000 to keep secret her allegation that he had raped her, Bakker resigned from PTL . Jerry Falwell , who was Bakker's successor at PTL, called Bakker a liar, an embezzler, a sexual deviant, and "the greatest scab and cancer on the face of Christianity in 2,000 years of church history." Tammy Faye Bakker - Obituary Financial irregularities in the PTL organization led to another scandal. From 1984 to 1987, Bakker and his PTL associates had sold "lifetime memberships" for $1,000 or more that entitled buyers to a three-night stay annually at a luxury hotel at Heritage USA. According to the prosecution at Bakker's later fraud trial, tens of thousands of memberships had been sold, but only one 500-room hotel was ever completed. Bakker sold more "exclusive" partnerships than could be accommodated, while raising more than twice the money needed to build the actual hotel. A good deal of the money went into Heritage USA's operating expenses, and Bakker kept $3,700,000 for himself. Bakker, who apparently made all of the financial decisions for the PTL organization, kept two sets of books to conceal the accounting irregularities. Reporters from the Newspaper '' The Charlotte Observer '', led by Charles Shepard, discovered and exposed the financial wrongdoings. 2 Heritage USA has changed hands a number of times. Recently, a portion of the land was purchased by Rick Joyner 's MorningStar Ministries, which is currently in the process of restoring the property for use as a Christian retreat and conference center known as Heritage International Ministries . CONVICTION AND PRISON Bakker was Indicted on federal charges of Fraud , Tax Evasion , and Racketeering . In 1989, after trial in Charlotte , Judge Robert Potter convicted Bakker of fraud and conspiring to commit fraud and sentenced him to 45 years in Federal Prison . Bakker's associate, Richard Dortch , senior vice-president of PTL and associate pastor of Heritage Village Church, also went to prison. In 1992, Bakker and his wife Tammy Faye were divorced at her request. Billy Graham visited Bakker in prison, as did his son, Franklin Graham , repeatedly saying, "Jim Bakker is my friend." Defending Bakker, one of his attorneys said: "If a man raises over $150 million for a business that competed with Disney and the major networks and kept $3 million for himself, he may be guilty of mismanagement, naïveté, even stupidity, but should it be a crime? Do you think Falwell lives in a five-room house?" The defense's argument failed. While mismanagement is legal, PTL was a non-profit organization, therefore Bakker had committed Fraud , which is illegal. According to Jim Bakker's book ''I Was Wrong'', the royalties from the books that he and Tammy wrote and the recordings that Tammy sold added up to $8,000,000. These royalties were given to PTL, as the Bakkers could not benefit from their own crimes. The board of PTL, independent of Jim and Tammy, awarded the Bakkers the 3+ million dollar bonus over a period of five years. They also determined Jim Bakker's salary of $200,000 per year. In early 1991, a federal appeals court upheld Bakker's conviction on the fraud and conspiracy charges, but voided Bakker's 45-year sentence, as well as the $500,000 fine, and ordered that a new sentencing hearing be held. At that hearing, Bakker was sentenced to 18 years in prison. AFTER PRISON In 1993, after serving almost five years of his sentence, Bakker was granted Parole for good behavior. Upon his release, the Grahams paid for a house for him and gave him a car. In 1995, he addressed a Christian leadership conference where 10,000 clergymen cheered and gave him a 15-minute standing ovation. "I thought people would spit on me," he later recalled. "Instead, they received me with open arms." On July 22, 1996, shortly after Jim Bakker had completed the writing of a retrospective, the Federal Jury ruled that PTL was not selling securities by offering Lifetime Partnerships at Heritage USA, as Bakker contended. On July 23 1996 , a North Carolina jury threw out a Class Action Suit brought on behalf of more than 160,000 onetime supporters who contributed as much as $7,000 each to Bakker's coffers in the 1980s. However, ''The Charlotte Observer'' reported that the Internal Revenue Service still holds Bakker and Roe Messner , Tammy Faye's husband from 1993 until her death in 2007, liable for personal income taxes owed from the 1980s when they were building the PTL empire, taxes assessed after the IRS revoked the PTL ministry's nonprofit status. Tammy Faye Messner's new husband said that the original tax amount was about $500,000, with penalties and interest accounting for the rest. The notices reinstating the liens list "James O. and Tamara F. Bakker" as owing $3,000,000, on which liens the Bakkers still pay. In 1998, Bakker released another book, ''Prosperity and the Coming Apocalypse'', and, in 2000, he published ''The Refuge: The Joy of Christian Community in a Torn-Apart World''. In January 2003, Bakker began broadcasting the ''New Jim Bakker Show'' at Studio City Cafe in Branson, Missouri , with his second wife, Lori Graham Bakker , whom he married in 1998. He has denounced his past teachings on Prosperity Theology , saying they were wrong. In his book, ''I Was Wrong'', he admitted that the first time he read the Bible all the way through was in prison, and that it made him realize he had taken certain passages out of context - passages which he had used as "proof texts" to back up his prosperity teachings.I Was Wrong, P 535 SEE ALSO
JIM BAKKER IN POPULAR CULTURE
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