How Jim Bakker became the Johnny Carson of Christian TV
The Conversation · 8 Oct 2026

How Jim Bakker became the Johnny Carson of Christian TV

When I was researching my 2017 book, “PTL: The Rise and Fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Evangelical Empire,” I interviewed dozens of former staffers and supporters of PTL, the ministry, television and theme park empire that the Bakkers built starting in the 1970s. Time and again, I heard the sam


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