Ozarks-based Televangelist Jim Bakker Will Be Focus of New ABC "20/20" Report

By Gregory J. Holman
Springfield News-Leader
January 14, 2019

https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/local/ozarks/2019/01/14/ozarks-televangelist-jim-bakker-abc-news-report/2570071002/

Jim Bakker is again in the news.

Late last week, ABC News announced that the disgraced '80s-era televangelist — who in recent years has been broadcasting and selling dehydrated food buckets from a church and condo development near Branson — would be the subject of a special two-hour episode of its "20/20" broadcast.

The Bakker episode is set to air Friday at 8 p.m. Springfield time.

In a promotional trailer posted to Facebook and Twitter late Jan. 11, ABC showcased what appears to be a sensational report promising new information about Bakker's activities three decades ago.

An unidentified voice on the trailer calls Bakker and his wife, Tammy Faye, "the Kardashians of the gospel."

Another unidentified voice states, "The fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker was a huge story."

Ted Koppel, host of ABC's late-night news broadcast "Nightline" from 1980 to 2005 and regarded as one of the most significant TV journalists of the 20th century, says on the trailer, "Sex, religion, money: We’re suckers for that kind of stuff. We always have been, we always will be.”

It's not clear what prompted ABC to revisit Bakker's case. The News-Leader reached out to a publicist for the TV network to inquire why, and whether ABC journalists contacted Bakker while preparing the new report. ABC's publicist said in a Monday email that the network would be releasing some information soon.

It's been roughly 30 years since Bakker's North Carolina-based Christian theme park, Heritage USA, closed in the wake of a scandal that prompted the demise of Bakker's Praise the Lord Ministries and its "PTL" TV show.

In 1987, allegations that Bakker raped his former New York church secretary, Jessica Hahn, became public. Bakker said the sex with Hahn was consensual.

ABC News plans to air a two-hour "20/20" report about Jim Bakker on Jan. 18, 2019. This photo of ABC News "20/20" co-anchor Barbara Walters and Jim Bakker shows Bakker in the mid-1990s, after he served a federal prison term for fraud and conspiracy related to his 1980s-era televangelist activity. Since 2003, Bakker has been broadcasting from the Branson area. (Photo: Andrew Semel, Copyright 1997 Springfield News-Leader)

Not long afterward, Bakker was dismissed from the Assemblies of God church, which was and remains headquartered in Springfield. Church officials cited "conduct unbecoming to a minister" in making their decision, according to previous News-Leader reporting.

Two years later, Bakker was convicted in federal court of 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy. Later on, some of those convictions were overturned. Bakker ended up serving five years of his original 45-year sentence.

Some observers, including a pair of Washington Post opinion writers who followed the case, said that it appeared that for years before the scandal became public, the Reagan administration was "less than eager to take a hard look" at Bakker's activities because Bakker's viewers and Reagan's political base constituted overlapping groups of voters.

While Bakker was in prison, his childhood sweetheart and wife of 30 years, Tammy Faye, divorced him and married his best friend. Tammy Faye died in 2007 at her home near Kansas City.

Bakker has since remarried.

In 1996, after he served his prison term, Bakker told ABC's Barbara Walters, "I don't have the need to be on television."

But in 2003, he began broadcasting again from the Missouri Ozarks.

In this 2002 photo, Jim Bakker holds one of the paintings that would go up at the Studio City Cafe, in Branson, where his TV show would be filmed. (Photo: Edmee Rodriguez/News-Leader)

In May, Bakker's show received national attention after Bakker claimed that the Ozark mountains in southwest Missouri would be the safest place to be should an apocalyptic disaster occur.

Bakker told his viewers May 1, "You're not going to live in downtown Chicago and survive the coming day ... Where are you going to go when the world's on fire? Where are you going to go? This place is for God's people and this place, we need some farmers to move here."

A January episode of his show included in ABC's trailer depicts Bakker and others on set promoting a product called Silver Lozenges. It is a "powerful duo of nano-silver and organic honey” intended to soothe throat irritation and promote saliva production, according to the store section of the show's website.

On Monday, the News-Leader left a message for Bakker with a representative of the Blue Eye-based Morningside church and condo development. A reporter also attempted to contact Morningside officials through Facebook.

The newspaper has not yet received a comment on ABC's planned special.