March 19, 1987: The Jim Bakker PTL Scandal

March 19, 1987: Jim Bakker resigns in disgrace as head of The PTL Club, both the organization and the TV show of the same name.

Jim and his wife, Tammy Faye Bakker, had been in the ministry with the Assemblies of God denomination since the early 1960s, prior to joining Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) in 1965. In 1973, he built on his success there by founding the Trinity Broadcasting Network, and started The PTL Club (the initials standing for "Praise The Lord") in 1974.

They broadcast out of Charlotte, North Carolina, hometown of the world's most famous Protestant evangelist, Billy Graham. Living across the State Line in suburban Fort Mill, South Carolina, they built a Christian theme park there, Heritage USA. Jim's preaching of "prosperity gospel" led some people to joke that "PTL" actually stood for "Pass The Loot."

For years, there seemed to be little about Bakker that stood out from other televangelists, other than Tammy Faye getting emotional over big contributions to PTL, and her mounds of makeup running as she cried.

But on March 19, 1987, Bakker resigned as head of PTL, and turned over control of his assets to the country's leading Assemblies of God minister, Jerry Falwell. He did so because of the revelation that, in 1980, he and his former co-host, John Wesley Fletcher, both of them 40 years old, had drugged and raped Jessica Hahn, then a 21-year-old secretary for PTL, in a hotel room in Clearwater, Florida, and then paid her $279,000 in hush money.

Bakker eventually said the sex was consensual, but that every other charge was true. Selling out to Falwell, famous for his group, which he rather inaccurately named "The Moral Majority," didn't work, as contributions to PTL dried up, and operations, including Heritage USA, shut down before the year was out.

Bakker was indicted, and convicted on 24 counts, mostly of fraud, and was sentenced to 45 years in prison. He served 6, including time at the federal prison in Rochester, Minnesota, where he shared a cell with political charlatan Lyndon LaRouche. He later remarried, wrote a memoir titled I Was Wrong, and seemed to be on the path to redemption.

Until Barack Obama came along. That seemed to send him back over the edge, and he became an end-times preacher, a Tea Partier and a Trumpanzee. He has lived into his 80s, and is unrecognizable. It looks like he wears more makeup than Tammy Faye ever did.

No, that's not "snake oil."

But it was sold as a COVID preventative.

It didn't work.

Tammy Faye, considered a sympathetic figure by some, but complicit by others, also remarried, and became an advocate for gay rights and AIDS victims, something her ex-husband would not have done. She died in 2007, after a long battle with cancer.

Their son, Jay Bakker, became a very different kind of minister, with tattoos and piercings and preaching to a multicultural congregation in Minneapolis, including officiating at gay weddings and serving rainbow-colored communion bread. He looked beyond "prosperity gospel" and saw the real Jesus.

Jessica Hahn became an actress, had a relationship with comedian Sam Kinison, and had a longer-term one with TV producer Ron Leavitt that lasted until his death.

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March 19, 1987 was a Thursday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. There were 5 games in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Indiana Pacers, 111-105 in overtime at Madison Square Garden. Gerald Wilkins scored 34 points for the Knicks.

* The Washington Bullets beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 110-106 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.

* The Chicago Bulls beat the Los Angeles Clippers, 114-97 at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. Michael Jordan scored 40 points.

* The Golden State Warriors beat the Portland Trail Blazers, 125-124 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

* And the Dallas Mavericks beat the Sacramento Kings, 105-104 at the original Arco Arena in Sacramento.

And there were 4 games in the NHL:

* The New York Islanders beat the Detroit Red Wings, 3-2 at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.

* The Boston Bruins beat the Minnesota North Stars, 6-2 at the Boston Garden.

* The Los Angeles Kings beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 5-2 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.

* And, in hockey's "Battle of Alberta," the Calgary Flames beat their arch-rivals, the Edmonton Oilers, 5-4 at the Saddledome in Calgary.

February 21, 1988: Jimmy Swaggart Confesses

February 21, 1988: Jimmy Swaggart faces the music. This time, he's not preaching to the choir.

Jimmy Lee Swaggart -- he wasn't born "James" -- was born on March 15, 1935, in Ferriday, Louisiana. Also from that town are his cousins, rock and roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis and country singer Mickey Gilley. He went into the family business, but stayed on the gospel side of it, signing with Sam Phillips' Sun Records, before being ordained in 1961. By 1971, he was preaching on the radio, getting a TV show in 1975, broadcasting from his church, the Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

In 1986, Swaggart exposed another Assemblies of God preacher, Marvin Gorman, in a sex scandal. Gorman vowed revenge. He hired his son Randy and his son-in-law Garland Bilbo to watch the Travel Inn, a "no-tell motel" in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, Louisiana. There, they photographed Swaggart outside Room 7 with Debra Murphree, a local prostitute.

Gorman arrived at the Travel Inn a short while later and confronted Swaggart. They struck a deal: Gorman would keep the secret if Swaggart would publicly apologize to him, say that he lied about Gorman's affairs, and start the process of Gorman's reinstatement to the Assemblies of God.

Gorman waited almost a year, a year that included the sex scandal that brought down another televangelist, Jim Bakker. Gorman hand-delivered a note to Swaggart informing him his time was up, and Swaggart did not respond. So, on February 16, 1988, Gorman contacted James Hamil, a member of the 13-man Executive Presbytery of the Assemblies of God, to expose Swaggart's assignation with the prostitute. The Presbytery suspended Swaggart from broadcasting his television program for 3 months.

On February 21, on live TV, Swaggart confessed to his flock:

I have tried to be like a man, and to preach this gospel exactly as I have seen it, without fear or reservation or compromise. I can do no less this morning.

I do not plan in any way to whitewash my sin. I do not call it a mistake, a mendacity; I call it sin. I would much rather, if possible -- and in my estimation it would not be possible -- to make it worse than less than it actually is. I have no one but myself to blame. I do not lay the fault or the blame of the charge at anyone else's feet. For no one is to blame but Jimmy Swaggart. I take the responsibility. I take the blame. I take the fault...

He apologized directly to his wife, Frances: "I have sinned against you, and I beg your forgiveness." He apologized to his son, Donnie, and his wife, Debbie. (Donnie would later divorce her, marry again, and get divorced again. In neither of his cases was it believed to be the result of adultery, on either side. Donnie and his son Gabriel are also ministers.) He apologized to the Assemblies of God in general, and to his church in particular. He apologized to his colleagues, for having demeaned their common profession. He apologized to his followers around the world.

Finally, through a torrent of tears, which seemed genuine and sincere at the time, he addressed Jesus Himself:

And most of all, to my Lord and my Savior, my Redeemer, the One whom I have served and I love and I worship. I bow at His feet, who has saved me and washed me and cleansed me. I have sinned against You, my Lord. And I would ask that Your precious blood would wash and cleanse every stain, until it is in the seas of God's forgetfulness, never to be remembered against me anymore.

Whether God or Jesus bought it, only They know. The Assemblies of God did not buy it, and suspended him for 2 years. He became an independent minister, and founded the SonLife Broadcasting Network (SBN).

In 1991, he got caught with another prostitute. This time, instead of a tearful, apparently heartfelt public confession, he told his superiors at the Assemblies of God, "The Lord told me it's flat none of your business." If, as the old saying goes, "Confession is good for the soul," it sure as hell didn't work in Swaggart's case.

As of February 21, 2022, at the age of 87, he's still at it -- ministry, that is, from his base in Baton Rouge. Whether he's still doing the other thing, I am in no position to know.

UPDATE: Jimmy Swaggart died on July 1, 2025.

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February 21, 1988 was a Sunday. This was also the day of the FA Cup match where Liverpool FC beat crosstown rival Everton FC, 1-0, and Liverpool's John Barnes backheeled a banana that had been thrown onto the pitch as a racist gesture. I have a separate entry for that event.

All the other games in that round of the FA Cup were played the day before. Baseball and American-style football were out of season. 

There were 5 games played in the NBA:

* The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Chicago Bulls, 113-111 at The Coliseum in the Cleveland suburb of Richfield, Ohio. 

* The Indiana Pacers beat the Sacramento Kings, 130-112, at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis.

* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 120-115 in overtime at the Milwaukee Arena. In 1974, it was renamed the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the UW-Panther Arena.

* The Portland Trail Blazers beat the San Antonio Spurs, 117-112 at the Portland Memorial Coliseum.

* And the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Detroit Pistons, 117-110 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California. This would prove to be a preview of the next two NBA Finals.

And there were 8 games in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Vancouver Canucks, 6-4 at Madison Square Garden.

* The New York Islanders beat the Hartford Whalers, 7-2 at the Hartford Civic Center (now the PeoplesBank Arena).

* The New Jersey Devils lost to the Boston Bruins, 4-1 at the Brendan Byrne Arena at the Meadowlands.

* The Philadelphia Flyers beat the Detroit Red Wings, 5-3 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.

* The Quebec Nordiques beat the Buffalo Sabres, 6-5 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.

* The St. Louis Blues beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 5-4 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.

* The Chicago Blackhawks and the Calgary Flames played to a tie, 3-3 at the Chicago Stadium.

* And the Edmonton Oilers beat the Winnipeg Jets, 4-3 at the Winnipeg Arena. Kevin Lowe scored the game-winner with 1:45 left in overtime.