Jim Bakker

In the 1970s and 1980s, perhaps no one was more popular on Christian television than Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. Founders of the PTL club, and later the Heritage USA Christian theme park, the Bakkers also espoused a Theology of prosperity. God wanted you to do well financially, they told us. But in the 1980s it came out that the Bakers were prospering a little bit too much off of the donations their viewers had set in. And after Jim Bakker was accused of sexually assaulting Church secretary Jessica Hahn, prosecutors moved to charge him with fraud. Bakker was convicted, and in 1989 was sentenced to 45 years in prison.