The Second Coming of Televangelist Jim Bakker

Bakker is 77 and a celebrity of sorts, famous in very specific evangelical Christian circles for his long career as a televangelist as well as the messy public end to that fame. Bakker is a Michigan-born, Bible-college-educated evangelical who began his career as a televangelist within three years of his marriage to his first wife, Tammy Faye, in 1961. (Tammy, who died in 2007, was famous for her extravagant eye makeup, which always bled down her face when she cried on the show.) Together, the Bakkers became one of the most prominent televangelist couples in the 1970s and '80s, just as televangelism began its rapid rise to massive popularity in America.