Jim Bakker

From RationalWiki

Jim Bakker is the disgraced televangelist from the PTL Club (which stands for Praise The Lord, Pass The Loot, or Pay The Lady). His main claims to fame are commiting adultery with a church secretary and paying her to keep it quiet, watching his PTL empire collapse after the revelations became public, turning PTL over to Jerry Falwell during the scandal only to see Falwell do a hostile takeover, building a Christian amusement park in South Carolina (now defunct) just before his big scandal, and serving a prison sentence for bilking the flock out of their money.

Learning a lesson from Jimmy Swaggart, who was widely ridiculed when he went on TV right after his adultery scandal to give a phony display of "LOOOORRRRDDDD, I have sinnnnned against theeeee!" hyperemotionalism and then insisting on returning to the ministry as if nothing had happened, Jim Bakker waited several years to attempt his own comeback. He did it with a much slicker version of Swaggart's "LOOOORRRRDDDD, I have sinnnnned against theeeee!", in the form of Bakker's entirely self-serving book I Was Wrong, written in a carefully cauculated way to redeem Bakker's reputation. Predictably, he then returned to preaching.

He also once shared a prison cell with Lyndon LaRouche.