Televangelist Jim Bakker's Daughter Apologizes to LGBTQ People for Harm Caused by Family Ministry

In October 2026, Tammy Sue Bakker, daughter of the late prominent American televangelist Jim Bakker, released a public statement apologizing to the LGBTQ community and anyone harmed by church practices and her family’s ministry over the past sixty years. In her message, she urged Christians to reject judgment and recommended that supporters direct donations or volunteer time toward local LGBTQ organizations instead of sending flowers to her father’s funeral.

According to American outlet LGBTQ Nation, the 56-year-old Bakker published her remarks ahead of the memorial service for her father, who died on October 5 at the age of 86. In the statement, she disclosed that she had departed her father’s ministry in 2022 due to fundamental disagreements with its ideological and theological rhetoric, remaining estranged from him thereafter. She noted that she was informed of his hospice care only three hours prior to his passing and learned of his death via online posts shared by acquaintances.

Bakker explained that while she maintained silence for decades to shield relatives and the church, she chose to speak out following her father’s death, drawing inspiration from the compassionate legacy of her late mother, evangelist Tammy Faye Bakker. “It breaks my heart to know that the church has been responsible for millions of people suffering, being rejected by their families, living with depression, being kicked out of their family homes, feeling like outcasts, dealing with suicidal ideation, or dying by suicide,” she wrote, calling on believers to embrace Christ’s unconditional love and abandon hatred.

Her parents, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, built the multimillion-dollar PTL (Praise The Lord) broadcasting network in the 1970s and 1980s, establishing one of the most visible religious broadcasting empires in the United States. While Jim Bakker maintained hardline conservative dogma and was later imprisoned for ministry-related financial fraud, Tammy Faye broke with evangelical peers during the height of the 1980s AIDS epidemic by extending empathy to gay men and people living with HIV, including a historic 1985 broadcast interview with gay pastor Steve Pieters. Their son, Jay Bakker, similarly became an evangelical pastor advocating church inclusion and marriage equality.

Uránia previously reported in detail on the death of 86-year-old televangelist Jim Bakker and the legacy of his PTL network, and covered debates within American Christian denominations regarding pastoral support for LGBT believers.