Latest news with #Swaggart
Yomiuri Shimbun
an hour ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, Whose Ministry Was Toppled by Prostitution Scandals, Dies at 90
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who became a household name amassing an enormous following and multimillion-dollar ministry only to be undone by his penchant for prostitutes, has died. Swaggart died decades after his once vast audience dwindled and his name became a punchline on late night television. His death was announced Tuesday on his public Facebook page. A cause wasn't immediately given, though at 90 he had been in poor health, having suffered cardiac arrest last month. The Louisiana native was best known for being a captivating Pentecostal preacher with a massive following before being caught on camera with a prostitute in New Orleans in 1988, one of a string of successful TV preachers brought down in the 1980s and 1990s by sex scandals. He continued preaching for decades, but with a reduced audience. Swaggart encapsulated his downfall in a tearful 1988 sermon, in which he wept and apologized but made no reference to his connection to a prostitute. 'I have sinned against you,' Swaggart told parishioners nationwide. 'I beg you to forgive me.' He announced his resignation from the Assemblies of God later that year, shortly after the church said it was defrocking him for rejecting punishment it had ordered for 'moral failure.' The church had wanted him to undergo a two-year rehabilitation program, including not preaching for a full year. Swaggart said at the time that he knew dismissal was inevitable but insisted he had no choice but to separate from the church to save his ministry and Bible college. From poverty and oil fields to a household name Swaggart grew up poor, the son of a preacher, in a music-rich family. He excelled at piano and gospel music, playing and singing with talented cousins who took different paths: rock-'n'-roller Jerry Lee Lewis and country singer Mickey Gilley. In his hometown of Ferriday, Louisiana, Swaggart said he first heard the call of God at age 8. The voice gave him goose bumps and made his hair tingle, he said. 'Everything seemed different after that day in front of the Arcade Theater,' he said in a 1985 interview with the Jacksonville Journal-Courier in Illinois. 'I felt better inside. Almost like taking a bath.' He preached and worked part time in oil fields until he was 23. He then moved entirely into his ministry: preaching, playing piano and singing gospel songs with the barrelhouse fervor of cousin Lewis at Assemblies of God revivals and camp meetings. Swaggart started a radio show, a magazine, and then moved into television, with outspoken views. He called Roman Catholicism 'a false religion. It is not the Christian way,' and claimed that Jews suffered for thousands of years 'because of their rejection of Christ.' 'If you don't like what I say, talk to my boss,' he once shouted as he strode in front of his congregation at his Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, where his sermons moved listeners to speak in tongues and stand up as if possessed by the Holy Spirit. Swaggart's messages stirred thousands of congregants and millions of TV viewers, making him a household name by the late 1980s. Contributors built Jimmy Swaggart Ministries into a business that made an estimated $142 million in 1986. His Baton Rouge complex still includes a worship center and broadcasting and recording facilities. The scandals that led to Swaggart's ruin Swaggart's downfall came in the late 1980s as other prominent preachers faced similar scandals. Swaggart said publicly that his earnings were hurt in 1987 by the sex scandal surrounding rival televangelist Jim Bakker and a former church secretary at Bakker's PTL ministry organization. The following year, Swaggart was photographed at a hotel with Debra Murphree, an admitted prostitute who told reporters that the two did not have sex but that the preacher had paid her to pose nude. She later repeated the claim — and posed nude — for Penthouse magazine. The surveillance photos that crippled Swaggart's career apparently stemmed from his rivalry with preacher Marvin Gorman, who Swaggart had accused of sexual misdeeds. Gorman hired the photographer who captured Swaggart and Murphree on film. Swaggart later paid Gorman $1.8 million to settle a lawsuit over the sexual allegations against Gorman. More trouble came in 1991, when police in California detained Swaggart with another prostitute. The evangelist was charged with driving on the wrong side of the road and driving an unregistered Jaguar. His companion, Rosemary Garcia, said Swaggart became nervous when he saw the police car and weaved when he tried to stuff pornographic magazines under a car seat. Swaggart was later mocked by the late TV comic Phil Hartman, who impersonated him on NBC's 'Saturday Night Live.' Out of the public eye but still in the pulpit The evangelist largely stayed out of the news in later years but remained in the pulpit at Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, often joined by his son, Donnie, a fellow preacher. His radio station broadcast church services and gospel music to 21 states, and Swaggart's ministry boasted a worldwide audience on the internet. 'My dad was a warrior. My dad was preacher. He didn't want to be anything else except a preacher of the gospel,' Donnie Swaggart said in a video message shared on social media Tuesday following his father's death. 'That's what he was put on this earth to do.' The preacher caused another brief stir in 2004 with remarks about being 'looked at' amorously by a gay man. 'And I'm going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I'm going to kill him and tell God he died,' Jimmy Swaggart said, to laughter from the congregation. He later apologized. Swaggart made few public appearances outside his church, save for singing 'Amazing Grace' at the 2005 funeral of Louisiana Secretary of State Fox McKeithen, a prominent name in state politics for decades. In 2022, he shared memories at the memorial service for Lewis, his cousin and rock 'n' roll pioneer. The pair had released 'The Boys From Ferriday,' a gospel album, earlier that year. Donnie Swaggart said he promised his father that 'I will continue the work' — distributing Bibles, sharing the gospel and 'proclaiming the message of Christ.' Swaggart is survived by his wife, Frances, son Donnie, daughter-in-law Debbie, grandson Gabriel, daughter Jill, granddaughter Jennifer, son-in-law Clif, son Matt, daughter-in-law Joanna and nine great-grandchildren.
USA Today
5 hours ago
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Pioneering televangelist Jimmy Swaggart's rise and fall remembered
Swaggart embodied the transition from traveling evangelist to radio preacher and then televangelist, garnering huge audiences along the way. Before his career ended in shame, televangelist Jimmy Swaggart was a pioneering legend, a magnetic preacher and performer whose mastery of both pulpit and piano earned a groundbreaking national and global following. Along with Robert Schuller and Jerry Falwell, the Louisiana-born televangelist was among the primary trailblazers and, at his 1980s peak, one of the most familiar faces in Christian television, bringing an expressive Pentecostal-style of worship into the evangelical mainstream. 'His preaching on television was particularly powerful because of his facial expressions,' said Quentin Schultze, professor emeritus of communication at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 'He helped lead many viewers to a more charismatic style of worship.' Swaggart, who died Tuesday morning at age 90, was a riveting and dramatic preacher, said Randall Balmer, a professor of religion at Dartmouth College, a private university in Hanover, New Hampshire. 'He pulled out all the stops – the tears, the exclamations,' Balmer said. 'He understood pacing and had an innate sense of how to manipulate people.' Swaggart, he said, embodied the transition from traveling evangelist to radio preacher and then televangelist, garnering huge audiences along the way. 'He was phenomenally successful at each one of those iterations,' said Balmer, author of 'Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture of America.' Swaggart pursued full-time ministry in 1955 and in 1969 launched 'The Campmeeting Hour,' broadcasting on more than 700 radio stations around the country. Four years later, 'The Jimmy Swaggart Telecast' would pivotally put him in front of a television audience. At the time, well-financed preachers could purchase nationally syndicated, Sunday morning airtime with the potential of reaching large audiences, Schultze said. Swaggart was among the few able to significantly capitalize on that opportunity, mastering the small screen with his intensely emotional delivery. In the 1970s and 1980s, television was really 'a medium of the face,' said Schultze, author of 'Televangelism and American Culture.' 'Not so much anymore, because of big screens, but back then most visual expression came from the face, and he had a very expressive face, along with his musical voice.' Swaggart's show would eventually air in more than 100 nations weekly. At his peak, according to the publication 64 Parishes, Swaggart's TV ministry would reach more than 2 million Christians around the globe. 'There was a time when 30% of all Americans who had their televisions on, on Sunday mornings, were tuned into Swaggart,' Schultze said. Pray for the family of Rev. Jimmy Swaggart who passed away today at the age of 90. He had been hospitalized since June 15 when he suffered cardiac arrest. In life and in death, we can thank God for His great mercy and His offer of salvation if we repent and put our faith in His… By the time sex scandals sledgehammered Swaggart's career in the late 1980s and early 1990s, cable and satellite TV, and eventually the internet, would make it 'virtually impossible' to attract the volume of viewership he achieved in his heyday, Schultze said. Religious audiences had become balkanized and many stations had discontinued paid programming. 'There was a short window where if you were a great television entertainer and could hire an advertising marketing agency to promote you, you could get some tremendous audiences,' Schultze said. "That's gone now, and there won't be anyone on TV or on the internet who's as popular as these guys were.' Preacher's rise and fall 'a cautionary tale' Swaggart, Schultze said, was a gifted singer with an affected, heartfelt style. As a younger man, he'd pondered a secular music career; his cousins were rock-and-roll icon Jerry Lee Lewis and country star Mickey Gilley. Instead, he chose the ministry, infusing traditional hymns with emotionally delivered, country music arrangements, upending notions of what Christian music could be and bringing mainstream legitimacy to Pentecostal-style worship. Swaggart sold 17 million gospel albums, though his enduring 'Southern gospel version of contemporary music' continues to divide churches today, Schultze said. 'Pentecostalism was always kind of tribal and seen as outside mainstream evangelical faith,' Schultze said. 'He brought it more into the center, and what became a lot of its faith and worship music was partly of his influence.' Had his career not been felled by his own missteps, Swaggart likely could have continued on, Schultze said. In 1988, Swaggart was embroiled in a scandal involving a sex worker, leading to his legendary 'I have sinned' apology delivered on live television. The incident led to Swaggart's suspension and then defrocking by the Assemblies of God, though he would eventually continue preaching without a denomination. 'He realized that unless he got back to TV he would lose everything,' Balmer said. 'He needed that huge influx of money and made a calculated decision to defy suspension and go back on his own as an independent. It didn't work out all that well for him.' A second scandal in 1991 would set Swaggart back for good. Balmer, who visited him in Baton Rouge while researching a 1998 magazine piece about the disgraced preacher, said Swaggart struggled mightily after his fall from grace. 'The whole enterprise was a shadow of its former self,' Balmer said. 'He'd had a whole empire, a bible college and various missionary organizations. I don't know how many acres he had in Baton Rouge but it was a large complex. And it was a ghost town by then.' Ultimately, Balmer said, Swaggart's legacy may be a cautionary tale. 'Here's somebody who rose to the pinnacle of evangelical stardom and through a series of missteps utterly destroyed his reputation and ministry,' he said. 'There were a few hangers-on to be sure, but by the time I got there 10 years later, the crowds of thousands were down to dozens.' While Swaggart's rise had been concurrent with the rise of the Moral Majority, the political organization founded by Falwell that helped elect Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and made the religious right a political force, politics was never his game. 'He was all about preaching and the music,' Schultze said. 'Sitting at the piano and doing an emotional hymn. None of the other TV evangelists could do that.' Contributing: Natalie Neysa Alund; Greg Hilburn, USAT Network
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Jimmy Swaggart, fire-and-brimstone preacher, dies at 90
As he barnstormed across America, Jimmy Swaggart would prowl the stage like a born-again Mick Jagger, all swagger as he strutted, bellowed, banged on a piano, spoke in tongues and — in a pitch he perfected to a near art form — urged the faithful to double down on their relationship with the Lord by contributing to his ministry. A fire-and-brimstone Pentecostal preacher, Swaggart bragged he had more followers than Oral Roberts or Jim Bakker, lived a luxuriant life on a 100-acre compound in Baton Rouge, La., and whooshed off to evangelistic crusades in a private jet with a fleet of 18-wheelers, loaded with musical instruments and television equipment, rumbling down the highway below. But his ministry was upended in the 1980s when photos surfaced showing Swaggart with a prostitute at a New Orleans motel and again when he was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol in the Mojave Desert while traveling with a woman who told officers she was a prostitute. Defrocked and disgraced, Swaggart clawed his way back to the pulpit, but attendance at his church shrank, his television ministry withered and the Bible college he founded stripped away his name. Unbowed until the end, Swaggart died Tuesday at Baton Rouge General Medical Center after suffering a cardiac event on June 15, according to a statement from Megan Kelly, a family spokesperson. He was 90. Much like his rock 'n' roll cousin Jerry Lee Lewis, Swaggart was comfortable onstage and confident at the piano, working the masses into a fervor when he invited those who were physically and spiritually ailing to approach the altar, where a team of ministers would lay their hands on the worshipers to begin the healing. "If you think Miller Lite is going to carry you home, you're wrong," he howled during one service in his native Louisiana. "If you think the president is going to carry you home, you're wrong," he said, pausing, and then gently adding: "It's Jesus Christ, that's your savior." His brand of populist hellfire played well in the U.S. and beyond in the 1980s when "The Jimmy Swaggart Telecast" reached nearly 2 million viewers a week on 500 stations and his monthly magazine, the Evangelist, was shipped to more than 800,000 households. His gospel albums sold millions, and when he hit the road, his followers would pour in by the thousands. Dan Rather once called him "the most effective speaker in the country." "I really don't look at it as success or lack of success," Swaggart told the Associated Press in 1985. "It's just mostly the Lord. I feel he wants me to do what I'm doing." Jimmy Lee Swaggart was born March 15, 1935, in Ferriday, a small crossroads eight miles from the Mississippi River in northeastern Louisiana. It was a tired-out town of just a few thousand, but it's likely that every soul there knew Swaggart, Lewis and their other cousin Mickey Gilley. The Ferriday Three, town folk called them. Swaggart said he was 8 when the Lord first spoke to him as he stood outside the Arcade Theater in downtown Ferriday, waiting to watch a Saturday matinee. "I felt better inside," Swaggart said years later. "Almost like taking a bath continuously." Like his cousins, Swaggart grew up with a burning desire to get out of Ferriday. He dropped out of high school, just like his cousins, and started preaching on street corners, then took a position as a pastor at a small church. The Bible had been his companion for years. But if Lewis' ascent was explosive as he rocketed to fame with "Great Balls of Fire" and "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On," Swaggart did the Lord's work in near poverty. While Lewis was earning up to $80,000 a month from record sales and concerts, Swaggart was lucky to scratch out $30 a week. Finally, Lewis bought his cousin a beat-up Plymouth and loaned Swaggart his backup musicians and studio time to record a gospel album. Swaggart finally hit the road, traveling the back roads of Louisiana and Mississippi, holding revivals. His gospel albums were good enough and his baritone voice strong enough that he settled in Baton Rouge in 1969 and started the "Camp Meeting Hour" radio show, a blend of gospel, dire warnings and road maps to redemption. By the time he was 49, Swaggart had overtaken Robert Schuller and Oral Roberts as the king of television preachers, reaching 2 million households a week and appearing on more than 500 stations. The money poured in. By 1985, his ministry was bringing in roughly $120 million a year from collections, magazine sales and merchandise from his World Ministry gift catalog. The trappings of it all were impressive: the 100-acre compound; the 7,500-square-foot house; the matching Lincoln Town Cars for his wife, Frances, and himself; the assembly hall that seated 1,000; the Bible college; the immaculately tended gardens; and the 28 relatives on the payroll. But the higher the ascent, the greater the fall. And for the Ferriday Three, there was to be a day of reckoning. Lewis had been a hell-raiser since he was a youth, and he was no different as an adult. He drank, took amphetamines and cheated on his wives. Lewis also seemed to have a tight relationship with death. A son drowned in a swimming pool, another was killed in a Jeep accident, and his fifth wife died of a drug overdose under suspicious circumstances. His fans rolled with his excesses and pitied his life tragedies. But when he married a 13-year-old cousin, they melted away. Gilley, who launched his career as a country artist but had greater success when he embraced pop, lost much of his fortune when he got into a legal dispute with his partner in a Pasadena, Texas, nightclub called Gilley's. Shuttered, the place burned to the ground in 1990 in a fire that authorities determined was arson. Swaggart's success with the collection plate occasionally raised suspicions. Former employees went to court, accusing the preacher of misappropriating donations, and lawsuits were filed against his ministry over tax exemptions and contested wills, which brought in millions. Swaggart's downfall, however, was born from a religious war of sorts that erupted in the 1980s among three pop-star evangelists — Bakker, then soaring high with "The PTL Club," New Orleans preacher Marvin Gorman and Swaggart himself. Swaggart took the first swing when he went after Bakker, accusing him of having an affair with a church secretary named Jessica Hahn. Bakker was eventually expelled from the Assemblies of God denomination and was sentenced to 45 years in prison for fraud. The sentence was later reduced to eight years, and Bakker was paroled after serving just five. But the outcome was far different when the preacher went after Gorman, who like Swaggart had an international television ministry. Swaggart accused the New Orleans preacher of having affairs with various parishioners, as well as another minister's wife. It was enough to get Gorman tossed from the Assemblies of God. Incensed, Gorman sued Swaggart for defamation and won a $10-million judgment that was later reduced to $6.64 million, then finally settled out of court for $1.8 million. Gorman's revenge, though, was not yet complete. Suspicious that Swaggart himself was an adulterer, Gorman asked his son to tail Swaggart one night. The son found Swaggart at a run-down motel on Airline Highway in New Orleans and took photos of the preacher checking into a room with a prostitute. Gorman handed the photos over to the Assemblies of God, which ordered Swaggart suspended for two years. Uncertain that his ministry could withstand such a long break, Swaggart gave it three months and returned to the pulpit, preaching under the auspices of the Jimmy Swaggart Bible College. On a bright Baton Rouge morning in 1988, Swaggart bounded up the steps of his worship center and — as thousands gazed on — spoke vaguely about his "trying time," his "burden" and his struggles with "Satan." When a women in the pews called out, "Do you want some money?" Swaggart smiled broadly. "I sure do." Three years later, Swaggart was pulled over for driving on the wrong side of the road in the Coachella Valley. His passenger told officers that she was a prostitute and that the preacher had picked her up while cruising the streets of Indio. This time, rather than face parishioners, Swaggart stepped down as head of his ministry in order "to reflect." His son Donnie took over Sunday services. Most days, Swaggart retired to his study and wrote or played the piano, singing his favorite gospel songs. During the length of his career, he wrote nearly 50 books and dozens of study guides and commentaries on the Bible. When he did preach, it was in a smaller church, where the gatherings would seem larger and his presence more commanding. When pressed about his sins, he was often direct. "The Lord told me it's flat none of your business," he said during one prayer service. Swaggart is survived by his wife, son, three grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. Times staff writer Grace Toohey contributed to this report. Sign up for Essential California for the L.A. Times biggest news, features and recommendations in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Toronto Sun
6 hours ago
- General
- Toronto Sun
Jimmy Swaggart, whose ministry was toppled by prostitution scandals, dies at 90
Published Jul 01, 2025 • 5 minute read Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who became a household name amassing an enormous following and multimillion-dollar ministry only to be undone by his penchant for prostitutes, has died. Photo by Postmedia Network files BATON ROUGE, La. — Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who became a household name amassing an enormous following and multimillion-dollar ministry only to be undone by his penchant for prostitutes, has died. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account Swaggart died decades after his once vast audience dwindled and his name became a punchline on late night television. His death was announced Tuesday on his public Facebook page. A cause wasn't immediately given, though at 90 he had been in poor health, having suffered cardiac arrest last month. The Louisiana native was best known for being a captivating Pentecostal preacher with a massive following before being caught on camera with a prostitute in New Orleans in 1988, one of a string of successful TV preachers brought down in the 1980s and 1990s by sex scandals. He continued preaching for decades, but with a reduced audience. Swaggart encapsulated his downfall in a tearful 1988 sermon, in which he wept and apologized but made no reference to his connection to a prostitute. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'I have sinned against you,' Swaggart told parishioners nationwide. 'I beg you to forgive me.' He announced his resignation from the Assemblies of God later that year, shortly after the church said it was defrocking him for rejecting punishment it had ordered for 'moral failure.' The church had wanted him to undergo a two-year rehabilitation program, including not preaching for a full year. Swaggart said at the time that he knew dismissal was inevitable but insisted he had no choice but to separate from the church to save his ministry and Bible college. Read More Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Swaggart grew up poor, the son of a preacher, in a music-rich family. He excelled at piano and gospel music, playing and singing with talented cousins who took different paths: Rock-'n'-roller Jerry Lee Lewis and country singer Mickey Gilley. In his hometown of Ferriday, La., Swaggart said he first heard the call of God at age 8. The voice gave him goose bumps and made his hair tingle, he said. 'Everything seemed different after that day in front of the Arcade Theater,' he said in a 1985 interview with the Jacksonville Journal-Courier in Illinois. 'I felt better inside. Almost like taking a bath.' He preached and worked part time in oil fields until he was 23. He then moved entirely into his ministry: preaching, playing piano and singing gospel songs with the barrelhouse fervour of cousin Lewis at Assemblies of God revivals and camp meetings. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Swaggart started a radio show, a magazine, and then moved into television, with outspoken views. He called Roman Catholicism 'a false religion. It is not the Christian way,' and claimed that Jews suffered for thousands of years 'because of their rejection of Christ.' 'If you don't like what I say, talk to my boss,' he once shouted as he strode in front of his congregation at his Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, where his sermons moved listeners to speak in tongues and stand up as if possessed by the Holy Spirit. Swaggart's messages stirred thousands of congregants and millions of TV viewers, making him a household name by the late 1980s. Contributors built Jimmy Swaggart Ministries into a business that made an estimated $142 million in 1986. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. His Baton Rouge complex still includes a worship centre and broadcasting and recording facilities. RECOMMENDED VIDEO The scandals that led to Swaggart's ruin Swaggart's downfall came in the late 1980s as other prominent preachers faced similar scandals. Swaggart said publicly that his earnings were hurt in 1987 by the sex scandal surrounding rival televangelist Jim Bakker and a former church secretary at Bakker's PTL ministry organization. The following year, Swaggart was photographed at a hotel with Debra Murphree, an admitted prostitute who told reporters that the two did not have sex but that the preacher had paid her to pose nude. She later repeated the claim — and posed nude — for Penthouse magazine. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The surveillance photos that crippled Swaggart's career apparently stemmed from his rivalry with preacher Marvin Gorman, who Swaggart had accused of sexual misdeeds. Gorman hired the photographer who captured Swaggart and Murphree on film. Swaggart later paid Gorman $1.8 million to settle a lawsuit over the sexual allegations against Gorman. More trouble came in 1991, when police in California detained Swaggart with another prostitute. The evangelist was charged with driving on the wrong side of the road and driving an unregistered Jaguar. His companion, Rosemary Garcia, said Swaggart became nervous when he saw the police car and weaved when he tried to stuff pornographic magazines under a car seat. Swaggart was later mocked by the late TV comic Phil Hartman, who impersonated him on NBC's Saturday Night Live . This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The evangelist largely stayed out of the news in later years but remained in the pulpit at Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, often joined by his son, Donnie, a fellow preacher. His radio station broadcast church services and gospel music to 21 states, and Swaggart's ministry boasted a worldwide audience on the internet. 'My dad was a warrior. My dad was preacher. He didn't want to be anything else except a preacher of the gospel,' Donnie Swaggart said in a video message shared on social media Tuesday following his father's death. 'That's what he was put on this earth to do.' The preacher caused another brief stir in 2004 with remarks about being 'looked at' amorously by a gay man. 'And I'm going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I'm going to kill him and tell God he died,' Jimmy Swaggart said, to laughter from the congregation. He later apologized. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Swaggart made few public appearances outside his church, save for singing Amazing Grace at the 2005 funeral of Louisiana secretary of state Fox McKeithen, a prominent name in state politics for decades. In 2022, he shared memories at the memorial service for Lewis, his cousin and rock 'n' roll pioneer. The pair had released The Boys From Ferriday , a gospel album, earlier that year. Donnie Swaggart said he promised his father that 'I will continue the work' — distributing Bibles, sharing the gospel and 'proclaiming the message of Christ.' Swaggart is survived by his wife Frances, son Donnie, daughter-in-law Debbie, grandson Gabriel, daughter Jill, granddaughter Jennifer, son-in-law Clif, son Matt, daughter-in-law Joanna and nine great-grandchildren.
USA Today
6 hours ago
- General
- USA Today
Iconic televangelist Jimmy Swaggart's rise and fall remembered
Swaggart embodied the transition from traveling evangelist to radio preacher and then televangelist, garnering huge audiences along the way. Before his career ended in shame, televangelist Jimmy Swaggart was a pioneering legend, a magnetic preacher and performer whose mastery of both pulpit and piano earned a groundbreaking national and global following. Along with Robert Schuller and Jerry Falwell, the Louisiana-born televangelist was among the primary trailblazers and at his 1980s peak one of the most familiar faces in Christian television, bringing an expressive Pentecostal-style of worship into the evangelical mainstream. 'His preaching on television was particularly powerful because of his facial expressions,' said Quentin Schultze, professor emeritus of communication at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 'He helped lead many viewers to a more charismatic style of worship.' Swaggart, who died Tuesday morning at age 90, was a riveting and dramatic preacher, said Randall Balmer, a professor of religion at Dartmouth College, a private university in Hanover, New Hampshire. 'He pulled out all the stops – the tears, the exclamations,' Balmer said. 'He understood pacing and had an innate sense of how to manipulate people.' Swaggart, he said, embodied the transition from traveling evangelist to radio preacher and then televangelist, garnering huge audiences along the way. 'He was phenomenally successful at each one of those iterations,' said Balmer, author of 'Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture of America.' Swaggart pursued full-time ministry in 1955 and in 1969 launched 'The Campmeeting Hour,' broadcasting on more than 700 radio stations around the country. Four years later, 'The Jimmy Swaggart Telecast' would pivotally put him in front of a television audience. At the time, well-financed preachers could purchase nationally syndicated, Sunday morning airtime with the potential of reaching large audiences, Schultze said. Swaggart was among the few able to significantly capitalize on that opportunity, mastering the small screen with his intensely emotional delivery. In the 1970s and 1980s, television was really 'a medium of the face,' said Schultze, author of 'Televangelism and American Culture.' 'Not so much anymore, because of big screens, but back then most visual expression came from the face, and he had a very expressive face, along with his musical voice.' Swaggart's show would eventually air in more than 100 nations weekly. At his peak, according to the publication 64 Parishes, Swaggart's TV ministry would reach more than 2 million Christians around the globe. 'There was a time when 30% of all Americans who had their televisions on, on Sunday mornings, were tuned into Swaggart,' Schultze said. Pray for the family of Rev. Jimmy Swaggart who passed away today at the age of 90. He had been hospitalized since June 15 when he suffered cardiac arrest. In life and in death, we can thank God for His great mercy and His offer of salvation if we repent and put our faith in His… By the time sex scandals sledgehammered Swaggart's career in the late 1980s and early 1990s, cable and satellite TV, and eventually the internet, would make it 'virtually impossible' to attract the volume of viewership he achieved in his heyday, Schultze said. Religious audiences had become balkanized and many stations had discontinued paid programming. 'There was a short window where if you were a great television entertainer and could hire an advertising marketing agency to promote you, you could get some tremendous audiences,' Schultze said. "That's gone now, and there won't be anyone on TV or on the internet who's as popular as these guys were.' Preacher's rise and fall 'a cautionary tale' Swaggart, Schultze said, was a gifted singer with an affected, heartfelt style. As a younger man, he'd pondered a secular music career; his cousins were rock-and-roll icon Jerry Lee Lewis and country star Mickey Gilley. Instead, he chose the ministry, infusing traditional hymns with emotionally delivered, country music arrangements, upending notions of what Christian music could be and bringing mainstream legitimacy to Pentecostal-style worship. Swaggart sold 17 million gospel albums, though his enduring 'Southern gospel version of contemporary music' continues to divide churches today, Schultze said. 'Pentecostalism was always kind of tribal and seen as outside mainstream evangelical faith,' Schultze said. 'He brought it more into the center, and what became a lot of its faith and worship music was partly of his influence.' Had his career not been felled by his own missteps, Swaggart likely could have continued on, Schultze said. In 1988, Swaggart was embroiled in a scandal involving a sex worker, leading to his legendary 'I have sinned' apology delivered on live television. The incident led to Swaggart's suspension and then defrocking by the Assemblies of God, though he would eventually continue preaching without a denomination. 'He realized that unless he got back to TV he would lose everything,' Balmer said. 'He needed that huge influx of money and made a calculated decision to defy suspension and go back on his own as an independent. It didn't work out all that well for him.' A second scandal in 1991 would set Swaggart back for good. Balmer, who visited him in Baton Rouge while researching a 1998 magazine piece about the disgraced preacher, said Swaggart struggled mightily after his fall from grace. 'The whole enterprise was a shadow of its former self,' Balmer said. 'He'd had a whole empire, a bible college and various missionary organizations. I don't know how many acres he had in Baton Rouge but it was a large complex. And it was a ghost town by then.' Ultimately, Balmer said, Swaggart's legacy may be a cautionary tale. 'Here's somebody who rose to the pinnacle of evangelical stardom and through a series of missteps utterly destroyed his reputation and ministry,' he said. 'There were a few hangers-on to be sure, but by the time I got there 10 years later, the crowds of thousands were down to dozens.' While Swaggart's rise had been concurrent with the rise of the Moral Majority, the political organization founded by Falwell that helped elect Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and made the religious right a political force, politics was never his game. 'He was all about preaching and the music,' Schultze said. 'Sitting at the piano and doing an emotional hymn. None of the other TV evangelists could do that.' Contributing: Natalie Neysa Alund; Greg Hilburn, USAT Network
