Baton Rouge, La
Swaggart once passed away decades after a massive audience declined, and his name became a punchline on late-night television. His death was announced on his public Facebook page Tuesday. The cause was not immediately given, but at age 90 he was in poor health and suffered cardiac arrest last month.
The Louisiana native was best known for being a seductive Pentecostal preacher, one of a series of television preachers who were defeated by sexual scandals in the 1980s and 1990s before getting caught up in camera with prostitutes in New Orleans in 1988. He continued to preach for decades, but his audience fell.
Swaggart encapsulated his downfall in a tearful 1988 sermon, where he wept and apologized, but did not mention his relationship with the prostitute.
“I have committed a crime against you,” Swaggart told parishioners around the country. “Please forgive me.”
He announced his resignation from God’s assembly later that year. Shortly after the church said it had fired him for refusing to punish him for “moral failure.” The church wanted him to undergo a two-year rehabilitation program, including that he was not a year-round sermon.
Swaggart said he knew that fire was inevitable, but insisted that he had no choice but to separate from the church to save his ministry and Bible College.
From poverty and oil fields to famous names
Swaggart grew up in a poor, music-rich family, the son of a preacher. He excelled in piano and gospel music, playing and singing alongside his talented cousin who went on different paths: Rock’n Roller Gerry Lewis and country singer Mickey Gillie.
Swaggart, home to Feliday, Louisiana, said he was the first to hear God’s call at the age of eight. The voice gave him a goose bump and stabbed him in the hair, he said.
“It looked like everything was different after that day in front of the Arcade Theatre,” he said in a 1985 interview with the Jacksonville, Illinois Journal Corrier. “I felt better inside, it was like taking a bath.”
He worked part-time in the oil fields until he was 23 years old. He then moved entirely to his ministry, sermoning, playing piano, and sang gospel songs with the enthusiasm of his cousin Lewis’ barrel house at the resurrection of God and camp meetings.
Swaggart started radio shows, magazines, and then moved to television to see the honest views.
He called Roman Catholicism “a false religion” and argued that it was not a Christian way,” and that Jews “rejected Christ” for thousands of years.
“If you don’t like what I say, talk to your boss,” he cried as he walked in front of the congregation at the Baton Rouge Family Worship Center.
Swaggart’s message sparked thousands of congregations and millions of television viewers, and by the late 1980s he had become a popular name. The contributors built the Jimmy Swaggart Ministries in 1986 in a business that earned an estimated $142 million.
His Baton Rouge complex still includes a worship centre and broadcast and recording facilities.
The scandal that led to the ruin of the swaggert
Swaggart’s downfall took place in the late 1980s as other prominent preachers faced similar scandals. Swaggart publicly said in 1987 that his income was hurt by a sexual scandal over rival televangelist Jim Bucker and former church secretary of Bucker’s PTL ministry organization.
The following year, Swaggart was photographed at the hotel. Debra Murfrey is an acknowledged prostitute who told reporters that the two weren’t having sex, but the preacher paid her to pose for nude.
She later repeated the claims in the Penthouse magazine and raised the nude.
The surveillance photos that crippled Swaggart’s career seem to have come from a rivalry with preacher Marvin Gorman, who Swaggart accused of sexual misconduct. Gorman hired a photographer who captured Swaggart and Murphy in the film. Swaggart later paid Gorman $1.8 million to settle the lawsuit against Gorman.
More issues came in 1991 when California police detained another prostitute and Swaggart. The evangelist was charged with driving on the wrong side of the road and driving an unregistered Jaguar. His companion Rosemary Garcia said Swaggart was nervous when he saw a police car and was woven into it as he tried to stuff a porn magazine under the car seat.
Swaggart was later laughed at by the late TV comic Philhartman who impersonated him on NBC’s Saturday Night Live.
From the public’s perspective, he is still in the pulpit
The evangelists remained in the pulpit of Jimmy Swaggart Ministry, although in later years he was largely away from the news. His radio station broadcast church services and gospel music to 21 states, and Swaggart’s ministry boasted a global audience on the internet.
“My father was a warrior. My father was a preacher. He didn’t want to do anything other than a gospel preacher,” Donnie Swaggart said in a video message Tuesday shared on social media after his father’s death. “That’s what he put on this earth.”
The preacher caused another brief upset in 2004 with a statement about “seeing” a gay man in favor of.
“And I’m going to be dull and mediocre. If I see me like that, I’ll kill him and tell him that God is dead,” Jimmy Swaggart laughed from the congregation. He later apologized.
Swaggart was barely open to the public outside of his church. He has been a prominent name in state politics for decades, except for singing “Amazing Blessings” at the 2005 funeral of Louisiana Secretary Fox McKaten.
In 2022 he shared memories at a service ceremony for his cousin and rock and roll pioneer Lewis. The pair released their gospel album “The Boys From Ferriday” earlier that year.
Donnie Swaggart told her father that he had promised him “I will continue working” – to distribute the Bible, share the gospel, and “proclaim the message of Christ.”
Swaggart was survived by his wife Francis, son Donnie, daughter-in-law Debbie, grandchildren Gabriel, daughter Jill, granddaughter Jennifer, son-in-law Cliff, son-in-law Matt, daughter-in-law Joanna, nine great grandchildren.
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