Jimmy Swaggart, one of the most popular televangelists of the 20th century until his tear-streaked televised confession to a sex scandal all but dashed his career and turned him into late-night comedy fodder, died this morning, July 1. He was 90.
His death was announced by his SonLife Broadcasting Network. He had been hospitalized at the Baton Rouge General Medical Center after suffering a cardiac event two weeks ago.
“Today, our hearts are heavy as we share that Brother Swaggart has finished his earthly race and entered into the presence of His Savior, Jesus Christ,” the message on Swaggart’s Instagram page reads. “Today was the day he has sung about for decades. He met his beloved Savior and entered the portals of glory. At the same time, we rejoice knowing that we will see him again one day.”
Born Jimmy Lee Swaggart in Ferriday, Louisiana, on March 15, 1935, Swaggart was the son of sharecroppers and cousin to both future rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis and future country music star Mickey Gilley. Swaggart himself often used piano music to back up his sermons but condemned the rock ‘n’ roll that his cousin helped invent.
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Swaggart’s strutting, sweaty, fire-and-brimstone style was a throwback to earlier eras of evangelism, a seeming rejection of the slicker, smiling approach popularized in the 1980s by fellow televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and Jerry Falwell. By the end of that decade Swaggart’s televised sermons — he sometimes was accused of being antisemitic and anti-Catholic, charges that Swaggart denied — had a global audience and were raking in more than $100 million a year in donations.
The downfall came fast. After being photographed with a prostitute in a New Orleans-area motel (the photographer was the son of a preacher that Swaggart had accused of having extramarital affairs) and suspended by his church’s presbytery leadership, Swaggart appeared on live television on February 21, 1988, to deliver what would be an extraordinary confession.
Swaggart’s tearful 1988 confession
Getty
With tears flowing down his face, Swaggart said in the lengthy speech: “To the hundreds of millions that I have stood before in over a hundred countries of the world, and I’ve looked into the cameras and so many of you with a heart of loneliness, needing help, have reached out to the minister of the gospel as a beacon of light. You that are nameless — most I will never be able to see except by faith. I have sinned against you. I beg you to forgive me.
“And most of all,” he continued, “to my Lord and my Savior, my Redeemer, the One whom I have served and I love and I worship. I bow at His feet, who has saved me and washed me and cleansed me. I have sinned against You, my Lord. And I would ask that Your precious blood would wash and cleanse every stain, until it is in the seas of God’s forgetfulness, never to be remembered against me anymore.”
If his most devoted followers saw repentance, more saw a performative bid to retain his career. Comedians were harsh, and a photo of Swaggart’s tear-stained face was ubiquitous. Swaggart eventually was defrocked and became an independent and non-denominational Pentecostal minister.
Three years after his confession, on October 11, 1991, Swaggart was pulled over by a police officer in Indio, California for driving on the wrong side of the road. He was with a woman who self-identified as a prostitute. He temporarily stepped away from his ministry but soon would resume his work as pastor of his Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge. Although he never regained a platform as widespread as his 1980s peak, he would continue as pastor of his worship center until his death, sermonizing on radio, TV and on the web.
