Jimmy Swaggart, who was among the many most profitable televangelists within the U.S. within the Nineteen Eighties, died Tuesday (July 1) on the age of 90. He died at Baton Rouge (Louisiana) Basic Medical Middle two weeks after struggling a cardiac occasion on June 15, based on an announcement from Megan Kelly, a household spokesperson.
Over the course of his profession, Swaggart wrote practically 50 books and dozens of research guides and commentaries on the Bible.
He additionally recorded quite a few albums. His 1980 album Worship obtained a Grammy nomination for finest gospel efficiency, conventional. Swaggart positioned 4 albums on Billboard’s Top Christian Albums chart within the mid-Nineteen Eighties: Dwelling Waters (No. 12 in 1984), Jesus Simply the Point out of Your Identify (No. 32 in 1984), Candy Anointing (No. 22 in 1985) and It’s Starting to Rain (No. 13 in 1986).
However Swaggart was not a fan of Christian rock music. In 1987, he co-authored Spiritual Rock n Roll: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothes with Robert Paul Lamb, by which he argued that the rise of the Modern Christian Music is as an extension of “worldly” leisure pursuits.
Jimmy Lee Swaggart was born on March 15, 1935, in Ferriday, a small city in northeastern Louisiana. Swaggart had two cousins who made it large in music: rock ’n’ roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis (who was additionally born in Ferriday) and nation music star Mickey Gilley. They have been identified regionally as The Ferriday Three. Lewis, who was within the first-class of artists inducted into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame in 1986, and Gilley, who amassed 17 No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Scorching Nation Songs chart, each died in 2022 – Gilley in May at age 86; Lewis in October at age 87.
A hearth-and-brimstone Pentecostal preacher, Swaggart started full-time evangelistic work in 1955. In 1960, he started recording gospel music albums and transmitting on Christian radio stations. In 1961, he was ordained by the Assemblies of God. A 12 months later, he started his radio ministry.
In 1971, Swaggart started transmitting a weekly, 30-minute telecast over native TV stations in Baton Rouge. Two years later, he proposed to tv producers in Nashville a program together with a music section, a brief sermon and time for speaking about present ministry tasks. Inside weeks, The Jimmy Swaggart Telecast was being broadcast across the U.S.
By 1984, Swaggart had overtaken Robert Schuller and Oral Roberts as America’s high televangelist. The Jimmy Swaggart Telecast reached practically 2 million viewers every week on 500 stations. Swaggart’s month-to-month journal, The Evangelist, was distributed to greater than 800,000 households.
By 1985, his ministry was reportedly bringing in roughly $120 million a 12 months from collections, journal gross sales and merchandise gross sales.
A bitter rivalry among the many high televangelists of the period led to destroy. Swaggart took the primary swing when he accused Jim Bakker of getting an affair with church secretary Jessica Hahn. On April 6, 1987, Swaggart and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker appeared on the quilt of TIME journal with the quilt line “Unholy Row: TV Preacher Jimmy Swaggart and the Besieged Bakkers.” Swaggart acknowledged that he had handed alongside rumors of Jim Bakker’s illicit habits to officers of the Assemblies of God, the Pentecostal denomination by which each have been clergy.
Swaggart additionally went after New Orleans preacher Marvin Gorman, accusing him of getting a number of affairs. Gorman fought again, suing Swaggart for defamation and in the end settling out of court docket for $1.8 million. Suspicious that Swaggart was an adulterer, Gorman requested his son to tail Swaggart one evening. The son discovered Swaggart at a motel in New Orleans and took pictures of the preacher checking right into a room with a prostitute. On Feb. 16, 1988, Gorman handed the pictures over to the Assemblies of God, which ordered Swaggart suspended for 3 months.
5 days later, Swaggart tearfully delivered what got here to be generally known as “I’ve sinned” speech on reside tv, a picture that has change into iconic.
The nationwide presbytery of the Assemblies of God defrocked Swaggart, eradicating his credentials and ministerial license. Swaggart countered by changing into an impartial and non-denominational Pentecostal minister, establishing Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, primarily based on the Household Worship Middle in Baton Rouge.
A second scandal involving one other prostitute three years later additional diminished Swaggart’s recognition. Even so, Swaggart was senior pastor of Household Worship Middle till his loss of life.
Swaggart is survived by his spouse of 73 years, Francis (whom he married when he was 17 and he or she was 15); a son, Donnie; three grandchildren and 9 nice grandchildren.