The Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, who emerged from the backwoods of Louisiana to become a television evangelist with global reach, preaching about an eternal struggle between good and evil and warning of the temptations of the flesh, a theme that played out in his own life in a sex scandal, died on July 1. He was 90.
His death was announced by Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, in Baton Rouge, La. It provided no other details. Mr. Swaggart had been placed in intensive care at a hospital after suffering a heart attack on June 15, his son, Donnie Swaggart, who is also a preacher, told a prayer service that morning at the family’s ministry. “Without a miracle, his time is short,” he was quoted as saying.
Mr. Swaggart’s voice and passion carried him to fame and riches that he could scarcely have dreamed of in his small-town boyhood. At its peak in the mid-1980s, Jimmy Swaggart Worldwide Ministries had a television presence in more than 140 countries and, along with its Bible college, took in up to half a million dollars a day from donations and sales of Bible courses, gospel music and merchandise.
In his prime, Mr. Swaggart strode the stage like a bear, his voice thundering with emotion, dropping to a near-whisper, then rising again, sometimes to the accompaniment of tears — his own as well as those of his followers — as he spoke of his love for God and his disdain for the Devil.
“Satan, you’re in for a whupping!” was a typical Swaggart warm-up.
But Satan may have sometimes won a round. In October 1987, Mr. Swaggart was photographed entering a hot-sheet New Orleans motel with a woman. In a later television interview, the woman said that she and Mr. Swaggart had several encounters, describing them as “pornographic” but as not involving intercourse.
Early the next year, the Assemblies of God, the huge Pentecostal organization under whose auspices Mr. Swaggart ministered, suspended him from preaching for a year and ordered him to undergo rehabilitation.
Mr. Swaggart responded in February 1988 with an extraordinary, tear-gushing mea culpa to some 7,000 followers at his World Faith Center in Baton Rouge. Turning first to his wife, Frances, he said, “Oh, I have sinned against you, and I beg your forgiveness.”
As some listeners wept, Mr. Swaggart went on: “I have sinned against you, my Lord, and I would ask that your precious blood would wash and cleanse every stain.”
Some in the audience were so moved by the confession that they fell to their knees, praying in tongues, an indication to Pentecostals of possession by the Holy Spirit.
Just months before his fall from grace, Mr. Swaggart denounced Jim Bakker, another Assemblies of God minister and leader of the PTL television ministry, as “a cancer that needed to be excised from the body of Christ” after it was revealed that Mr. Bakker had a sexual encounter with a church secretary in 1980.
Mr. Swaggart had also cast stones at another prominent Assemblies evangelist, Marvin Gorman of New Orleans, accusing him in 1986 of being a serial adulterer. Mr. Gorman denied the accusations, though he admitted to one “immoral act” with a woman. He later hired a private detective, who followed Mr. Swaggart and took the photographs in New Orleans that sparked the scandal.
Mr. Gorman went on to sue Mr. Swaggart, accusing him of defamation by spreading false rumors. A jury awarded Mr. Gorman $10 million, but a settlement for a much lower amount was eventually reached.
The Assemblies of God defrocked Mr. Swaggart in 1988 after he disobeyed its one-year suspension by taking the pulpit again after about three months. He said he regretted parting from the Assemblies but insisted that to refrain from preaching for a year would have ruined his television ministry.
