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 shrunk, his television ministry withered and the Bible college he founded stripped away his name.
Unbowed until the end, Swaggart died Tuesday, according to an announcement by Jimmy Swaggart Ministries. . 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, Francis, and himself; the assembly hall that sat 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.
He also seemed to have a tight relationship with death. A son drowned in a swimming pool, another 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 between 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 then 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 eight great-grandchildren.
Times Staff Writer Grace Toohey contributed to this report.
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