(RNS) — Jimmy Swaggart, a televangelist and gospel singer whose fall from grace in the late 1980s made national headlines, died Tuesday (July 1).
He was 90.
“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. 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,” according to an announcement from his ministry posted on social media.
Swaggart was hospitalized June 15 after going into cardiac arrest and being treated by paramedics, the televangelist’s son, Donnie, told congregants at the Family Worship Center Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, during a weekend prayer meeting after his father was taken to the Baton Rouge General Medical Center. Though paramedics were able to restore the elder Swaggart’s heartbeat, he did not regain consciousness, according to his son, leaving him in critical condition.
“Without a miracle, his time will be short,” Donnie Swaggart told congregants in mid-June.
Swaggart remained hospitalized for days, never regaining consciousness. On Sunday (June 29), Donnie Swaggart told worshippers at the church that the family had gathered around his father and it was just a matter of time.
“We want his last days to be comfortable,” he said. “We want him to be surrounded by his family.”
In announcing Swaggart’s death, the family thanked the staff, doctors and nurses who cared for him.
A legendary Pentecostal televangelist and musician — his cousins were country star Mickey Gillis and rock pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis — Swaggart was once one of the best-known preachers in America, filling stadiums for crusades in the early 1980s, building a massive radio and television following, raising more than $100 million a year for his ministry and feuding with rival televangelists Jim Bakker and Oral Roberts.
After Swaggart was accused of trying to take over Bakker’s troubled Praise the Lord ministry, Bakker’s lawyer warned that there would be consequences. “You will bring down the pillars of the temple on your own head like Samson,” Bakker’s attorney Norman Roy Grutman said in March 1987, according to The Washington Post.
Within a year, Swaggart would join Bakker in falling from grace — in large part due to a feud with Marvin Gorman, a Louisiana televangelist whom Swaggart had accused of sexual misconduct. Gorman turned around and sued Swaggart and also hired a private detective to follow him. Eventually Swaggart was photographed visiting a prostitute in New Orleans.
After an investigation by the Assemblies of God, the Pentecostal denomination that ordained Swaggart, he confessed during a live broadcast of a church service. During that service, he apologized first to his wife, Frances, whom he credited for all his success. Then he spoke to the rest of the congregation and his television audience.
“I have sinned against you,” he told his audience and a capacity crowd at his Louisiana church. “I beg you, forgive me.” He was later caught again with a woman identified as a prostitute in 1991, during a traffic stop in California.
Jimmy Swaggart Ministries hosts a show segment, “The Message of the Cross.” (Photo courtesy Family Worship Center)
The scandals cost Swaggart’s ministry millions — it dropped from $150 million in revenue during the mid-1980s to about $11 million in the 1990s, RNS reported at the time, and much of his television audience collapsed. The Family Worship Center Church, which could hold thousands, began to draw only a few hundred worshippers.
After a few months out of the pulpit, Swaggart, who was defrocked by the Assemblies of God, returned to ministry and remained active the rest of his life, preaching into his late 80s. Earlier this year, he joined the church’s gospel band at a camp meeting, his voice still clear and powerful.
“If you’re longing for a friend, loving and true,” he sang, sitting at a grand piano, “then turn to Jesus, he waits for you.”
That voice carried Swaggart, who was born March 15, 1935, in Ferriday, Louisiana, from the small Pentecostal churches he attended with his parents, W.L. and Minnie Bell Swaggart, to stadiums and revival meetings around the world. Swaggart began his ministry in 1955 and a few years later released his first album, “Some Golden Daybreak,” and would eventually sell more than 17 million recordings, according to his ministry bio.
He first began broadcasting with his radio show, “The Camp Meeting Hour,” in 1969, followed by the “Jimmy Swaggart Telecast” in 1973, which brought him to national prominence. He also has run a Bible teaching program, A Study in the World. He started the SonLife Radio network in 1995 and the SonLife Broadcasting Network in 2010, run by Jimmy Swaggart Ministries.
Jimmy Swaggart sits at the piano during a Family Worship Center event. (Photo courtesy Family Worship Center)
Swaggart also authored 100 books, including an Expositor’s Study Bible, which his ministry said had sold more than 4 million copies, and published The Evangelist magazine for five decades. This fall he will be inducted into the Southern Gospel Music Hall of Fame.
During his father’s hospitalization, Donnie Swaggart asked supporters to pray for his mother, Frances, saying she has been the rock of their family and has been by her husband’s side in the hospital room. The couple were married 72 years.
“My mother has always been the rock and the strength of our family and of this ministry. She is a woman of faith,” Donnie Swaggart said in a video update. “She is a woman of God.”
The younger Swaggart said his father had not been well in the days before his heart attack. The day before being taken to the hospital, he was so ill when Donnie Swaggart arrived to take him to a prayer meeting that the son encouraged the father to skip the gathering.
“No, I want to go pray,” Donnie Swaggart recalled his father saying. “I want to go pray.”