Jimmy Swaggart, passionate televangelist ousted by scandal, dies at 90

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 Tuesday. He was 90.

His death was announced by Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It provided no other details. Swaggart had been placed in intensive care at a hospital after suffering a heart attack June 15, his son, Donnie Swaggart, who is also a preacher, told a prayer service that morning at the family’s ministry.

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 $500,000 a day from donations and sales of Bible courses, gospel music and merchandise.

In his prime, 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.

In October 1987, Swaggart was photographed entering a hot-sheet New Orleans motel with a woman. In a later television interview, the woman said she and 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 Swaggart ministered, suspended him from preaching for a year and ordered him to undergo rehabilitation.

The Assemblies of God defrocked Swaggart in 1988 after he disobeyed its one-year suspension by taking the pulpit again after about three months.

He continued to preach independently. But donations dropped off, and while he still earned enough for him and his family to live very comfortably, he never regained the influence he had enjoyed.

Scandal struck again in October 1991, when Swaggart, who was in California on business, was pulled over by police in a red-light section of the city of Indio for driving erratically. In his company was a prostitute.

Soon afterward, Donnie Swaggart said his father would seek medical and spiritual help.

Jimmy Lee Swaggart was born in eastern Louisiana, in the small town of Ferriday, on March 15, 1935, to Willie and Minnie Bell (Herron) Swaggart. His father was a grocer, a slap-and-strap disciplinarian and an occasional preacher at the local Assemblies of God church. Both parents became evangelicals.

On Oct. 10, 1952, Jimmy Swaggart married Frances Anderson. He was 17 and she was 15. A year later, their son, Donnie, was born.

Swaggart founded his Family Worship Center in the late 1960s and began his television ministry in 1975. Before long, his message was reaching many millions around the world through television, radio and the internet. He recorded many gospel songs and wrote books on Christianity.

Swaggart’s wife helped run day-to-day operations of the family’s ministry, where Donnie Swaggart has followed in his father’s footsteps as a preacher.

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