Jimmy Swaggart, US televangelist undone by prostitute scandal, dies at 90
The fire-and-brimstone preacher had a global audience of around 200 million before his career came crashing down in the 1980s
Jimmy Swaggart, who was one of America’s most influential televangelists in the 1980s before an affair with a prostitute brought his career crashing down, has died at the age of 90.
Jimmy Swaggart Ministries confirmed his death on social media, and his family thanked medical staff at Baton Rouge General Medical Centre in Louisiana. It did not share details of the cause of death.
In his heyday as a fundamentalist Pentecostal preacher, Swaggart had an estimated global audience of 200 million. Then came the prostitute scandal in 1988. With tears gushing down his cheeks, Swaggart admitted to his congregation that he had sinned – without providing details – and begged forgiveness.
Swaggart, born March 15, 1935, grew up in the rough-and-tumble and racially segregated Louisiana backwater of Ferriday with two cousins who also would become famous – rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis and country singer Mickey Gilley.
As a boy, Swaggart was surrounded by the fire-and-brimstone Pentecostal version of Christianity he would later take to the airwaves. His father, a grocer and a tough disciplinarian, preached himself from time to time and Swaggart was only nine when he claimed he was first “called” to the ministry.
“You will preach my Gospel all over the world. You will even take it to Africa,” was the command that Swaggart said God gave him.