Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, whose ministry was toppled by prostitution
scandals, dies at 90
[July 02, 2025]
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who became a
household name amassing an enormous following and multimillion-dollar
ministry only to be undone by his penchant for prostitutes, has died.
Swaggart died decades after his once vast audience dwindled and his name
became a punchline on late night television. His death was announced
Tuesday on his public Facebook page. A cause wasn't immediately given,
though at 90 he had been in poor health, having suffered cardiac arrest
last month.
The Louisiana native was best known for being a captivating Pentecostal
preacher with a massive following before being caught on camera with a
prostitute in New Orleans in 1988, one of a string of successful TV
preachers brought down in the 1980s and 1990s by sex scandals. He
continued preaching for decades, but with a reduced audience.
Swaggart encapsulated his downfall in a tearful 1988 sermon, in which he
wept and apologized but made no reference to his connection to a
prostitute.
“I have sinned against you,” Swaggart told parishioners nationwide. “I
beg you to forgive me.”
He announced his resignation from the Assemblies of God later that year,
shortly after the church said it was defrocking him for rejecting
punishment it had ordered for “moral failure.” The church had wanted him
to undergo a two-year rehabilitation program, including not preaching
for a full year.
Swaggart said at the time that he knew dismissal was inevitable but
insisted he had no choice but to separate from the church to save his
ministry and Bible college.
From poverty and oil fields to a household name
Swaggart grew up poor, the son of a preacher, in a music-rich family. He
excelled at piano and gospel music, playing and singing with talented
cousins who took different paths: rock-'n'-roller Jerry Lee Lewis and
country singer Mickey Gilley.
In his hometown of Ferriday, Louisiana, Swaggart said he first heard the
call of God at age 8. The voice gave him goose bumps and made his hair
tingle, he said.
“Everything seemed different after that day in front of the Arcade
Theater,” he said in a 1985 interview with the Jacksonville
Journal-Courier in Illinois. “I felt better inside. Almost like taking a
bath.”
He preached and worked part time in oil fields until he was 23. He then
moved entirely into his ministry: preaching, playing piano and singing
gospel songs with the barrelhouse fervor of cousin Lewis at Assemblies
of God revivals and camp meetings.
Swaggart started a radio show, a magazine, and then moved into
television, with outspoken views.
He called Roman Catholicism “a false religion. It is not the Christian
way,” and claimed that Jews suffered for thousands of years “because of
their rejection of Christ.”
“If you don't like what I say, talk to my boss,” he once shouted as he
strode in front of his congregation at his Family Worship Center in
Baton Rouge, where his sermons moved listeners to speak in tongues and
stand up as if possessed by the Holy Spirit.
Swaggart's messages stirred thousands of congregants and millions of TV
viewers, making him a household name by the late 1980s. Contributors
built Jimmy Swaggart Ministries into a business that made an estimated
$142 million in 1986.
His Baton Rouge complex still includes a worship center and broadcasting
and recording facilities.
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Rev. Jimmy Swaggart raises his fist to make point at news conference
at the Sports Arena in Los Angeles, Friday, March 27, 1987. (AP
Photo/Lennox McLendon, file)
The scandals that led to Swaggart's ruin
Swaggart’s downfall came in the late 1980s as other prominent
preachers faced similar scandals. Swaggart said publicly that his
earnings were hurt in 1987 by the sex scandal surrounding rival
televangelist Jim Bakker and a former church secretary at Bakker's
PTL ministry organization.
The following year, Swaggart was photographed at a hotel with Debra
Murphree, an admitted prostitute who told reporters that the two did
not have sex but that the preacher had paid her to pose nude.
She later repeated the claim — and posed nude — for Penthouse
magazine.
The surveillance photos that crippled Swaggart's career apparently
stemmed from his rivalry with preacher Marvin Gorman, who Swaggart
had accused of sexual misdeeds. Gorman hired the photographer who
captured Swaggart and Murphree on film. Swaggart later paid Gorman
$1.8 million to settle a lawsuit over the sexual allegations against
Gorman.
More trouble came in 1991, when police in California detained
Swaggart with another prostitute. The evangelist was charged with
driving on the wrong side of the road and driving an unregistered
Jaguar. His companion, Rosemary Garcia, said Swaggart became nervous
when he saw the police car and weaved when he tried to stuff
pornographic magazines under a car seat.
Swaggart was later mocked by the late TV comic Phil Hartman, who
impersonated him on NBC's “Saturday Night Live.”
Out of the public eye but still in the pulpit
The evangelist largely stayed out of the news in later years but
remained in the pulpit at Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, often joined by
his son, Donnie, a fellow preacher. His radio station broadcast
church services and gospel music to 21 states, and Swaggart’s
ministry boasted a worldwide audience on the internet.
“My dad was a warrior. My dad was preacher. He didn't want to be
anything else except a preacher of the gospel,” Donnie Swaggart said
in a video message shared on social media Tuesday following his
father's death. “That's what he was put on this earth to do.”
The preacher caused another brief stir in 2004 with remarks about
being “looked at” amorously by a gay man.
“And I'm going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like
that, I'm going to kill him and tell God he died,” Jimmy Swaggart
said, to laughter from the congregation. He later apologized.
Swaggart made few public appearances outside his church, save for
singing “Amazing Grace” at the 2005 funeral of Louisiana Secretary
of State Fox McKeithen, a prominent name in state politics for
decades.
In 2022, he shared memories at the memorial service for Lewis, his
cousin and rock ‘n’ roll pioneer. The pair had released “The Boys
From Ferriday,” a gospel album, earlier that year.
Donnie Swaggart said he promised his father that “I will continue
the work" — distributing Bibles, sharing the gospel and “proclaiming
the message of Christ.”
Swaggart is survived by his wife, Frances, son Donnie,
daughter-in-law Debbie, grandson Gabriel, daughter Jill,
granddaughter Jennifer, son-in-law Clif, son Matt, daughter-in-law
Joanna and nine great-grandchildren.
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