The Fall and Rise and Then Fall Again of Jimmy Swaggart
In 1991, the California Highway Patrol stopped a white Jaguar in Indio for driving on the wrong side of the road. The driver's explanation was that he had stopped to offer a ride to a young woman on that side and was in the process of moving back over when he was pulled over. The police could have accepted this or issued a ticket and moved on, but two factors changed the situation: the woman was a known prostitute named Rosemary Garcia, and the driver was the well-known televangelist Jimmy Swaggart. This was not Swaggart's first time being caught with sex workers; four years earlier, he was found with a prostitute in a motel on Airline Highway in Metairie, Louisiana. The previous scandal had nearly ended his career, and the second incident significantly hindered his comeback. Before delving further into this, it is beneficial to understand a bit about Swaggart's background.
Jimmy Swaggart was born in Ferriday, Louisiana on March 15, 1935, just six months before his cousin, the rock and roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis, and a year before another cousin, the country star Mickey Gilley. He tied the knot with Frances Anderson at the age of 17 and became a father at 19, despite lacking a permanent residence or income.
The Swaggarts led a nomadic lifestyle as Jimmy preached in small rural Louisiana churches, earning around $30 a week and staying wherever they were welcomed. However, a flair for performance was evident in the family, and by 1957 Swaggart had gained popularity at revival meetings across the South. He enrolled in Bible college, started recording Gospel music albums in 1960, and was ordained by the Assemblies of God upon graduating in 1961. He soon launched his own radio program, which became popular throughout the Bible Belt by 1969. In that same year, he established the Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, acquired an AM radio station, and initiated a weekly 30-minute television broadcast that was later syndicated. His television ministry rapidly expanded; in 1978, the show extended to an hour, and in 1980, it transitioned from weekly to daily. By the mid-1980s, his broadcast was airing on over 250 television stations nationwide and generating approximately $150 million annually.
Jimmy had come a long way from sleeping in church basements and preaching from the backs of trucks, but instead of rejoicing in his good fortune and helping other struggling preachers as Christian morality demands, Swaggart instead grew jealous of his position and schemed to bring down rival Assemblies of God televangelist Marvin Gorman, whose television show was becoming increasingly popular. In 1986 Swaggart discovered (possibly through the use of a private detective) that Gorman had a mistress, and exposed him to the AoG Presbytery with claims of “several affairs” (though Gorman only confessed to one). Gorman was defrocked, his TV ministry collapsed and he was forced to file bankruptcy; as one might expect, he wanted revenge. So, he hired a private detective named Scott Bailey and assigned his son Randy to assist him, and the two set out to discover whatever Swaggart might have to hide.
It didn’t take long; early in 1987 they discovered that Swaggart regularly employed the services of Debra Murphree, a sex worker who worked out of the Travel Inn on Airline Highway. On a day when Bailey expected Swaggart to visit Murphree, Randy Gorman rented another room and secretly took pictures of her clients coming and going; when Swaggart arrived Randy snapped his picture entering the room, then let the air out of his tires and called his father (who lived only a few minutes away). The elder Gorman confronted Swaggart when he emerged and promised he wouldn’t release the pictures if Swaggart would publicly apologise to Gorman, admit to the Assemblies of God that he had lied about the affairs and use his influence to have Gorman reinstated.
But for some reason, Swaggart never made good on his end of the deal, and in January of 1988 Gorman told Swaggart his time was up. On February 15th Gorman contacted the AoG Executive Presbytery, the same officials who had defrocked him two years earlier, and exposed Swaggart’s transgression; they initially suspended him for three months, then travelled with him on his private plane to AoG headquarters in Springfield, Missouri to set the matter before the church’s national leadership. One would think Swaggart would be contrite and penitent, but this was not the case; an evangelist who was on that flight later reported that “Swaggart was VERY contemptuous of them. At one point…he stood up and wagged his finger in their faces and said…[words to the effect that] Swaggart spoke for God, and the AofG did not.” The national leaders were so offended by Swaggart’s arrogance they increased the suspension to two years, and so it was that on February 21st, 1988 Swaggart made his now-famous “I have sinned” speech and temporarily stepped down from the pulpit.
Murphree was interviewed repeatedly by news media and admitted to the odd fact that though Swaggart had seen her many times, he had never had sex with her; instead he had paid her to pose while he masturbated. This dovetailed with Swaggart’s admission to the AoG leaders that he “suffered from a lifelong addiction” to pornography, which certainly surprised no one who knew anything about reaction formation considering his vocal anti-porn stance. In July she got an illustrated interview in Penthouse which they paid $210,000 for her story, of which the IRS stole three-quarters.
Meanwhile, Swaggart had returned to the pulpit in May, at the end of the original three-month suspension; the AoG leadership responded by defrocking him for disobeying their two-year ban, and Swaggart countered by making his Family Worship Center and TV ministry non-denominational. The defiant move came at a heavy cost; he had already lost considerable following due to the scandal and was a national laughingstock (mocked by celebrities from Saturday Night Live to Ozzy Osbourne), and the break from AoG sent him into a downward spiral. By the end of 1988 he had lost 80% of his viewership, and in September of 1991 a New Orleans jury found that Swaggart had defamed Gorman with false allegations of adultery, and ordered him to pay $10 million in damages. Still, the fallen icon was determined and charismatic, and soon after that verdict he preached to a standing-room only crowd in San Diego.
But a week later he picked up Rosemary Garcia in Indio…and that’s where we came in. She said he asked her to guide him to a hotel with in-room porn, and as she later told reporters
“He’s the same guy who cries on TV for all these people to feel sorry for him…to give him all their money. For what? So he can come give it to us. That’s pretty good.”
There was no tearful apology from the repeatedly disgraced televangelist this time; instead, he stood before his congregation and issued the statement which forms today’s epigram. His quick-thinking son Donnie immediately announced that his father would be temporarily stepping down as head of the ministry for “a time of healing and counselling.”
One might think that would be the end of the road for Swaggart, but as the adage tells us “you can fool some of the people all of the time.” In 1995 he founded the SonLife radio network, which according to Swaggart’s website “is heard nationwide on over 78 stations and around the world via the internet.” In 2009 he launched SonLife Broadcasting Network, “a Christian Television Network which airs nationally and internationally to a potential viewing audience of over 80 million.” And though he’s not the force he once was, there’s no doubt that he’s still a multi-millionaire with millions of adoring fans.
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