Born in 1935 in Ferriday, Louisiana, Swaggart first “spoke” to the Lord while waiting in line outside a movie theater. “‘Don’t go in there, but give me your heart,'” Swaggart recounted the voice he heard. “‘I want to save your soul and set you apart as a chosen vessel used in my service.'” That service included a string of sex scandals, pilfering children’s aid funds for his luxurious compounds, and collecting checks from the elderly. When Zoe Vance, a wealthy California widow, died, she left her fortune to Swaggart’s ministry. Lawyers for the Vance family accused the preacher of “preying upon her loneliness and illness” to secure donations. According to ABC News, Jimmy Swaggart Ministries generated an estimated $142 million in revenue in 1986.
Swaggart came from humble beginnings. He first preached with an accordion outside a grocery store in Louisiana, where the young preacher realized that music brought crowds. The cousin of rock ‘n’ roll innovator Jerry Lee Lewis and, later, a two-time Grammy nominee, Swaggart turned down a record deal with Sun Records, which sought an entry into the gospel business. Swaggart began cutting records himself, slowly building a media empire through radio and live performances. Swaggart was a passionate preacher able to bring that energy to the airwaves, where his influence and bank account began to grow.
In the early 1960s, he founded his radio ministry and slowly accumulated a following. By the end of the decade, he had founded the Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, LA. With the ’70s approaching, he began focusing on television, where his fiery sermons captivated millions. He used his power to lambast Roman Catholics (“a false religion”), Jews (“because of their rejection of Christ, they have known sorrow and heartache like no other people on the face of the Earth”), and homosexuals (“we’ve got to get those limp-wristed preachers out of the pulpits”). In 2004, he remarked that if a man ever looked at him “like that,” he would “kill him and tell God he died.”
Despite being the preacher who “helped engineer” fellow televangelist Jim Bakker’s downfall, a tactic he had employed against other supposedly pious competitors, he was undone by his own infidelity. A year after the Bakker scandal broke, Swaggart was photographed with a sex worker, who told reporters that they didn’t have sex; he took nude pictures of her. Swaggart would give a tearful apology to the viewing audience at home and those in the pews of a Family Worship Center. Three years later, he was pulled over for driving on the wrong side of the road in an unregistered Jaguar with another sex worker.
