Jimmy swaggart biography pdf Continue Called King Honky Tonk Heaven by Newsweek in 1982, Jimmy Swaggart was America's most popular televangelist in the 1980s. At Swaggart's peak in 1987, when he was preaching from the pulpit at his Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, Arbionon estimated his weekly audience in the U.S. at 2.1 million viewers. With his access to the Ronald Reagan White House and the international coverage of Jimmy Swaggart's ministries, he was a leading figure in the political emergence of the Christian right. Swaggart's reputation declined after a sex scandal broke in 1988. Unmammed by his denomination, the Assemblies of God, he continued to work as a non-denominational preacher, but was implicated in another sex scandal in 1991. Since then, Swaggart's career has been overshadowed. Born in Ferride, Louisiana, Swaggart grew up poor in a community without electricity and paved roads. His father, Willie Leon Son Swaggart, was a violinist who worked for a bootlegger before being drawn with his wife, Minnie Belle Herron, in the Assembly of God. The Pentecost denomination, the Assembly of God measures the faith of adherents by their possession of the Holy Spirit, manifestations of which include speaking in tongues. Music is crucial in the highly emotional services of the Pentecostals, and the Swaggart family is replete with talent. Minnie Belle sang in the choir, and Swaggart's cousins were rock and country stars Jerry Lee Lewis and Mickey Gilley. Swaggart became a successful Gospel singer, earning several gold records, but strongly despising secular music. Pentecostal dominated Swaggart's life from the beginning. By the age of nine, he claimed to have spoken in tongues, and within a few years, when Willie Leon founded his own church in Ferride, Swaggart became a pianist. In 1952 he married Frances Anderson, who became his assistant. Swaggart has embarked on a full-time ministry in rural Louisiana, often preaching from the back of a flat trailer. Unlike most televangelists, who became his colleagues and rivals in the 1970s and 1980s, Swaggart rarely embellished his message or adapted his speech to the expectations of America at the end of the twentieth century. He was an unapologetic and unreconstructed supporter of the old religion and performed in an emotionally fervent style strongly reminiscent of Billy Sunday and meeting the rebirth of an earlier age tent. He easily moved between the pulp and piano and put on a rollercoack, clapping the hands of the show as he admonished sinners and excoriated Jews and Catholics, Hollywood and popular music, science and secularism. Swaggart preached the gospel of biblical literalism in accordance with his own interpretation. In 1961, after more than half a decade of freelance sermons, Swaggart was ordained to the Assembly of God's Minister. His Family Center of Worship in Baton Rouge began modestly, but to has grown in for megachurches with campus buildings and more than a thousand parishioners. Broadcasting and shrewd marketing brought him success. In 1962 he began preaching on the radio in the south and acquired a small network of stations. Television soon followed. By 1975, his weekly tv shows had been seen all over the country, and in 1980 he added a daily program. He also created an extensive mailing list. Swaggart's fiery style of speech was compared to Hughie Long's populism, but his messages were apocalyptic and attracted an audience uncomfortable with a rapidly changing society. Swaggart was more careful than some of his rivals in the e-church to document his finances. However, he was clearly a pitcher with a large catalog of merchandise. Swaggart Ministries enjoy a live stream of revenue from the sale of his gospel records along with Bibles and religious texts, calendars, and Christmas cards and trinkets. His fervent denunciations of pornography made some think about his own sexual obsessions even before the hidden side of his personal life appeared. Swaggart's ongoing relationship with prostitutes surfaced after he exposed fellow Assembly minister Marvin Gorman for adultery. As a result, Gorman was defused. Seeking revenge, Gorman collected photographs of Swaggart's sexual activities and threatened to expose him if he did not publicly renounce his accusations of adultery. When Swaggart refused to respond to the blackmail, Gorman presented his evidence to the Assembly's governing body. On February 21, 1988, Swaggart told his television audience that he had sinned. God's congregations removed Swaggart, and later, considering him unrereciable, desecrated him. Swaggart continued his work under a non-denominational banner, but unfavorable advertising undermined his audience and his income. In 1991, he was stopped by a California Highway Patrol for erratic driving and was found with a prostitute. His wife Frances, son Donnie and grandson Gabriel took a more public role at the Family Worship Center and his other ministries. Swaggart's career as a religious broadcaster continues to this day, but he never regained his influence in the 1980s. Page 2 Page 3 This biography of a living person needs additional quotes to verify. Please help by adding reliable sources. Controversial material about living persons who have no sources or bad sources should be immediately removed, especially if potentially defamatory or harmful. Find sources: Jimmy Swaggart - News Newspaper Book Scientist JSTOR (March 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Jimmy SwaggartSwaggart in 2009BornJimmy Lee Swaggart (1935-03-15) March 15, 1935 (age 85) Ferride, Louisiana, USA. OccupationEvangelist, singer, author, author, PianistYears active1955-presentTelevisionThe Jimmy Swaggart Telecast (1971-present) Wife (s) Francis Swaggart (m. 1952) ChildrenDonnie SwaggartWebsitejsm.org Jimmy Lee Swaggart (/ˈswæɡərt/; born March 15, 1935) is an American Pentecostal evangelist. Swaggart's television department, which began in 1971, has a visual audience both in the U.S. and internationally. Jimmy Swaggart Telecast and A Study in the Word's weekly programs are broadcast throughout the United States and on 78 channels in 104 other countries, as well as over the Internet. At its peak in its heyday in the 1980s, its telecast was broadcast by more than 3,000 stations and cable systems each week. He currently owns and operates the SonLife broadcast network. Sexual scandals with prostitutes in the late 1980s and early 1990s led to the Assembly of God desecrating him. As a result of the scandals, Swaggart temporarily resigned as head of the ministry Jimmy Swaggart. Jimmy Lee Swaggart was born on March 15, 1935, in Ferrid, Louisiana. By birth, he is the nephew of Arila (Swaggart's father) Wells (1916-2015), who was also manager of Wells Grocery in Tunica, Louisiana. He is the cousin of rock 'n' roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis and country music star Mickey Gilley. He also had a sister, Jeanette Ensminger (1942-1999). Together with his parents, Swaggart visited a small church in Ferrida attended by 25 members of the Assembly of God. In 1952, at the age of 17, Swaggart married 15-year-old Frances Anderson, whom he met in church while playing music with his father. They have a son named Donnie. Swaggart worked several part-time odd jobs to support his young family, and began singing Southern Gospel music in various churches. According to his autobiography, Swaggart, along with his wife and son, lived in poverty during the 1950s as he preached throughout rural Louisiana, struggling to survive at US$30 a week (equivalent to $270 in 2019). Being too poor to own a house, the Swaggarts lived in church basements, pastors' homes and small motels. Sun Records producer Sam Phillips wanted to start a gospel music line for the label (perhaps to remain in competition with RCA Victor and Columbia, who also had evangelical lines at the time) and wanted Swaggart for Sun to be the label's first gospel artist. Swaggart's cousin Jerry Lee Lewis, who previously signed with The Sun, was reportedly making $20,000 a week at the time. Although the proposal meant a promise of significant income for him and his family, Swaggart denied Phillips, saying he was called to preach the gospel. Dedication and early career Preaching from a tablet trailer gifted to him, Swaggart began working as a full-time evangelist in Year. He began to develop a revival-meeting following across the American South. In 1960, he began recording gospel albums and broadcasting on Christian radio stations. In 1961, Swaggart was God's assemblies; a year later he began his radio service. In the late 1960s, Swaggart founded a small church called the Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; the church eventually became a district associated with the Assemblies of God. In the late 1960s, Swaggart began broadcasting a weekly 30-minute telecast on various local television stations in Baton Rouge, and acquired the local am radio station, WLUX (now WPFC). The station broadcast Christian fiction, sermons and teachings to various fundamentalist and Pentecostal denominations and played the black gospel, the Southern Gospel and inspiring music. As modern Christian music became more common, the station avoided playing it. Swaggart sold many of his radio stations gradually throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. Moving on to television by 1975, Swaggart's television ministry expanded to more time stations across the U.S., and he began using television as his main sermon forum. In 1978, Swaggart's weekly tv show was increased to an hour. In 1980, Swaggart began a daily weekday telecast featuring Bible study and music, and on weekends, an hour-long telecast included a service either from the Family Worship Center (Swaggart Church) or from a crusade on the ground in a major city. In the early 1980s, Swaggart's broadcasting spread to major cities across the country.