Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, whose multimillion-dollar ministry and huge audience dwindled following his prostitution scandals, has died. He was 90. Swaggart's death was announced Tuesday on his public Facebook page. A cause wasn't immediately given, though Swaggart had been in ill health, reports the AP. 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 '90s 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."
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. "Everything seemed different after that day in front of the Arcade Theater," he said in a 1985 interview. "I felt better inside. Almost like taking a bath." Swaggart started a radio show and a magazine, and then moved into television, with outspoken views. He called Roman Catholicism "a false religion. It is not the Christian way," as well as claimed that Jews suffered for thousands of years "because of their rejection of Christ."
story continues below
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. 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.
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
