Scandal-Plagued Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart Dies At 90

Jimmy Swaggart, the Louisiana televangelist whose name became a watchword for scandal, died in Baton Rouge on July 1. He was 90. 

Swaggart was one of the best-known and most successful TV preachers in the 1980s, reaching an estimated half-billion people every week with riveting sermons about the struggle against sin and the good gift of God’s redeeming grace.

Then, at the peak of his popularity, Swaggart was caught at a rundown motel paying a woman for sex.

In 1988, he confessed on TV that he had sinned, face contorted with tears as he apologized to his congregation, those watching at home, his wife, his son, his son’s wife, other Pentecostal preachers and evangelists, the Assemblies of God, and, finally, Jesus Christ.

You can read the rest of this article at Christianity Today.

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Daniel Silliman is senior news editor. He previously worked as a crime reporter outside of Atlanta and earned a doctorate in American studies from the University of Heidelberg, in Germany. He lives in East Tennessee and is the author of One Lost Soul and Reading Evangelicals.