By the early 1980s, Swaggart’s televised sermons were reaching millions internationally, his ministry was estimated to rake in more than $140 million a year, and he had become one of the most influential Pentecostals in America. He even helped Charismatic expressions of Christian faith to join the American religious mainstream following decades of obscure disreputability. Unlike such contemporaries as Jerry Falwell, who explicitly linked conservative theology to political activism, Swaggart kept his focus on personal morality and individual spiritual renewal. His style combined emotional Pentecostal preaching and passionate musical performances with an intuitive mastery of media spectacle; prioritizing individual salvation over politics was, among other things, a shrewd way to prevent his audience from being preemptively limited by political orientation. Yet behind the scenes of his public ministry, as detailed in Ann Seaman’s biography, Swaggart was frequently engaged in denominational politics, internal power struggles, and televangelist turf wars—most notoriously during his feud with fellow Pentecostal televangelist Jim Bakker, whom Swaggart openly condemned for sexual misconduct and financial wrongdoing after Bakker’s own fall from grace.
From his Baton Rouge headquarters, Swaggart came to preside over a sprawling empire that included a megachurch, a Bible college, recording studios, and extensive broadcasting facilities. At its peak, his ministry was one of Baton Rouge’s largest employers: According to Seaman, it had over 1,500 employees, was generating as much as $500,000 a day, and “issued more building permits than the state of Louisiana.”
BUT WHEN THE LIGHTS in his ministry’s broadcast studio were pointed elsewhere, Swaggart was in the thrall of the secret sexual proclivities that would later become a public matter, bringing down all he had built in short order. In 1987, the same year his rival Bakker resigned from his own TV ministry amid a sex scandal, Swaggart was caught with a prostitute in a New Orleans motel.
According to Swaggart, he had long struggled with sexual urges, which he attempted to combat with prayer and fasting. After the scandal hit the news, a New Orleans motel owner recalled seeing Swaggart regularly checking into rooms with prostitutes over the previous “two or three years.”
During this same period, Swaggart delivered many harsh denunciations of sexual immorality from his pulpit on the small screen. He also took actions that were consistent with his words: In 1986, he led a public crusade to expose fellow Assemblies of God minister Marvin Gorman’s alleged adultery, which led to Gorman’s defrocking by their denomination.