I have lived in smaller Southern towns for most of my life. I believe local preachers like the ones in PTC are good people. They are modest folks who care much less about themselves than their flock. The typical local Reverend cares much more about the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of his church’s members than he/she does extremist politics… or getting wealthy.
Frankly, I don’t feel similarly positive about most televangelists. However, this column is not intended to negate the good works of any televangelist. For example, to his everlasting credit Billy Graham bravely pushed desegregation at a time when it was not popular in the South, his home.
But I am particularly disappointed with Pentecostal Reverend Jimmy Swaggart, who recently died at the age of 91. Swaggart was born in poverty in Louisiana. However, he amassed a fortune by demanding money from his poor followers… while going against the basic principles of Christianity.
For example, Jimmy Swaggart Ministries provided funding and material support to the violent Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO), a terrorist group backed by the white apartheid governments of South African and Rhodesia. The right-wing RENAMO committed numerous war crimes during Mozambique’s civil war, supposedly to prevent “socialism”, however they chose to loosely define the term. Thus, Swaggart inspired quasi-religious conservative activism having nothing at all to do with righteousness or virtue (https://64parishes.org/entry/jimmy-swaggart ).
Moreover, Swaggart was a bigot. Swaggart was very prejudiced against Catholics, calling the Pope “the most evil man alive,” among other defamations(https://www.catholicleague.org/old-time-bigot-is-dead/ ).
And he was also openly antisemitic, stating that the reason Jews suffered horribly for 2000 years was “because of their rejection of Christ.” (https://abc13.com/post/televangelist-jimmy-swaggart-multimillion-dollar-ministry-was-toppled-prostitution-scandals-has-died-90/16903172/ ) Would Jesus, a Jew, have approved of Swaggert’s documented anti-Semitism?
Meanwhile, he was one of the least moral televangelists ever. Swaggart, a married man, was plagued by personal scandals. Swaggart was caught frequenting prostitutes- twice. He apologized to his TV watchers in a sermon (on 2-21-88)… and was subsequently defrocked by the Assemblies of God, which ultimately reduced his TV viewership.
So, then he became an independent Pentecostal preacher. And once again, he was caught with a prostitute (on 10-11-91), severely limiting the rest of his televangelist TV career (although he continued to ask his followers for money).
Along the way (in the 80s), hypocritical Swaggart successfully pushed to get a fellow preacher (Marvin Gorman) defrocked for immorality. He subsequently lost a defamation action taken by Gorman, settling for a judgement against him of $1.75 million.
It should be noted that Swaggart, although a multi-millionaire, was not our richest preacher. There are much wealthier American preachers. Here are the net worth figures for a few American television evangelicals- Kenneth Copeland – $760 million; Joel Osteen – $100 million;Andy Stanley – $45 million; Creflo Dollar – $27 million;
Rick Warren– $25 million; and T.D. Jakes– $20 million.
The underlying question is- what did Swaggart (and each of the others above) ever do to help the downtrodden?