Monday Morning Music Ministry

7-7-25

This week I share an article I wrote for The American Spectator magazine. It was occasioned by the death of Jimmy Swaggart, one of Christianity’s great evangelists and certainly the premier “televangelist.” I knew him slightly – more specifically, I interviewed him several times as I worked some years ago on a projected book about him and his cousin Jerry Lee Lewis.

More than that, I was a follower of his ministry and was baptised in the Spirit – became a Pentecostal – under his teaching. My family and I attended many crusades. Through “ups and downs,” as people will ask; and my wife and I are weekly worshipers today. His son Donnie and grandson Gabriel carry the message admirably, teaching and preaching.

“Ups and downs”? I almost would rather learn from a human being who has been redeemed then… well, someone who suggests that he or she never has fallen. As Theodore Roosevelt said, It is not having been in the Dark House, but having left it, that counts.

+ + +

As it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many (Hebrews 9:27-28).

America was largely founded, substantially settled, and essentially established on Christian foundations. The models for colonies’ governments, and the blueprints for “framing” documents, were Biblical. Even Deists among the Founding Fathers generally acknowledged the Bible as their guide for designing constitutions and the governing documents.

America’s spiritual moorings were derived from more than such influences, however. The nation often has had “parallel leadership” from among Christian figures. Pilgrims came to the New World in search of religious freedom. Among them were Puritans. Before the Revolution – and helping to fuel its liberty-loving fervor – was the Great Awakening. Preachers like Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and the Wesley brothers were enormously influential throughout the colonies and new United States. In the next generations the Second Great Awakening, and religious figures like Henry Ward Beecher and his sister Harriet Beecher Stowe persuasively argued against slavery and for social reform. Open-air revival meetings were conducted on Wall Street and other major sites.

… and so through much of American history. No matter the tenor of political changes and social trends, preachers, evangelists, and Gospel songwriters influenced broad swaths of American culture. Camp-meetings as Americans moved Westward; massive urban revivals; new denominations. Clergy as best-selling authors and influential lecturers have always been prominent in public debates. The D L Moodys, Billy Sundays, Aimee Semple McPhersons, and Father Coughlins of yesterday prefigured “America’s Pastor,” Billy Graham.

While one segment of America was discovering Jesus in California in the 1960s and ‘70s – the “Jesus Movement” on the beaches – another revolution was sweeping through more traditional neighborhoods, families, and denominations: Pentecostalism. There were many leaders, including Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, and Jim Bakker. They sustained ostracism from mainstream denominations, yet they flourished. Many of them built huge empires that eventually were undermined by corruption and scandals, frequently self-inflicted.

The death of Reverend Jimmy Swaggart, who died on July 1, 2025, is a case in point. He became a figure of major influence in American religious life and even politics, endured scandal and self-abasement, and was an actor in a sad but not uncommon scenario… but his last chapters reflected redemption and “overcoming.” His flock remained with him, or regrouped. He rebuilt his major Pentecostal movement through fidelity to its basic tenets, but also by shifting the focus and presentation of his message, or God’s message as He received it.

Forty years ago Jimmy Swaggart was invited to the White House by Ronald Reagan; and last year a new president, Donald Trump, placed calls to his office. In the 1980s Swaggart graced the covers of weekly news magazines; recently he was feted at his 90th birthday celebration by the likes of Bill Gaither and Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham who once disdained his style of preaching and much of its substance. Between the “first and second” Swaggarts he also overcame near-universal opprobrium after being caught with prostitutes.

By the time of his death Swaggart was the longest-running televangelist and possibly the most prominent expositor of Protestant Christianity in the world; certainly the leading exponent of Pentecostalism, which is sweeping the globe, especially south of the Equator. His ministry of frequent and massive crusades across America and in numerous overseas countries was supplanted by a media ministry, the only 24/7 Christian cable channel offering exclusive programming of a single ministry. Myriad worship services originate in his large headquarters in Baton Rouge LA; he published a monthly magazine and produced dozens of CDs and DVDs featuring his own distinctive performances and those of his large and talented worship team. Scores of published books and tracts written by Swaggart are ministry staples.

Over his career Swaggart inadvertently provided an additional meaning to the Biblical phrase “Born Again.”

+ + +

Jimmy Lee Swaggart was born on the Ides of March, 1935, within months of his cousins Jerry Lee Lewis, a pioneer of rock and roll; and Mickey Gilley, the popular country-music star whose nightclub Gilley’s was the setting of the movie Urban Cowboy. The clan – whose family tree resembles, rather, a twisted vine – counts other piano-playing preachers and recording stars. Linda Gail Lewis (Jerry Lee’s sister), for instance, began her career in the 1960s and still records and performs, with a large following in Europe as a rockabilly queen. That family tree, planted and nurtured around little Ferriday LA, is replete with inter-marriage, multiple marriages (Jerry and Linda Gail each having tied the knot seven times through the years), adultery, and illegitimate siblings and cousins. In that medley, Jimmy and Jerry Lee were double first-cousins.

Jimmy Swaggart himself had one marriage, to Frances Anderson of Wisner LA; and one child, Donnie, who was named after Swaggart’s older brother who died in infancy. It is curious to note that Swaggart, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Ray Charles all had older brothers who died in accidents when they were boys. The rural South of the 1930s dished up a strange, but common, set of touchstones – tragedy, poverty, violence, music, religious fundamentalism.

After his hardscrabble family of drinkers, roustabouts, and lawbreakers got saved in a tent revival, young Jimmy felt a calling to be an evangelist. After his marriage at age 17 (Frances was 15), they travelled with Donnie and a lone accordion, singing Gospel songs and preaching – initially to sparse groups, and sleeping in their car or in church basements.

In 1957 his cousin Jerry Lee Lewis, recently signed to a recording contract with Elvis’s label Sun Records, mightily defined rock ‘n’ roll with massive hit songs like Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On and Great Balls Of Fire, making tens of thousands of dollars a night and appearing on network TV. Jerry Lee and Sam Phillips of Sun Records arranged to launch a Gospel line with Swaggart its featured performer. But the young evangelist declined the offer, believing that God wanted him to preach, not sing.

Swaggart was destined – called – to do both.

+ + +

In the late ‘50s Swaggart gradually expanded his ministry from small churches and modest tent revivals to larger crusades, recording traditional Southern Gospel songs and attracting radio air time. The dynamic music was “bait,” he said, to draw people to the preaching; and vice versa in other cases.

Through the 1970s and ‘80s, Jimmy Swaggart Ministries grew exponentially. He established a church in Baton Rouge, Family Worship Center; he founded a Bible College; his radio empire expanded to television, buying time on stations to form a de facto network; crusades became major events in major venues in major cities… expanding to mass meetings in many countries around the world, often filling entire stadiums. Many of his singers and musicians, like Janet Paschal and John Starnes, graduated to successful solo careers. By the mid-1980s his telecast, now a full hour in length, was carried on 250 stations. Swaggart’s template for crusades was a Friday evangelistic message; a Saturday “invitation service” for people to respond to altar calls; and a Sunday service explaining the Gifts of the Spirit for those eager to receive them.

The on-stage evangelist Jimmy Swaggart was electric – a handsome, talented, exuberant musician, singer, and preacher. Inevitably his anointed messages were accompanied by sweat and tears and “hard” preaching – against sin, apostasy, liberal theology, “dead churches,” and such. He had little trouble criticising rival preachers, some by name; and he received criticism back. The Christian Right was ascendant in politics at the time; Pentecostal and Charismatic ministries were naturally compatible with those social and political impulses.

But “Pride goeth before a fall,” and a spate of scandals soiled the Pentecostal movement in the mid-1980s. Jim Bakker had sex with a church secretary and was later sent to jail for financial improprieties at the tacky Christian theme park established by him and his tacky wife Tammy Faye. Jerry Falwell, who had successfully penetrated the political world through his Moral Majority, embarrassed himself in the scramble for Bakker’s empire. Oral Roberts said that God would kill him if supporters fell short of donation-goals. (The goal was met, and the Lord did not immediately take Roberts’s life.) Ministers engaged in “Name It and Claim It” promises, and invented a seductive “Prosperity Gospel.” Many other ministries were embroiled, seemingly every other month, in sex or financial or doctrinal scandals.

An Elmer Gantry-type if there ever were one, Swaggart continued his hellfire preaching at the time, severely criticizing many of his fellow evangelists on moral and theological grounds. Many rapacious “reporters” like Geraldo Rivera and CNN’s John Camp devoted themselves to finding chinks in Swaggart’s armor. Beyond defending himself and the Gospel, his attitude and body language in interviews signalled the Pride about which Scripture warns.

Indeed it foreshadowed a fall – from grace, from a mass following, and from respect and respectability in the Christian world. In 1988 a rival Louisiana preacher with whom Swaggart had tussled caught Jimmy with a prostitute, in a cheap motel outside New Orleans. The preacher’s men took photographic evidence and slashed Swaggart’s tires. A nation-wide scandal ensued; Swaggart confessed in an apology to God and Frances and Donnie that was picked up by a multitude of TV stations and magazine covers. His tear-stained face and contorted expression were cemented in the public’s mind as the new face of Pentecostalism. Swaggart’s denomination, the Assemblies of God, rebuked him and ordered corrective steps designed to rehabilitate the preacher and rescue his ministry.

Swaggart accepted some discipline, ignored other recommendations. He self-exiled, but returned to his pulpit sooner than the AG ruled. The denomination eventually revoked Swaggart’s ministry credentials. Offerings and donations drastically dropped. Enrollment at the Bible College fell from 1451 to 370. Grass grew in the cracks of Family Worship Center’s parking lots.

+ + +

During these very times I was working on a project about the Cousins Swaggart, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Mickey Gilley. I had interviewed all three and many of their relatives, associates, even students at Swaggart’s Bible College. Even a prostitute he was caught with.

His confession aligned with the facts. Whether his apologies – more correctly, signs of repentance – were sincere, became a matter of fierce debate.

After the service at which he returned to the pulpit, I approached him and expressed the hope that his failing, and what I assumed would be his repentance and rehabilitation, could make for a powerful message to a public comprised, after all, of sinners and flawed people. And that I would tell that story without tabloid flavors. He replied with what I have since called a Pentecostal No: “Brother Marschall, I’ll pray about it.”

In Jimmy Swaggart’s message that day, the theme centered on the Biblical figure of King David – that he too (I add the “too,” because it was obvious Swaggart drew a comparison to himself) engaged in lust and adultery, and was guilty of much. But none of that, Swaggart noted, changed the fact that God had a call on David’s life. With that anointing, David eventually carried out amazing tasks that God had set before him.

It was a facile argument, given the circumstances in Baton Rouge that morning, and yet it was theologically sound.

The road that Jimmy Swaggart walked thereafter, whether out of desperation or by design – his or God’s – has been unique. Perhaps it was a strategic withdrawal from the ministry’s program. The overseas crusades largely ended, as did many stateside crusades. The face-to-the-world aspect of his ministry became the home church, Family Worship Center, featuring three services a week and various camp meetings and special conferences. An extensive media ministry was established through his new outlet, SonLife Broadcasting. A core group of staffers, musicians, singers, and teachers remained, loyally. A children’s ministry was expanded.

The ministry outreach grew, particularly exegetical material (Swaggart’s Bible studies total more than 7500 pages). He claimed a divine revelation that directed him to address “the message of the Cross,” asserting that aspect of Jesus’s sacrifice as the proper focus of Christians’ faith. In the course of his latter-day ministry activities I have joined those who believe his ultimate repentance was sincere.

Swaggart was joined in the pulpit by his son Donnie and grandson Dr Gabriel Swaggart. In the years before his death they assumed virtually all the ministry duties, excellently – breaking a pattern of many televangelists’ kids being weak shadows of their fathers, with the exception of Franklin Graham.

+ + +

In Jimmy Swaggart’s last decades his fervent delivery mellowed, but not his message. Hellfire themes continued. He never softened his Pentecostal distinctives (his son and grandson emphasize the Gifts even more than he had), and his publications and sermons continued to attack false doctrines and flawed theology in some denominations.

If parts of the general public did not know, or forgot, who Jimmy Swaggart was, it was due to his decision to “feed the sheep” and focus on his congregation; on SonLife’s media outreach; and sharing his theological brand. Appeals for, say, hospitals in India were supplanted by campaigns to provide thousands of Expositor’s Study Bibles to countries around the world. These were important goals of Swaggart until the end, and along the way he acquired new friends (as calls from Donald Trump, Bill Gaither, Mike Lindell and a wide variety of others attest) and in new fields of activity. Gabe, and especially Donnie, became increasingly active and vocal in conservative politics.

… which brings to the fore, full-circle perhaps, the traditional and essential place of Christianity in American life. Jimmy Swaggart’s ultimate re-emergence and influence, and a new (or renewed) America where Donnie Swaggart is invited to White House prayer meetings, and Gabe Swaggart is honored at the Louisiana State Senate, testifies to an important aspect of faith – ultimately, “overcoming” in this corrupt world. The perseverance that lifted the piano-playing preacher from Ferriday, Louisiana was largely spiritual but also spoke of definition and redefinition; of dispensing and seeking forgiveness; of knowing God and making Him known. Somehow, an American story too.

Jimmy Swaggart’s struggles, victories, and personal “overcoming” will be a testament living beyond his grave.

He breathed his last earthly breath, as country folks say, about 8:30 a.m. on July 1, 2025. Donnie made the announcement on various ministry platforms, and quoted a verse from II Timothy that his father cited as he was slipping away in recent months:I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course.

+ + +

Looking For A City

5-9-16

I have been asked many questions these days about the proper attitude and informed decisions to be made by Christians and people of faith about the elections this year. To be more precise, I have been asked the same question by many people: Is Donald Trump someone to be trusted; does he know or understand biblical principles and basic Christian creedal tenets; is he someone who will “make deals” with the devil – so to speak – once in office?

I am asked those questions by a variety of folks, in my putative role as a social critic, political commentator, and Christian writer. I have no special insights, not holy ones I claim, anyway. Among those who ask me these burning questions is… myself.

A crazy political season. A crazy world, crazier and more ominous by the day. If it is not the advent of End Times, we might wish it were. We all should be primarily seeking spiritual, moral, and ethical answers – because our major challenges in America are, and have been caused by, spiritual, moral, and ethical lapses.

I will don another one my hats, my actual training as a historian, and posit some observations. Those who make stark critiques and censure are Jeremiahs. Most of us historians, as Gibbon and Macaulay did, wait millennia to make sense of history, to discern missteps.

There is an aspect of the human spirit that tends to think that contemporary crises are unprecedented, perhaps apocalyptic. It cannot always be true; but someday it will be. Oddly, we occasionally adopt the attitude of Dr Pangloss, that “this is the best of all possible worlds,” and in certain ways it too sometimes is correct.

But has our society, in our days, begun its ultimate dissolution? Is it possible that we are past “sliding down the slippery slope” and, rather, in the maelstrom of the flushing toilet of history, a vortex going “down the tubes”?

I think it is reasonable to think so. Too many of our foundations are crumbling, too many moral traditions are denigrated or ignored. But our political season, as crazy as it is, is not unprecedented.

We can look back at other crises in presidential contests. In 1800 the election was deadlocked – at the time, the House of Representatives, not the general populace, voted for president and vice-president, separate votes for each of two candidates; all later adjusted by a Constitutional amendment. Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr each had more votes than the incumbent president John Adams, but a secret deal withheld some of Burr’s electoral support and resulted in his defeat. The invective, chicanery, and dirty dealing all led to what history calls the “Revolution of 1800.” A few years later, Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel, and eventually fled west where he reportedly attempted to organize an uprising against the United States and/or Mexico.

Let us gloss over the social aspects of Andrew Jackson’s presidency, bereft by scandals, charges of “loose women” in the White House kitchen, and White House events where the president invited the general public, leading to shredding of carpets, destruction of furnishings, and theft of property. Jackson’s presidential campaigns led to the “spoils system” of trading votes for jobs.

In the 1860 election, the Republican Party, then only six years old, gained the White House as beneficiary of four candidates in the field. Abraham Lincoln’s nomination was secured by his manager who forbad Honest Abe from attending or knowing anything about their machinations – such as promising the same federal offices and cabinet positions to more than one person. The campaign was dirty (Secession was imminent) and dangerous (Lincoln reportedly travelled through pro-slavery Baltimore on his way to the inauguration in a plaid cloak and Scottish cap to evade assassins).

In 1896 a virtual unknown, William Jennings Bryan, delivered a speech (the “Cross of Gold”) to the Democrat convention that stampeded the delegates to nominate him in a frenzy. Barely old enough to serve as president, Bryan’s radical, socialist agenda split the party in two and had Americans, those who were not seduced by the firebrand, fearful of blood in the streets.

Theodore Roosevelt, wildly popular on his retirement in 1909, went on an African safari and tour of Europe for a year, partly to grant the spotlight to his hand-picked successor William Howard Taft. But during Taft’s term, there were personal slights of TR; reversal of many Roosevelt policies; serious broken promises; and a calamitous decline in the GOP’s popularity, including the loss of Congress. Severe affronts to Roosevelt, and an irresistible demand from many Republicans, persuaded him to challenge Taft for the nomination.

An ex-president versus a sitting president. Friends became enemies. “Liar” and “Fathead” were among the many epithets. There were mass defections from the GOP after the nomination was wrested from TR, who had won most of the new-fangled primaries. The speakers’ platform at the Republican convention had barbed wire under the bunting, in fear that riots would break out. TR’s bolt of the convention led to the independent Bull Moose party, which soundly trounced the GOP; Taft won only two states. A Socialist, Eugene Debs, polled nearly a million votes. In late October, a bartender who had been persuaded against a Third Term shot Roosevelt point-blank in the chest. TR insisted on continuing to his speech; with blood streaming down his shirt, he spoke for almost 90 minutes. Democrat Woodrow Wilson won the four-way election.

Another year of the gun, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy, after a primary victory in California, were killed. A sitting president, Lyndon Johnson, was forced from running again when he could not endure widespread protests and a rebellious Democrat Party. Millions in the streets and campuses; a bitter primary; riots outside the convention; the anarchist Yippies; a candidate nominated (VP Humphrey) who had not even run in the primaries; the return of the has-been Richard Nixon; and the amazing grass-roots revolt of third-party candidate George Wallace. The story of 1968.

So… does this year’s election cycle seem tame yet? For all the elements that foreshadowed our current season of discontent, I think the campaign of 1884 has the most parallels. So far. The GOP, in the White House for 24 straight years, was rife with divisions. Factions called “Half-Breeds” and “Stalwarts” hated each other and vied for power. An office-seeker of one faction had assassinated President James Garfield, of another, when he was frustrated in securing a federal job. Bosses continually attempted a comeback for ex-president Ulysses Grant, whom they could control.

Sen. James G Blaine was the favorite for the nomination. A former Speaker of the House, he had been involved numerous. He sold influence; he had solicited bribes. He arrogantly admitted many of these discretions, but he was a magnetic speaker who swayed crowds and inspired devotion. He faced opposition, however, not so much from strong candidates, but a field of lesser names.

The major threat to Blaine instead was from the reform movement in the GOP, a gaggle of veterans and newcomers. Among the former were George William Curtis and Carl Schurz, whose political careers went back to the Civil War. Leaders of the latter group were young Henry Cabot Lodge and 24-year-old Theodore Roosevelt, a major force in the convention. Their efforts to advance reform candidates failed on the floor.

There was public revulsion against Blaine (“Blaine, Blaine; James G Blaine! The continental liar from the state of Maine!” street crowds chanted) but a lot of GOP voters fell in line. Grover Cleveland, the Democrat candidate, was “ugly honest,” a good reputation for 1884; but midway through the campaign it was revealed that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child – remember, this in the staid Victorian era. (“Ma! Ma! Where’s my pa? Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!” rival crowds chanted.) THAT was some campaign.

As in 2016, a large number of Republican politicians and activists faced moral and practical dilemmas. Many of them sincerely believed that Blaine was toxic for the party’s self-esteem and for its future; and they had made threats – or promises – never to vote for Blaine. Excruciating.

There was, collectively, a Solomonic decision. Reformers like Curtis and Schurz and Henry Ward Beecher, America’s most prominent pastor, whose sister had written “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” left the Republican Party, and supported Cleveland. They were dubbed “Mugwumps.”

Reformers like Roosevelt and Lodge, however, reluctantly remained within the party. Never endorsing Blaine, they “supported the ticket,” stating that the only way to influence the party was from within the party. Young TR, whose wife and mother had died a few months earlier (on the same day), left for an understandable “sabbatical” on his cattle ranch in the Dakotas. For two years he was a cowboy, out of the public eye. He made one or two campaign speeches for down-ticket candidates, including Lodge who ran for Congress.

Lodge lost. He and Roosevelt both considered their political futures ruined.

Both were mistaken, of course. Many of the Mugwumps eventually returned to the GOP, which thereafter always had – has had – a reform wing. Cleveland won, but a dozen years later he and many establishment Democrats boycotted the agrarian radical Bryan. Blaine lost the 1884 election, but by a whisker.

The final detail of the final moments of that crazy 1884 campaign might be relevant if not dispositive to troubled Republicans weathering Hurricane Donald this year: a moral, specifically a religious, aspect.

Just before election eve, Blaine attended a dinner of industrialists and monopolists at Delmonico’s in New York. One of the speakers, a nonentity minister, in his speech described the Democrats as the “party of Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.” Rum was a smear on lowlife aspects of stereotyped Democrat voters; Rebellion was a reminder of the Democrats’ association with Secession.

Romanism, however, was a word that touched social and religious nerves. It was a direct reference to Catholicism, imputing a congenital association between Democrats and the Pope; and was not meant as a compliment. The consequent furor over the insult (which Blaine had ignored) energized New York City’s Irish immigrants. New York City went Democrat; New York State and its electoral votes narrowly went for Cleveland… enough to tip the national outcome away from the GOP.

The scenario is a different animal than whether to endorse a candidate you distrust or despise in 2016 – but it reminds us that religion is never far from the larger debate. Our civic consciences might still roil over whether to Trump, or not to Trump. Life has gone on in America despite, as Kipling wrote, “The tumult and the shouting dies.”

Myself, I greet with dubiety Trump’s assurances that he is familiar with the Bible, understands doctrine, and has a saving knowledge, as we say, of Jesus Christ. But we are not to judge: I question, however. “God judges the man; voters judge the candidate” is, this year, less of a maxim and feels like more of an excuse.

Many of us have the nagging feeling that things are different this time, that past is less than prologue. The Captains and the Kings may depart, yet we seem closer to our destiny, maybe an apocalypse.

+ + +

Real Clear Religion, on whose site many readers have followed Monday Music Ministry, has been to many people an indispensible part of their daily fare. It is going through changes right now after almost seven years.

For those who have followed us on RCR, please be sure to continue receiving our weekly essays by Subscribing to Monday Morning Music Ministry. (See link under “Pages” at right.)

+ + +

Click: I Am a Pilgrim