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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Looking For A City

11-7-16

For a few weeks here, I have been pointing my usual concerns to the presidential election. It has been a legitimate detour because the choices – the crises – we face are more momentous than any in memory. Also, the nature of our regular topics, including spiritual and patriotic matters, are dispositive this year. That is, the nation is about to reconfirm our standards and values, or depart into uncharted territories. Everyone senses it.

Many people will think that Hillary represents continuity, and Trump will bring the Unknown to office. I argue, in these days before the election, that the situation is precisely the opposite.

I have urged friends and readers who, like most citizens, are enthusiastic about neither candidate, to ignore the candidates as much as possible, and vote for the policy outcomes most important to them. This is why parties have platforms, why congressional caucuses compose manifestoes, why candidates offer “contracts with voters.” Officeholders, once elected, often break their pledges, but we still have yardsticks to measure and hold them accountable.

In this regard, “I hate them both” becomes a fatuous position. Generally, people dislike Trump but distrust Hillary: reason enough for a thoughtful choice. Personally, my view of Trump as a vulgarian of malleable principles has evolved – mostly because, during the campaign, he has evolved, and actually has articulated a set of positions. These positions are strong, consistent, and far more detailed than of any presidential candidate since Reagan.

Oddly, his manifesto has come under the radar – not, for instance, with the PR fanfare of Gingrich’s “Contract with America” in 1994 – and, ironically, subsequent to the primaries and his nomination. Yet on immigration (moderated), international trade, school choice, abortion, Constitutional issues, taxes, judicial appointments, health care, regulation, and other issues, he has become this generation’s issues-oriented candidate. Who would have thought?

Moreover, his positions, especially for a man of chameleonlike attitudes and ideological U-turns through the years, are consistent with longstanding goals of Christian activists, right-wing loyalists, and “movement conservatives.” Many of these goals have been frustrating failures to activists, but Trump trumpets them. Not timid because of past failures of the governing class, he doubles down. Liberals decry these stands, but Establishment Republicans, in whose hot-houses these views were hatched, strangely are silent. Why?

Well, Trump is not one of “them.”

Surely he is not, and that is one reason he has caught the imagination of the electorate. Many prominent elected Republicans have not endorsed him; and only one major newspaper has. He has, by traditional standards, repeatedly committed political suicide; but he refuses to die. Scandals, gaffes, embarrassments… and he rises in the polls. The “world” “hates” him, but he is dead-even in polls now; and I believe will prevail.

There is something extremely profound at work. For all of Trump’s brand of charisma or his unorthodox appeal, it is not about him. And it is only partly what he says. It is what he represents. Almost despite of himself. He is giving voice to an inchoate but tsunami-like Spirit of the Age. He is the inheritor of a bubbling brew of protest figures. Barry Goldwater; Howard Beale, the maverick TV newsman in the movie Network (“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!”); George Wallace; Spiro Agnew; Ronald Reagan; Pat Buchanan; Ralph Nader; Pat Robertson; Ross Perot; and various columnists, talk radio hosts, and cable news people.

Beyond that, Trump represents the same, or similar, packages of discontents that have fueled the Le Pens in France; UKIP and Brexit in England; Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and anti-immigrant, small-government, nationalist leaders in Italy, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Sweden, and even Iceland.

Given the tide of right-wing populist passions throughout the West – none of it coordinated, not yet – it is evident that if Donald Trump had not emerged, the Silent Majority would have manufactured someone like him.

What kind of president would he make? Hillary, as noted above, surely would be a continuation… of Obama, of Bill, of ObamaCare, of endless and purposeless wars in the Middle East, of endless and purposeless bureaucrats, of the familiar old faces and tired old policies. Trump might come to office, with no baggage and few commitments, and run the government as a CEO would. He could appoint powerhouses to Cabinet posts; would formulate programs and deadlines to deal with priority issues; and hold periodic board meetings to check the progress on his agenda. How refreshing a prospect; what a difference.

Or… he could appoint lackeys; bluster his way through controversies, and relish arguments more than solutions. Unlikely, but a possibility. But hour by hour, Americans are willing to take the chance rather than vote for Hillary. And that is apart from the larcenous and perhaps treasonous future of Clinton Inc., about which facts are being revealed, also virtually hour by hour.

As in other parts of the world, “the old order changeth.” Citizens are now eager to break with their old parties, to punish and abandon old politicians. Apart from the over-arching issues I listed above, I can explain the flight from Hillary and Democrats, and the tide toward Trump, in a way I have not seen analyzed elsewhere.

In recent years, many social conservatives often remained loyal to Democrats – at least their House members; or because of unions’ appeals; or with sympathy for Obama as a Black, or other ethnic concerns. This year I politely have eavesdropped in areas of Michigan and Pennsylvania and Colorado. In factory and suburban and executive neighborhoods. And I have heard people who used to caricature Republicans now bitterly complain about Democrats and leaders like Hillary. Why? Their priorities of unrestricted immigration, sanctuary cities, LBTGBTQ (sorry) “rights,” and pedophiles’ access to Women’s rest rooms. Candidate aside, the Party has changed.

On one less inflammatory issue, liberals like Obama and Hillary boast about the increased numbers of people on food stamps. Conservatives, and, once upon a time, even Democrats, used to work toward the day when nobody needed to be on welfare assistance.

The coming populist wave is easy to understand.

If the wave is postponed, Canute-like, four or eight years, or fails in its essentials, ugly things might happen in America. I already anticipate violence in the streets, looting, and other such “civic protests,” if Trump wins. Count on it.

If Trump loses, many of us, patriots and Christians, will recognize that our country is lost. Suburbanites, shopkeepers, and churchgoers might not take it to the streets, maybe not, but many of us will be ready for radical action and fundamental change. We will say “thank you” to the old system, keep portions of it, and work, really work, to build something new. There will be opposition to us; we will have to accept the rejection of friends and family members; and we will turn to civil disobedience.
All of which, counterintuitively, would be a very traditional reaction to our current crisis. Thomas Jefferson himself said that in each generation, the Tree of Liberty might have to be nourished with the blood of patriots.

I will enlist. But it is my belief, with a couple days to go, that Enthusiasm and Momentum are building, as they always do, toward an election wave. Let us pray.

In any case.

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Click: Turn the Tide – A Prayer for America – Abigail Miller