He Outlived His Cousins

 That is one thing you can say about televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, 90, who died after a recent bout of ill health.  This death was not unexpected, since his son, Donnie, had announced he had been in critical condition for the past couple of weeks.

Swaggart was a highly successful televangelist, a cousin of entertainers Jerry Lee Lewis and Mickey Gilley, but in the end, greed and hypocrisy were his undoing.  He was in the forefront of the successful attempt by him, Jerry Falwell, and others to topple Jim Bakker and his PTL Network back in 1987.  Swaggart was mad at Bakker because Bakker took him off the network thanks to Swaggart's anti-Catholic rants.  Bakker's network was widely televised in Catholic-dominated countries and felt Swaggart was bad for business.  It wouldn't be too long before Bakker himself was not just forced out of PTL, but he had criminal charges lodged against him and ultimately prison for a few years.

I am sure Bakker has few kind words to say about Swaggart upon the latter's death.

But, as you know or should know, Swaggart himself all but ruined his career thanks to his own peccadillos.  A rival televangelist by the name of Marvin Gorman  was the victim of Swaggart's accusations of adultery, but Gorman retaliated by obtaining pictures of Swaggart with prostitute Debra Murphree at an Airline Highway motel room in Metairie, Louisiana.  Swaggart was busted.   It was an epic downfall from which Swaggart never recovered.  Murphree did a layout of sorts for Penthouse following the scandal and an interview with the magazine.  As I recall, she said Swaggart was a pretty "easy" john, just a "couple of pumps" and that was it.  I read that article years ago and may still have that issue.

His downfall was so epic, he went on television with a tearful apology because he got caught:

Debra Murphree gave an interview some time after the scandal broke:

Gorman wasn't finished with Swaggart there.  He filed a $10 million defamation lawsuit against him, but it was ultimately settled for $1.85 million.

It was downhill for Jimmy Swaggart.  His wife, Frances, and son, Donnie, stood by him despite or because of him publicly humiliating the family, but he was defrocked from the Assemblies of God. He was involved in a second prostitute scandal a couple of years after the Murphree incident.   He did continue his ministry on a much smaller scale.  Donnie and Donnie's son have continued the Swaggart ministry.

Snip from article:

Jimmy Lee Swaggart was born March 15, 1935, in Ferriday, Louisiana, to W.L. and Minnie Bell Swaggart.

The family was blessed with showmanship and musical talent, exemplified by Swaggart's TV acumen and the singing ability of his famed cousins Jerry Lee Lewis and Mickey Gilley.

The pastor was comfortable spreading his Pentecostal message at a typewriter, behind a radio microphone and eventually in front of a TV camera.

But with his microphone always metaphorically on, Swaggart was often caught making deeply divisive statements.

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An Overlooked Obituary and a Forgotten Scandal

I missed this obituary from 2 1/2 years ago, but I will note it here belatedly:   Rev. Marvin Gorman, a televangelist who was responsible for the downfall of Jimmy Swaggart in his prostitute scandal in the 1980s but went down in scandal himself, died at the age of 83 in 2017.  I was thinking about him a few minutes ago, as I have been doing a lot of reading and watching programs about the old PTL scandal.   Swaggart, of course, never fully recovered from his scandal.  It couldn't have happened to a better person, as it was Swaggart who vowed revenge on Jim Bakker when Bakker yanked Swaggart's program off the PTL Satellite Network because of his anti-Catholic rants.  Since the network went into many Catholic-dominated countries, Bakker was having none of that bullshit on his network.  Swaggart was vengeful, and it was he who was going to find out all the dirt he could on Bakker.   He didn't have to try all that hard, as we know, because people like PTL bigwig Richard Dortch and Jerry Falwell were all too willing to bring Bakker down themselves.

Anyway, Gorman had his own sex scandal to contend with, and thereafter he lived mostly in semi-obscurity:

Rev. Gorman was brought down in an epic feud that sullied the Pentecostal movement three decades ago. In 1986, Swaggart, a fellow Assembly of God televangelist based in Baton Rouge, accused him of adultery. Swaggart also helped blow the whistle on Jim Bakker, an Assembly of God televangelist in Charlotte, N.C., for an extramarital affair with a church secretary.

In response, Rev. Gorman circulated photographs of Swaggart and a prostitute at an Airline Highway motel in Metairie, leading to Swaggart's downfall, and he sued Swaggart for defamation. He won a $10 million award, although the parties later settled out of court at $1.85 million.

By this time all three men's ministries were in ruins. Rev. Gorman declared bankruptcy, Bakker went to prison and Swaggart's empire collapsed.

That scandal was and remains endlessly fascinating.  I had followed Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's program for many years prior.

Currently, I am finishing up Tammy Faye's memoir, which focused much attention on the scandal and its aftermath, Tammy:  Telling It My Way.  It was published in 1996, several years after her divorce from Bakker and eleven years before she died of lung cancer.  It is a very good book especially reminding the reader of the shenanigans that went on behind the scenes in the toppling of Bakker.  He trusted the wrong people time and time again.

It was a pattern with Bakker.  He helped get Pat Robertson's 700 Club off the ground, but Robertson wanted to appear in front of the camera instead of the Bakkers, so Bakker left.  He started up the Trinity Broadcasting Network, becoming an instant hit, but Paul and Jan Crouch wanted to appear in front of the camera, so Bakker left.  He got two major religious networks their starts, and then he went on and formed his own satellite network, one of the first if not the first of its kind.  It was a huge success and helped spur the movement for a Christian Disneyland near Fort Mill, South Carolina, called Heritage USA.  In fact,  Bakker at this point was suffering from the Edifice Complex with one building project after another, until it ultimately got out of hand.  As we know, Bakker once again put trust in the wrong people, who pounced when Bakker had taken a leave from the PTL program to take care of Tammy Faye following her bout with pneumonia and then a stint at the Betty Ford Clinic for dependency on medication.  He never came back to the network as Jerry Falwell pretty much stole the business away from him because Falwell wanted the satellite facilities which in the end he never got.  Falwell ran the entire enterprise into bankruptcy solely because he wanted the satellite network.  That was the real scandal, but it got buried because of all the turmoil surrounding Bakker, the Jessica Hahn payoff, and the mismanagement primarily orchestrated by Richard Dortch, head of PTL.  Three times was not the charm for Bakker, and he spent five years in prison.  Falwell emerged from the scandal with nary a scratch, as he had major connections in D.C. politics, unlike Bakker.

But, as we know, Bakker got out and just couldn't give up the idea of a Christian talk show, so, starting very small with a brand new wife, Lori Graham Bakker, he set up a small-scale television show near Branson, Missouri.  He has been doing this show for fifteen or more years.  However, he has gotten more and more paranoid in his old age, so now he has a program with lots and lots of end times nonsense with guests like the crackpot Lance Wallnau claiming Trump is doing God's work, while at the same time Bakker his hocking his food buckets of freeze dried slop (slop when water is added).

Tammy Faye, rest her soul, would spin in her grave if she knew what a crackpot her ex turned out to be.  Maybe the second part of this post's title is wrong, for as long as Jim Bakker remains in the limelight, the PTL scandal won't be forgotten.