This denunciation, which some saw as a move by Swaggart to take over Bakker’s empire, precipitated a closer look at Swaggart’s own life, leading to the revelation that he had performed voyeuristic acts with a female prostitute. In 1987 Swaggart publicly accused fellow televangelist Jim Bakker of immoral sexual behaviour. Swaggart soon garnered a large viewing audience across the country by the mid-1980s his weekly telecasts reached approximately two million households in the United States, making him one of the most popular and successful televangelists of the era. His continued success as a gospel music artist enabled him to launch a local television ministry, which began in 1975 with a weekly program.
In 1969 he began The Camp Meeting Hour, a radio show featuring gospel music and preaching that was soon broadcast nationally. Swaggart recorded several gospel albums in the 1960s. In 1961 he was ordained by the Assemblies of God. However, he continued to assist with his parents’ ministry, and in 1958 he became a full-time evangelist with his own ministry. His cousins Jerry Lee Lewis, a rock and roll pioneer, and Mickey Gilley, a country music singer, inspired him to attempt a career in music. Swaggart’s father was a sharecropper before becoming a Pentecostal preacher in the Assemblies of God denomination in the 1950s, and Swaggart was immersed in the church’s culture from his youth. He was defrocked by the Assemblies of God in 1988 after a sex scandal involving prostitutes. Jimmy Swaggart, in full Jimmy Lee Swaggart, (born March 15, 1935, Ferriday, Louisiana, U.S.), American televangelist and gospel music performer.
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