Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, whose ministry was toppled by prostitution scandals, dies at 90

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who became a household name amassing an enormous following and multimillion-dollar ministry only to be undone by his penchant for prostitutes, has died.

Swaggart died decades after his once vast audience dwindled and his name became a punchline on late night television. His death was announced Tuesday on his public Facebook page. A cause wasn't immediately given, though at 90 he had been in poor health, having suffered cardiac arrest last month.

The Louisiana native was best known for being a captivating Pentecostal preacher with a massive following before being caught on camera with a prostitute in New Orleans in 1988, one of a string of successful TV preachers brought down in the 1980s and 1990s by sex scandals. He continued preaching for decades, but with a reduced audience.

Swaggart encapsulated his downfall in a tearful 1988 sermon, in which he wept and apologized but made no reference to his connection to a prostitute.

“I have sinned against you,” Swaggart told parishioners nationwide. “I beg you to forgive me.”

He announced his resignation from the Assemblies of God later that year, shortly after the church said it was defrocking him for rejecting punishment it had ordered for “moral failure.” The church had wanted him to undergo a two-year rehabilitation program, including not preaching for a full year.

Swaggart said at the time that he knew dismissal was inevitable but insisted he had no choice but to separate from the church to save his ministry and Bible college.

Swaggart grew up poor, the son of a preacher, in a music-rich family. He excelled at piano and gospel music, playing and singing with talented cousins who took different paths: rock-'n'-roller Jerry Lee Lewis and country singer Mickey Gilley.

In his hometown of Ferriday, Louisiana, Swaggart said he first heard the call of God at age 8. The voice gave him goose bumps and made his hair tingle, he said.

“Everything seemed different after that day in front of the Arcade Theater,” he said in a 1985 interview with the Jacksonville Journal-Courier in Illinois. “I felt better inside. Almost like taking a bath.”

He preached and worked part time in oil fields until he was 23. He then moved entirely into his ministry: preaching, playing piano and singing gospel songs with the barrelhouse fervor of cousin Lewis at Assemblies of God revivals and camp meetings.

Swaggart started a radio show, a magazine, and then moved into television, with outspoken views.

He called Roman Catholicism “a false religion. It is not the Christian way,” and claimed that Jews suffered for thousands of years “because of their rejection of Christ.”

“If you don't like what I say, talk to my boss,” he once shouted as he strode in front of his congregation at his Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, where his sermons moved listeners to speak in tongues and stand up as if possessed by the Holy Spirit.

Swaggart's messages stirred thousands of congregants and millions of TV viewers, making him a household name by the late 1980s. Contributors built Jimmy Swaggart Ministries into a business that made an estimated $142 million in 1986.

His Baton Rouge complex still includes a worship center and broadcasting and recording facilities.

Swaggart’s downfall came in the late 1980s as other prominent preachers faced similar scandals. Swaggart said publicly that his earnings were hurt in 1987 by the sex scandal surrounding rival televangelist Jim Bakker and a former church secretary at Bakker's PTL ministry organization.

The following year, Swaggart was photographed at a hotel with Debra Murphree, an admitted prostitute who told reporters that the two did not have sex but that the preacher had paid her to pose nude.

She later repeated the claim — and posed nude — for Penthouse magazine.

The surveillance photos that crippled Swaggart's career apparently stemmed from his rivalry with preacher Marvin Gorman, who Swaggart had accused of sexual misdeeds. Gorman hired the photographer who captured Swaggart and Murphree on film. Swaggart later paid Gorman $1.8 million to settle a lawsuit over the sexual allegations against Gorman.

More trouble came in 1991, when police in California detained Swaggart with another prostitute. The evangelist was charged with driving on the wrong side of the road and driving an unregistered Jaguar. His companion, Rosemary Garcia, said Swaggart became nervous when he saw the police car and weaved when he tried to stuff pornographic magazines under a car seat.

Swaggart was later mocked by the late TV comic Phil Hartman, who impersonated him on NBC's “Saturday Night Live.”

The evangelist largely stayed out of the news in later years but remained in the pulpit at Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, often joined by his son, Donnie, a fellow preacher. His radio station broadcast church services and gospel music to 21 states, and Swaggart’s ministry boasted a worldwide audience on the internet.

“My dad was a warrior. My dad was preacher. He didn't want to be anything else except a preacher of the gospel,” Donnie Swaggart said in a video message shared on social media Tuesday following his father's death. “That's what he was put on this earth to do.”

The preacher caused another brief stir in 2004 with remarks about being “looked at” amorously by a gay man.

“And I'm going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I'm going to kill him and tell God he died,” Jimmy Swaggart said, to laughter from the congregation. He later apologized.

Swaggart made few public appearances outside his church, save for singing “Amazing Grace” at the 2005 funeral of Louisiana Secretary of State Fox McKeithen, a prominent name in state politics for decades.

In 2022, he shared memories at the memorial service for Lewis, his cousin and rock ‘n’ roll pioneer. The pair had released “The Boys From Ferriday,” a gospel album, earlier that year.

Donnie Swaggart said he promised his father that “I will continue the work" — distributing Bibles, sharing the gospel and “proclaiming the message of Christ.”

Swaggart is survived by his wife, Frances, son Donnie, daughter-in-law Debbie, grandson Gabriel, daughter Jill, granddaughter Jennifer, son-in-law Clif, son Matt, daughter-in-law Joanna and nine great-grandchildren.

FILE - Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart speaks at the funeral service for his cousin, rock and roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis, in Ferriday, La., Saturday, Nov. 5, 2022. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, file)

FILE - Rev. Jimmy Swaggart raises his fist to make point at news conference at the Sports Arena in Los Angeles, Friday, March 27, 1987. (AP Photo/Lennox McLendon, file)

FILE - Members of the audience react to evangelist Jimmy Swaggart during a recent rally in Milwaukee, Feb. 10, 1985. (AP Photo/Joseph Jensen Jr, file)

FILE - The Rev. Jimmy Swaggart gestures as he preaches the Gospel to the nearly 14,000 faithful who attended his Los Angeles Crusade in the Sports Arena, Sunday, March 29, 1987. (AP Photo/Mark Avery, file)

ST. LOUIS (AP) — World champions Ilia Malinin and the ice dance duo of Madison Chock and Evan Bates will anchor one of the strongest U.S. Figure Skating teams in history when they head to Italy for the Milan Cortina Olympics in less than a month.

Malinin, fresh off his fourth straight national title, will be the prohibitive favorite to follow in the footsteps of Nathan Chen by delivering another men's gold medal for the American squad when he steps on the ice at the Milano Ice Skating Arena.

Chock and Bates, who won their record-setting seventh U.S. title Saturday night, also will be among the Olympic favorites, as will world champion Alysa Liu and women's teammate Amber Glenn, fresh off her third consecutive national title.

U.S. Figure Skating announced its full squad of 16 athletes for the Winter Games during a made-for-TV celebration Sunday.

"I'm just so excited for the Olympic spirit, the Olympic environment," Malinin said. “Hopefully go for that Olympic gold.”

Malinin will be joined on the men's side by Andrew Torgashev, the all-or-nothing 24-year-old from Coral Springs, Florida, and Maxim Naumov, the 24-year-old from Simsbury, Connecticut, who fulfilled the hopes of his late parents by making the Olympic team.

Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova were returning from a talent camp in Kansas when their American Airlines flight collided with a military helicopter and crashed into the icy Potomac River in January 2025. One of the last conversations they had with their son was about what it would take for him to follow in their footsteps by becoming an Olympian.

“We absolutely did it,” Naumov said. “Every day, year after year, we talked about the Olympics. It means so much in our family. It's what I've been thinking about since I was 5 years old, before I even know what to think. I can't put this into words.”

Chock and Bates helped the Americans win team gold at the Beijing Games four years ago, but they finished fourth — one spot out of the medals — in the ice dance competition. They have hardly finished anywhere but first in the years since, winning three consecutive world championships and the gold medal at three straight Grand Prix Finals.

U.S. silver medalists Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik also made the dance team, as did the Canadian-born Christina Carreira, who became eligible for the Olympics in November when her American citizenship came through, and Anthony Ponomarenko.

Liu was picked for her second Olympic team after briefly retiring following the Beijing Games. She had been burned out by years of practice and competing, but stepping away seemed to rejuvenate the 20-year-old from Clovis, California, and she returned to win the first world title by an American since Kimmie Meissner stood atop the podium two decades ago.

Now, the avant-garde Liu will be trying to help the U.S. win its first women's medal since Sasha Cohen in Turin in 2006, and perhaps the first gold medal since Sarah Hughes triumphed four years earlier at the Salt Lake City Games.

Her biggest competition, besides a powerful Japanese contingent, could come from her own teammates: Glenn, a first-time Olympian, has been nearly unbeatable the past two years, while 18-year-old Isabeau Levito is a former world silver medalist.

"This was my goal and my dream and it just feels so special that it came true,” said Levito, whose mother is originally from Milan.

The two pairs spots went to Ellie Kam and Danny O'Shea, the U.S. silver medalists, and the team of Emily Chan and Spencer Howe.

The top American pairs team, two-time reigning U.S. champions Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov, were hoping that the Finnish-born Efimova would get her citizenship approved in time to compete in Italy. But despite efforts by the Skating Club of Boston, where they train, and the help of their U.S. senators, she did not receive her passport by the selection deadline.

“The importance and magnitude of selecting an Olympic team is one of the most important milestones in an athlete's life,” U.S. Figure Skating CEO Matt Farrell said, "and it has such an impact, and while there are sometimes rules, there is also a human element to this that we really have to take into account as we make decisions and what's best going forward from a selection process.

“Sometimes these aren't easy," Farrell said, “and this is not the fun part.”

The fun is just beginning, though, for the 16 athletes picked for the powerful American team.

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

Amber Glenn competes during the women's free skating competition at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Alysa Liu skates during the "Making Team USA" performance at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Maxim Naumov skates during the "Making Team USA" performance at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Madison Chock and Evan Bates skate during the "Making the Team" performance at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Gold medalist Ilia Malinin arrives for the metal ceremony after the men's free skate competition at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)