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...Swaggart's Sunday sermon a sincere moment of contrition or a piece of theater carefully calibrated to salvage his ministry and its yearly intake of $150 million. Or perhaps both? God only knew. However, there was no shortage of scoffers, for Swaggart had fashioned himself into the most hated of the TV preachers. He smoldered with resentment against the proud, the well born and the intellectual. He had attacked Roman Catholicism for "damning the deceived souls of multitudinous millions," and Jews, attributing their sufferings to "rejection of Christ." With equal venom, he spewed accusations against fellow conservative Protestants...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Religion: Now It's Jimmy's Turn | 3/7/1988 | See Source »

...throwback to the fire-and-brimstone preachers of old, Swaggart was ever attacking sin, especially sexual immorality and such manifestations as rock 'n' roll, through which First Cousin and Childhood Chum Jerry Lee Lewis had won fame. Pornography, another pet target, constituted a form of "addiction," he proclaimed. Those who sell it "represent the worst our great nation has to offer, the scum on an otherwise tranquil pond...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Religion: Now It's Jimmy's Turn | 3/7/1988 | See Source »

...Swaggart played sexual inquisitor when moral accusations arose against Bakker and Swaggart's Louisiana rival Marvin Gorman, both ministers in Swaggart's Pentecostalist denomination, the Assemblies of God. When each was defrocked, he proclaimed good riddance...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Religion: Now It's Jimmy's Turn | 3/7/1988 | See Source »

...Swaggart scandal began to unfold on Feb. 18, three days before his climactic confession service, when the evangelist and his entourage rushed by private jet to Springfield, Mo., for a secret meeting with church leaders at Assemblies of God headquarters. It was a sorry moment for the denomination, which had seen attendance jump by 23.3% between 1979 and 1985. Adherents now number 2.1 million in the U.S., 16.4 million worldwide. Swaggart has been the group's most electrifying TV preacher and road revivalist, and his ministry has expanded lavishly overseas, providing $10.4 million of the denomination's 1987 mission budget...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Religion: Now It's Jimmy's Turn | 3/7/1988 | See Source »

...crisis of Swaggart's conscience that brought peril to this empire. The evangelist confronted his sin only because Assemblies' leaders had been provided with sordid information. Their chief evidence was incriminating photos taken last fall outside New Orleans at a down-at-the-heels motel called the Travel Inn. The pictures showed a prostitute welcoming a series of men; Swaggart was seen both entering and leaving her room. According to a person present at the ten-hour session in Springfield, Swaggart confessed that he had battled an obsession with pornography since his youth and had been a periodic backslider...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Religion: Now It's Jimmy's Turn | 3/7/1988 | See Source »

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