By age nine, he claimed to have spoken in tongues, and within a few years, when Willie Leon established his own church in Ferriday, Swaggart became the pianist. Pentecostalism dominated SwaggartвЂ™s life from early on. Swaggart would become a successful gospel singer, earning several gold records, but resolutely disdained secular music. Minnie Belle sang in the choir, and SwaggartвЂ™s cousins included rock and country stars Jerry Lee Lewis and Mickey Gilley. Music is crucial in the highly emotional services of Pentecostals, and SwaggartвЂ™s family was rife with talent. A Pentecostal denomination, the Assemblies of God measures the faith of adherents by their possession of the Holy Spirit, whose manifestations include speaking in tongues. His father, Willie Leon вЂњSonвЂќ Swaggart, was a fiddle player who worked for a bootlegger before being drawn with his wife, Minnie Belle Herron, to the Assemblies of God. SwaggartвЂ™s career has been in eclipse ever since.Д«orn in Ferriday, Louisiana, Swaggart grew up poor in a community without electricity and paved roads. Defrocked by his denomination, the Assemblies of God, he continued as a nondenominational preacher but was implicated in another sex scandal in 1991. SwaggartвЂ™s reputation declined after a sexual scandal broke in 1988. With his access to Ronald ReaganвЂ™s White House and the international reach of the Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, he was a leading figure in the political emergence of the Christian Right. At SwaggartвЂ™s peak in 1987, when he was preaching from the pulpit at his Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, Arbitron estimated his weekly U.S.В audience at 2.1 million viewers. Swaggart is pictured here during one of his televised sermons in the 1980s.Д¬alled the вЂњKing of Honky Tonk HeavenвЂќ by Newsweek in 1982, Jimmy Swaggart was AmericaвЂ™s most popular televangelist in the 1980s.

Jimmy Swaggart is a Pentecostal pastor based in Baton Rouge. Jimmy Swaggart Called the 'King of Honky Tonk Heaven' by Newsweek in 1982, Ferriday's Jimmy Swaggart was America's most popular televangelist in the 1980s.

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