Swaggart the Latest : ‘How Are the Mighty Fallen’--It’s Not New

The minister basked in glory, so exalted that special choirs of women sang praises to him. Born poor, he had become rich and famous. When he preached, people sighed and waved handkerchiefs in admiration.

But he tumbled into disgrace.

That happened to a 3rd-Century Syrian bishop, Paul Samosata, dethroned as a heretic. It is a story recalled as resembling the fall of TV evangelists, including the latest, Jimmy Swaggart.

‘As Old as the Hills’

“There’s nothing new in this; it’s as old as the hills,” said Stanley M. Burgess, professor of religion at Southwestern Missouri State University in Springfield, but TV makes it a spectacle for millions.

“The higher the pedestal, the heavier the winds,” Burgess said. “The higher they get up the mountain, the thicker the fog.

“It’s harder for them to reflect on themselves and see who they really are. With people constantly telling them how wonderful they are, that they’re the ‘man of God for this hour,’ it’s not a position to be in if one wants to be honest with himself.”

It is the old ego problem, as old as the biblical Adam who sought to be God himself, but Burgess said the glorified are especially vulnerable.

“This is a common strand that runs through all religious literature,” he said.

As 2 Samuel 1:25 puts it: “How are the mighty fallen . . . “

Swaggart’s fall, over reported involvement with a prostitute, is particularly stark because of his “hard-line preaching,” Burgess said.

‘All the More Dramatic’

“He had preached against almost everything imaginable, and then for him to do the very thing he preached against makes it all the more dramatic,” Burgess said.

Burgess, a scholar of the Assemblies of God, the denomination to which Swaggart belongs, said some ministers go wrong in every denomination “virtually every day.”

But Swaggart, who lashed out at sexual lapses, becomes “the epitome of hypocrisy,” Burgess said.

Richard Champion, editor of the denomination’s weekly, Pentecostal Evangel, said that when “people surround themselves with those who always agree, who tell them only good things, they get tripped up in public adulation.

“Ego takes over and gets out of control,” he said. “They see evil as something in other people and rationalize their own behavior. . . . With somebody like Swaggart, it is a very visible thing.”

Clinical psychologist Larry Bass of Springfield, Mo., said that without being specific about Swaggart, his case seemed to fit the category of someone who has “difficulty accepting his own humanness.”

“While he is so vocal attacking other people’s sexual sins,” Bass said, “he is guilty of some of that himself and struggling with it, but he feels as if he has to be above it, and so he hides it.

“He comes across as very judgmental and critical of other people. He can’t accept his own vulnerability to sin, so what he has to do is hide it in a kind of self-righteous hypocrisy.”

Bass, who also belongs to the Assemblies of God, said that many times those who are the “most judgmental, putting down others and condemning are guilty of the same thing they’re haranguing about.

“But they have to hide it. That’s the shame. They’re so afraid to deal with it.”

That kind of “ego is a tremendous burden to carry around,” Bass said, adding that Swaggart’s preaching often was bigoted and absolutist, condemning other religions as well as other people.

“That was his downfall,” Bass said.

He noted that Swaggart had been “very, very vocal” in condemning preachers caught in sex scandals, including fallen TV evangelist Jim Bakker and New Orleans evangelist Marvin Gorman.

Swaggart admitted to his congregation Sunday that he had been involved in sin after Gorman reportedly supplied church officials with pictures of Swaggart at a motel with a prostitute.