Church Bars Swaggart for at Least a Year

Television preacher Jimmy Swaggart, who tearfully confessed last month to unspecified sins involving a prostitute, was ordered Tuesday by his church elders to stay out of the pulpit and off the air for a minimum of one year.

In recognition of the modern age of evangelism, terms of the suspension announced here at the headquarters of the Assemblies of God denomination forbade the broadcast anywhere in the world of Swaggart reruns or sermons already taped and awaiting distribution.

The action ended a chaotic month of indecision and intramural bickering within the 1.2-million-member church over what to do with the wayward Swaggart, easily its most powerful, popular--and profitable--minister. Church officials in Louisiana had recommended that Swaggart refrain from preaching for only three months.

“The decisions reached have not been based on pressure, public opinion or money,” said G. Raymond Carlson, Assemblies of God general superintendent.

Swaggart’s suspension followed a two-day convocation of the church’s 240-member General Presbytery, a private meeting that participants said focused as much on procedural matters as on Swaggart’s alleged dalliance with a prostitute outside New Orleans.

The drama now returns to Swaggart’s domain. The world’s most widely watched TV evangelist must decide whether his $150-million-a-year ministry can survive without him while he submits to a two-year program of “rehabilitation.” The church has requested that he agree to the terms “in writing” within 30 days.

Assemblies of God officials conceded that there was nothing to prevent Swaggart from breaking with the church to retake his pulpit as an independent preacher, and some members of the General Presbytery indicated that this was the most likely scenario. Jim Bakker, another Assemblies of God “televangelist,” refused rehabilitation last year after he was engulfed in a sex scandal, and he was subsequently defrocked.

Response Today

Swaggart was not allowed to attend the hearing. A Swaggart spokesman said there would be no response to the decision until today.

Carlson said he notified Swaggart of the suspension by telephone Tuesday morning: “I gave the decision to him, he expressed thanks and I had prayer with him over the telephone.” He said Swaggart had not indicated what course he might take.

During the last four years, Swaggart and his Louisiana-based ministries have enhanced the Assemblies of God foreign mission program by nearly $40 million in contributions. General Presbytery members said that during the meeting they were told the loss of that money--in some years as much as 15% of the budget--would create difficulties for the operation but not kill it.

Fiery TV Fixture

Swaggart has been affiliated with Assemblies of God since 1960, long before he rose above the Pentecostal revival circuit to gain celebrity as a fiery fixture of religious television.

Church leaders said that, although they hoped Swaggart would stay on board, they had no choice but to handle his case as they would any other fallen minister. To do less, they said, would risk church credibility.

“This is the redemptive process as it ought to be,” said the Rev. Fred Cottriel, who heads the church’s Southern California district, based in Costa Mesa. “A man who wants to straighten out his life and go on with the business of his calling can do it. It really puts the ball in his court. Nobody is after him. Everybody wants the best for him. And we feel the best for him is the best for us.”

Technically, the suspension announced Tuesday would extend for two years. It would be lifted only after Swaggart completed a program of rehabilitation, meeting weekly with designated counselors who in turn would file monthly reports to church leaders. He would not be allowed to preach to his congregation or participate on camera in his television ministry.

‘Limited’ Access to Pulpit

Swaggart would be permitted “limited” access to the pulpit only after he successfully completed the first year of rehabilitation, Carlson said.

Much of the Swaggart affair has meant new ground for the Assemblies of God leadership, both because of his enormous contributions to the denomination and because of the complicated nature of his ministry. A critical question was whether to allow Swaggart reruns and canned sermons to be aired during his suspension, and the officials determined that they should not be shown.

Carlson said no legal advice was sought during the deliberations.

The Rev. Leonard Nipper, another member of the Southern California delegation present here, said Swaggart’s writings about what fates should befall sinful ministers came into play during deliberations, raising hopes that the terms would be accepted.

Previous Statements

“I would be inclined to think he would accept it,” Nipper said. “I might be in a minority, but I think so because of his own statements in previous publications, where he said if a man fails this is what he should do.”

Swaggart had been a prominent player in Bakker’s downfall, suggesting that the preacher and others with similar weaknesses were “cancers on the body of Christ.”

The session here was unprecedented. The General Presbytery usually meets only once a year, in August. The scattered leadership was summoned here after the Louisiana branch, seeking to ban Swaggart from the pulpit for only three months, challenged the power of the church’s highest body, the Executive Presbytery, to mete out punishment to fallen ministers.

Affirmation of Authority

The General Presbyters voted overwhelmingly late Monday that the executive body did indeed have that power, and Tuesday morning the conditions of Swaggart’s suspension were drafted and announced. Some participants saw the meeting as an important affirmation of the central authority of the Springfield headquarters over the denomination.

The General Presbyters said they were not given full details of the nature of Swaggart’s offenses--as one put it, “We operate on a need to know basis.”

A weeping Swaggart told his congregation Feb. 21 that he had “sinned” against the church and his wife, Frances, a prominent supporting performer on his religious broadcast. It subsequently developed from a variety of sources that the sins had occurred along a strip of seedy motels in New Orleans. A rival preacher said he had obtained photographs of Swaggart leaving a motel room with a prostitute, and the confession followed.

Prostitute’s Story

Debra Murphree, a thrice-arrested prostitute, said she was the woman in those photographs, and in an interview with a New Orleans television station crew described in frank detail how Swaggart would pay her to strike nude poses on a bed while he watched and sexually stimulated himself from a nearby chair.

Murphree has signed a contract to tell her story--and re-create her poses--for Penthouse, a spokesman for the magazine said this week.

Swaggart has not yet delivered on a promise to detail his indiscretions to his congregation, but he also has not challenged media accounts of the affair.

On Monday, Carlson and other members of the Executive Presbytery were shown a tape of the Murphree interview with the ABC television affiliate in New Orleans. There were reports that the church officials were concerned with conflicts between the accounts of Swaggart and Murphree regarding the frequency of his visits.

Carlson said Tuesday, however, that the subject did not come up in the meeting with the General Presbyters.

“We did not discuss what prostitutes might have said,” he said.