Defrocked Swaggart Receives Applause at Half-Full Church
About 2,000 people in a half-empty church Sunday applauded Jimmy Swaggart’s scheduled return to the pulpit next month despite the defrocked evangelist being without ministerial credentials.
Swaggart, banished from the Assemblies of God on Friday for refusing to abide by a yearlong suspension because of his “moral failure” involving a prostitute, did not address the congregants. He instead led them in a rousing gospel song, “Hallelujah, I’m Walking With the King.”
A visiting minister, the Rev. Al Trotter, delivered the sermon at Swaggart’s Family Worship Center and mentioned Swaggart’s scheduled return to the pulpit May 22.
“Just one thing is agitating me and just one thing is filling me with nervous anticipation,” Trotter said. “That’s for Sunday, May 22, to roll around and for the bishop (Swaggart) to take the pulpit again.”
As Trotter finished his words, many of the 2,000 in attendance at the 5,000-seat church rose in boisterous applause.
The Rev. Thomas Zimmerman, former superintendent of the Assemblies of God, said followers would probably lose faith in Swaggart now that he has been evicted from the church.
“In an hour-long show (in which Swaggart admitted the moral sin Feb. 21) he showed all the world some humility, but since that one episode there hasn’t been anything to indicate that he was submissive,” Zimmerman said.
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