‘Different’ Jimmy Swaggart Opens 3-Day L.A. Crusade

Television evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, saying he is a “different” man with a rebounding ministry, opened a weekend crusade Friday night at the Shrine Auditorium before a crowd of less than 2,000.

It was only his second U.S. preaching appearance outside his Louisiana base this year, since being defrocked over his alleged involvement with a prostitute.

“We lost a lot of our supporters, but some of them are coming back,” Swaggart said Friday.

Swaggart filled less than one-third of the 6,300-seat Shrine, whereas he nearly packed the 15,000-seat Los Angeles Sports Arena a year and a half ago.

After the scandal, Swaggart’s weekly program dropped from No. 1 to No. 3 among TV evangelists in Arbitron audience ratings, but he said he still has 300 broadcast stations for his Sunday program and 200 stations carrying his daily show.

After drawing good crowds at his first post-defrocking services, held in Indianapolis last month, Swaggart is now resuming his three-day crusades in U.S. cities at the average rate of two a month through 1989, aides said.

Swaggart associates said his largest crowd will probably be tonight. The minister, who sings and plays the piano as well as preaching, also will conduct a rally Sunday afternoon. Half a dozen sign-carrying pickets outside the Shrine on Friday night accused Swaggart of being a “pervert” and “false prophet.”

The 52-year-old evangelist, known previously for his determined attacks within the Assemblies of God on fellow ministers who erred in behavior or theology, surprised his congregation in Baton Rouge, La., on Feb. 19 when he tearfully confessed to undisclosed sins.

His denomination had begun investigating reports that he paid a prostitute to pose nude for him. Although he confessed his “moral failures” privately to church authorities, Swaggart publicly has neither denied any allegations nor explained what the sins were.

In an interview Friday, he said, “I don’t know if I would have made that decision (to remain silent) if I had known all the things that were going to be told and all the lies and half-truths. But we felt that to be specific could do nothing but hurt and cause problems.”

When national Assemblies of God leaders ordered a two-year rehabilitation for Swaggart, including one year away from the pulpit of his $170-million ministry, Swaggart resigned from the denomination and continued to observe his self-imposed, three-month ban on preaching.

Turned to His Own Ministries

Attorney William Treeby, Swaggart’s chief spokesman, said Friday that Swaggart was reordained shortly thereafter by his own Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, based in Baton Rouge.

Treeby said Sunday attendance at the 5,000-seat Family Worship Center there has climbed steadily, reaching 3,900 last Sunday. Enrollment at the Jimmy Swaggart Bible College next week is expected to be about 400 students, compared to the 1,450 enrolled last year. A long-planned graduate seminary will open with 16 students, Treeby said.

“I believe there is a different Jimmy Swaggart here,” Swaggart said Friday. “The self-righteous . . . fault-finding part of me is gone.”

Swaggart said that people should be generous in support of other TV ministers, including the Rev. Robert Schuller of Garden Grove’s Crystal Cathedral, with whom he differs theologically and who now tops the Arbitron ratings for religious programs.

Bakker Included

Swaggart even had good words for Jim Bakker. When Swaggart last preached in Los Angeles, March 27-29, 1987, it was only days after Bakker resigned from his PTL television network after saying he paid church secretary Jessica Hahn money to keep quiet a sexual encounter they had years earlier. Declaring then that Bakker had not repented, Swaggart described the PTL scandal as “a cancer on the body of Christ (the church).”

But on Friday Swaggart said that Bakker ought to be allowed to buy back PTL’s Heritage USA park at Ft. Mill, S.C. Although admitting that PTL’s recovery from bankruptcy faces monumental problems, Swaggart said: “He built PTL. . . . I think he ought to be given the chance to make it work.”

Demonstrating his support of Swaggart at tonight’s rally will be the Rev. E. V. Hill of Los Angeles, a nationally prominent black Baptist pastor. “I have no argument with the Assembly of God procedure,” Hill said. “I just happen to know that the Holy Spirit constantly puts you back on your feet and empowers you to go back and preach the Gospel.”

But Swaggart and his wife, Frances, indicated in comments Friday afternoon that they were disappointed by some Christians who did not support Swaggart’s decision to refuse lengthy counseling and to limit his pulpit silence to three months.

“Christians are supposed to be the most forgiving people on the face of the Earth,” Swaggart said.

“Surprisingly enough, you don’t find very many Pharisees in the bars, clubs, honky-tonks and dance halls,” he said, referring to the Gospel characterizations of Pharisees as religious hypocrites. “Sad to say you find most (of them) in church.”