Swaggart worked several part-time odd jobs to support his young family and also began singing Southern Gospel music at various churches.Īccording to his autobiography “To Cross a River”, Swaggart, along with his wife and son, lived in poverty during the 1950s as he preached throughout rural Louisiana, struggling to survive on an income of $30 a week (equivalent to $290 in 2021). In 1952, aged 17, Swaggart married 15-year-old Frances Anderson, whom he met in church in Wisner, Louisiana while he was playing music with his father, who pastored the Assembly of God Church there. With his parents, Swaggart attended small Assemblies of God churches in Ferriday and Wisner. He also had a sister, Jeanette Ensminger (1942–1999). The extended family had a complex network of interrelationships: 'cousins and in-laws and other relatives married each other until the clan was entwined like a big, tight ball of rubber bands.'He is the cousin of rockabilly pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis and country music star Mickey Gilley. They were related by marriage, as Son's maternal uncle was Elmo Lewis, who was married to Minnie's sister Mamie. Jimmy Lee Swaggart was born on March 15, 1935, in Ferriday, Louisiana, to fiddle player and Pentecostal preacher Willie Leon (known as 'Sun' or 'Son') Swaggart and Minnie Bell Herron, daughter of sharecropper William Herron. Jimmy Lee Swaggart ( born March 15, 1935) is an American Pentecostal televangelist, gospel music recording artist, pianist, and Christian author. Swaggart is the senior pastor of the Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. During the 1970s and 1980s, he sold in excess of 17 million LP albums.In 1980, Swaggart received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Performance for Traditional Gospel.The Jimmy Swaggart Ministries owns and operates the SonLife Broadcasting Network (SBN). Swaggart plays the piano and he also sings in a baritone voice. His “crusades” enabled him to travel throughout the contiguous United States, Canada, Europe, Africa, and South America. and on 78 channels in 104 countries, and over the Internet.At the height of his popularity in the 1980s, his telecast was transmitted to in excess of 3,000 stations and cable systems each week.

The weekly Jimmy Swaggart Telecast and A Study in the Word programs are broadcast throughout the U.S. His television ministry, which began in 1971, and was originally known as the “Camp Meeting Hour”, has a viewing audience both in the U.S.

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