‘He was playing for salvation’: Ferriday native Jimmy Swaggart dies
Published 12:14 pm Tuesday, July 1, 2025
From left, cousins the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, the late Jerry Lee Lewis and the late Mickey Gilley. Swaggart will officiate Lewis's funeral in Ferriday at Young's Funeral Home at 11 a.m. (Photo courtesy Matthew Swaggart)
The Rev. Jimmy Swaggart give the eulogy for Jerry Lee Lewis at Young's Funeral Home in Ferriday. Ferriday Police Chief Sam King is in the foreground.
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FERRIDAY, La. – The Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, Ferriday native and America’s longest-serving TV evangelist, has died.
The family announced his death on Tuesday. He was 90.
Swaggart, who was born on March 15, 1935, in Ferriday, launched into full-time ministry in 1955. He served as the pastor of the Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and founded Jimmy Swaggart Ministries. At his peak in the mid-1980s, Swaggart was the country’s top-rated TV preacher. His services were broadcast to over 2 million households.
However, his image was bruised after he was linked to a 1987 scandal involving a prostitute that he met in a New Orleans motel. Swaggart never confessed to anything more than an unspecified sin during a televised apology in which he tearfully delivered his “I have sinned speech.”
To Miss-Lou residents, Swaggart is perhaps best known as one of the three double-first-cousins with incredible talents who came from the little Assemblies of God Church on Texas Avenue in Ferriday: Swaggart, Jerry Lee Lewis, a Grammy-award winning rock and roll star; and Mickey Gilley, country music star and businessman.
“There were a lot of memories out of that Assembly of God Church in Ferriday, Louisiana,” said Hyram Copeland, a cousin to the trio. “I told my wife this morning that it’s sad. Now I’m the last of (our generation) left, and I’m 85.”
Swaggart, Lewis and Gilley were double-first cousins through the Gilley and Lewis families from Mangham. “There were five brothers who married five sisters in the Gilley and Lewis families,” Copeland said. ‘The Gilleys had eight boys and three girls; the Lewises had eight girls and three boys … and they all started dating each other in Snake Ridge, Louisiana.”
Copeland was a cousin as well, though not one of the double-doubles. He was five years younger than the others, but vividly recalls watching their musical abilities develop.
“They all sang in the choir together,” Copeland said. “Jerry went on to sell records; Mickey went into country music; and Jimmy stayed in ministry. All their talent was God-given.”
Copeland said none of the trio could read music. Instead, they played by ear. “My aunt had the only piano and they would come to her house and play,” he said. “They’d go to the cafe and listen to the juke box, then go back to the house and play just exactly as they heard it on the jukebox.”
Swaggart’s father, known as “Son” Swaggart, was a fire-and-brimstone preacher at the Assemblies of God Church, said Glen McGlothin. “Back in the old days he did a lot of barnstorming they called it … evangelizing.”
And while Swaggart shared his cousins’ musical talents, he chose a different path. “Back then you could see it. His father was good Christian man, and Jimmy was going to follow him,” McGlothin said.
According to the Huffington Post, Swaggart said in a 1985 interview that he heard the call of God at the age of 8. “Everything seemed different after that day in front of the Arcade Theater,” he said in a 1985 interview with the Jacksonville Journal-Courier in Illinois. “I felt better inside. Almost like taking a bath.”
He preached and worked part time in oil fields until he was 23. He then moved entirely into his ministry: preaching, playing piano and singing gospel songs with the barrelhouse fervor of cousin Lewis at Assemblies of God revivals and camp meetings.
Swaggart started a radio show, a magazine, and then moved into television, with outspoken views. Swaggart’s messages stirred thousands of congregants and millions of TV viewers, making him a household name by the late 1980s. Contributors built Jimmy Swaggart Ministries into a business that made an estimated $142 million in 1986.
His Baton Rouge complex still includes a worship center and broadcasting and recording facilities.
The evangelist largely stayed out of the news in later years but remained in the pulpit at Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, often joined by his son, Donnie, a fellow preacher. His radio station broadcast church services and gospel music to 21 states, and Swaggart’s ministry boasted a worldwide audience on the internet.
“There’s been no greater example of a good and faithful servant than my father. No ifs, ands and buts about it. A man who lived his life for the cause of Christ,” Donnie Swaggart said in a video message shared on social media Sunday about his dad’s final days.
Swaggart most recently returned to Ferriday in October 2022 to officiate the service at Lewis’ funeral.
On Monday, Swaggart was inducted into the Southern Gospel Music Hall of Fame, a tribute to his talent and his lifelong gift.
“Man I loved his voice; I loved his singing” McGlothin said. “He may not be as well-known for that, and maybe he didn’t have as flamboyant of a career as the other two did, but he didn’t need it. He was playing a different ball game.
“He was playing for salvation.”
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