Biography

Before he was a successful televangelist, he used to work as a construction worker near his hometown in Ferriday, Louisiana.

When he was 14, in 1949, he had enough of his father's strictness. Along with his cousin, Jerry Lee Lewis, Swaggart was sneaking out to nightclubs, listening to blues music.

He, along with Frances and Donnie, lived in poverty during the 1950s as he preached throughout rural Louisiana, struggling to survive on $30 a week.

Underwent successful surgery at Baton Rouge General Hospital after complaining of chest pains, also an angioplasty procedure to clear a blockage in an artery leading to his heart. [3 February 2001].

Born to local sharecroppers.

[When he was worried if he'd no longer preach] If I do not return to the pulpit this weekend, millions of people will go to hell.

I'm not knocking the poor homosexual, I'm not. They need salvation just like anybody else.

[When he asks Christians to know their enemy]: Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact. Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. Only atheists could accept this Satanic theory.

I'm knocking our pitiful, pathetic lawmakers. And I thank God that [President George W. Bush] has stated, we need a Constitutional amendment that states that marriage is between a man and a woman.

I get amazed, I can't look at it but about 10 seconds, at these politicians dancing around this, dancing around this, I'm trying to find a correct name for it, this utter absolute, asinine, idiotic stupidity of men marrying men.