Swaggart Hints He’ll Defy Order, Return to Pulpit

BATON ROUGE, La. —  Citing “the will of God” and speaking through his lawyer, scandal-torn preacher Jimmy Swaggart indicated Wednesday that he will defy an order from church elders to step away from his lucrative television ministry for a year.

Attorney William Treeby, reading from a prepared statement, said Swaggart “is looking forward with great anticipation” to resuming his role as mainstay of the world’s most widely watched religious broadcast in just seven weeks.

The statement was issued one day after the national elders of the Assemblies of God suspended the firebrand preacher for “moral failures.” The failures reportedly involve him paying a prostitute to pose naked.

The church’s suspension would be lifted only after Swaggart concluded a customary two-year rehabilitation process that mandates at least a one-year hiatus from all preaching--in church or on television, live or taped. Church officials said that if Swaggart fails to comply with the terms he can be defrocked.

Though the scandal has received national attention as a riveting moral drama, cast with puritanical preachers and common street prostitutes and set in seedy motels, the confrontation between Swaggart and his elders is taking shape as a complicated wrangle over Assemblies of God bylaws and the right of state branches of the church to govern themselves.

Elders Overruled

Louisiana elders seeking to keep Swaggart out of the pulpit for only three months--until May 22--were overruled this week by the Assemblies of God national leadership at an emergency meeting at church headquarters in Springfield, Mo.

“The Louisiana district,” Swaggart’s statement asserted, “has rightfully taken the firm position that the district alone has the authority under the constitution and bylaws (of the church) to decide on appropriate plans of rehabilitation for the ordained ministers of the Louisiana district.”

However, Juleen Turnage, spokeswoman for the Assemblies of God headquarters, said Wednesday that the three-month preaching ban recommended by the Louisiana district “is a moot point now” since the church’s Executive Presbytery did not accept it.

Officials of the Executive Presbytery, comprising the top 13 officers of the church, said Wednesday that they plan to decide, before ending their meeting today, on how many days to wait for an official response from Swaggart.

“The denomination does not communicate with a disciplined minister through press conferences and/or through lawyers,” Turnage said.

She said Swaggart does not have 30 days to appeal the Executive Presbytery decision. That appeal period applies only to a minister who has been dismissed, she said.

A weeping Swaggart confessed ambiguously to “sins” on Feb. 21, shortly after reports that a rival minister had obtained photos of Swaggart in the company of a known prostitute at a low-rent motel outside New Orleans.

After his confession, the Assemblies of God Louisiana presbyters ruled that Swaggart, as penance, should undergo two years of counseling from his elders and refrain from preaching for three months. The regional body rejected a recommendation from the national leadership to invoke a stricter penalty, and also left open the possibility that Swaggart’s $150-million-a-year ministry could rely during his absence on a vast library of reruns and as yet unbroadcast tapes of sermons.

Complied So Far

Swaggart has complied so far with this penance. He has refrained from preaching, though he has addressed his congregation from the spectator’s gallery of his Family Worship Center here. His wife and son have moved to center stage in Swaggart’s absence.

In the statement read to reporters here by attorney Treeby, Swaggart advanced the same argument that the Louisiana delegates had brought to the session in Springfield:

“Rev. Swaggart is continuing to do exactly as he has promised, and that is to submit himself to the presbyters of the Louisiana district who are attempting to do what is right under a proper interpretation of the Bible and the constitution and bylaws of the Assemblies of God.

“And, according to his submission to these, his elders, and to the will of God, he is looking forward with great anticipation to returning to television and the pulpit in accordance with the district decision, on Sunday, May 22, 1988.”

In addition to its departure from traditional discipline meted out to preachers, the Louisiana decision also was noteworthy in that at least two of the presbyters who made it also have leadership roles in Swaggart’s Baton Rouge-based ministry.

The action prompted the national Executive Presbytery to convene its 240-member General Presbytery on Monday. The unprecedented two-day session produced a tangle of parliamentary procedures apparently designed to empower the church’s headquarters.

The General Presbytery voted overwhelmingly, despite objections from Louisiana delegates, that the Executive Presbytery has the ultimate authority to discipline wayward ministers, including Swaggart. The executive presbyters then issued their strict suspension.

The Swaggart statement said that the possibilities of an appeal through the church structure “will be considered carefully.”

Should Swaggart be defrocked from the Assemblies of God, he could continue his ministry as an independent preacher or seek affiliation with another Christian body. While neither of these options is unprecedented, Swaggart’s loss of his accreditation from the Assemblies of God could cause him problems with Christian networks that have carried his programs.

At the same time, should Swaggart be forced off television for a year, it could do great fiscal harm to his operations here. Money from audience donations is one of the ministry’s main sources of income and Swaggart, of course, is the star attraction.

Swaggart and his family were conspicuous in their absence at the Family Worship Center’s Wednesday night service. About 1,000 people showed up despite heavy rains to hear co-pastor Jim Rentz preach a sermon crafted around two verses from Psalm 37:

“The steps of a good man,” the scripture goes, “are ordered by the Lord and he delighteth in his way. And though he falls he should not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.”

Rentz made no direct reference to Swaggart, who was in town and refusing through intermediaries all requests for interviews. But Rentz did address in his sermon the Lord’s capacity for mercy and the dangers of allowing religious authority figures to get between a believer and God. Afterward, Rentz said any allegorical references to Swaggart were unintentional.

Times religion writer John Dart contributed to this story from Los Angeles.