He claimed the confrontation was a kindness. As the Post recalled: On July 15, 1986, Swaggart invited Gorman to his bayou mansion and accused the married preacher of committing adultery with several different women. Each story acknowledged that Gorman, whose own mid-1980s television ministry was perhaps eyed by Swaggart as unwelcome competition, had his own flaws.
Unlike a mere news report, the subject of a malicious obit can't send a letter to the editor.īy contrast, the Gorman articles in the Times-Picayune and the Post were respectful, thorough, and - wait for it! - balanced. When this creeps into obituaries, as it did in the case of Tim LaHaye, readers suffer because such a viewpoint obscures important facts. There is, as this blog regularly notes, a tendency to often frame holders of more traditional religious viewpoints - ones that don't comport with Kellerism, the tmatt-coined word describing matters the overlords of the media have already settled, be it marriage, origins or whatever. As Julia Duin noted, there were many other problems with the Times' obit, but that "journalistic 'f-word,' " as she put it, set the tone for a hit piece disguised as a remembrance. Tim LaHaye, the Southern Baptist pastor-turned-mega-bestselling-novelist.
#Jimmy swaggart he was there all the time how to
Marvin Gorman's life story, as told in New Orleans and by The Washington Post, illustrates why it's vital to do this - and how to get a complicated story right.īefore we go there, some general background: It was off-putting to me, and others, when The New York Times hung the "fundamentalist" label on the late Rev. I believe, however, that it's important to remember the lives and works, good or bad, of those who've labored in the vineyards of faith, and thereby hangs, I would also suggest, a journalistic tale. But it was long, long ago, and the media could be forgiven for having moved on to the latest prosperity gospel preacher who's set to pray at Donald Trump's inauguration, or something else more contemporary. Those of us in or around the Godbeat in those days know how tumultuous a time it was. Gorman declared bankruptcy, Bakker went to prison and Swaggart's empire collapsed. By this time all three men's ministries were in ruins. He won a $10 million award, although the parties later settled out of court at $1.85 million. Gorman circulated photographs of Swaggart and a prostitute at an Airline Highway motel in Metairie, leading to Swaggart's downfall, and he sued Swaggart for defamation. Swaggart also helped blow the whistle on Jim Bakker, an Assembly of God televangelist in Charlotte, N.C., for an extramarital affair with a church secretary.
In 1986, Swaggart, a fellow Assembly of God televangelist based in Baton Rouge, accused him of adultery.
Gorman was brought down in an epic feud that sullied the Pentecostal movement three decades ago. Gorman, 86, who passed to his rest on January 4 in New Orleans, was one of the first, in 1987, to formally accuse Swaggart of adultery, and he had the photographic evidence to support the charge.Īs the New Orleans Times-Picayune captured it: Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, was once affiliated with the much more mainstream Assemblies of God. Until just recently, you'd have to have been a rather deep-in-the-weeds religion nerd to remember Pastor Marvin Gorman, a pentecostal preacher who, like the much-more-famous Rev.
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