Tribute to Swaggart

Hearing about Jimmy Swaggart dying today registered with me in a unique way. For the past week or so, thinking about how best to write up my experience at Ohio State (which was an unbelievable, fundamentally crucial time for me), I actually thought about how was I going to explain that the man who kept me going at the time as a Christian was Swaggart, who I'd watch on my little black-and-white portable TV when I came home (off-campus rental house on Patterson that I shared with two roommates) from classes during my junior year at OSU.

Before you think badly of me, I became fully aware in a relatively short time that he was a "holy roller" Pentecostal preacher not to be trusted. I knew about his scandals when they first became news and I remember being very turned off.

For some reason, even to this day, I've never really been that embarrassed to let Grace Believers know that he was the only preacher I ever really listened to in my adult life prior to finding Shorewood!

I will just as easily tell people that in high school I was a big fan of the Rev. Robert Schuller and his "Hour of Power" national TV show on Sunday mornings.

Schuller was a big deal in my family, as far as watching him on TV and giving him money to support his ministry. We even had some of his "positive thinking" trinkets (as gifts for donations) placed around our kitchen and family room. We even had a kitchen plaque engraved with Schuller's signature slogan: "Tough Times Never Last But Tough People Do."

You see, I was raised by people who believed in preachers. In fact, my dad was saved in his late 30s by the very popular preacher, Dallas Billington, in my hometown of Akron, OH. Billington, the head man at the Akron Baptist Temple, was a patient of my dad (who had a private medical practice in Firestone Park at the time).

I didn't find this out until one day in my 30s, but when I actually finally asked my dad how he became saved, he told me Billington got him saved, even giving his own Bible to my dad during one office visit!

The funny thing is I received my very first Bible as a little child attending Billington's church. It was a pocket-sized red leather King James Bible (New Testament) embossed in gold with the words, "Akron Baptist Temple. The World's Largest Sunday School."

Billington was a big enough name that even my current pastor, Richard Jordan, readily acknowledged knowing all about him when I told him I grew up in his church (from ages 2-5) before we became missionaries in Costa Rica and then Ecuador.

At the time, Akron was home and headquarters for the national "celebrity preachers" Ernest Angley and Rex Humbard!

This is a quick aside, but my mom tells the story of how she shocked fellow missionaries in Costa Rica when she told them her church in Akron had 20 ushers for its main Sunday service.

Well, I guess I got off on a real tangent there, but this is the real meat of my "testimony" after all. After I left for college at 18, I didn't have anyone telling me I had to go to church or anything. I did voluntarily go to a Protestant church (I don't even remember the denomination) that was actually part of the campus at Ohio University, but I don't remember getting anything much from it, and because I only attended by myself, I would skip many Sunday mornings.

Once I got to Ohio State I didn't know of any church to try and don't remember even being very interested in trying to find one. I don't remember how I came across Swaggart, as he was nobody anyone in my family ever mentioned, but I think it must have been through tuning into a Christian TV station.

What I know for sure is I readily gravitated toward him and thought highly of his preaching skills. His Bible was always open and he would walk around with it in his hands as he crisscrossed the stage, sometimes crying, sometimes yelling, sometimes laughing.

I loved his piano playing and thought his singing voice was great. I loved everything about him, as I remember, and would give money to his program because that's what the show was always asking for to keep his ministry going and I was taught by my father to believe in tithing.

I never told anyone in my family about my watching Swaggart and it wasn't until after I met my first (and only!) boyfriend during my junior year that I started to consider Swaggart might be a phony.

Fred was the one to first tell me Swaggart was a "phony" and he would laugh at me for giving money to his program. Of course, Fred was an unbeliever and that's what ultimately led to our breakup.