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Thrice Born
The Rhetorical Comeback of Jimmy Swaggart
by Michael J. Giuliano
In February of 1988, Jimmy Swaggart, the world's most watched televangelist, was caught consorting with a prostitute in New Orleans, Louisiana. This study examines Swaggart's rhetorical campaign to salvage his ministry in the face of those actions. By analyzing his sermons, letters, and magazine articles presented between February 21 and May 22, 1988, the work seeks to discover the rationale that Swaggart offered his doctrinal community to justify the claim, I am worthy of forgiveness and continued support.
Using Stephen Toulmin's model of informal argument as a tool to unlock the shared world view of rhetor and audience, this study argues that Swaggart's overt stance, "am solely to blame for what I did," was not the conclusion his primary audience would reach. Using stories and doctrinal arguments, Swaggart successfully argued that he was not a fault for his actions, that his actions could be accurately be blamed on other individuals and the entire ordeal would lead to an improved Swaggart. However, in that the arguments were shaped out of the shared Pentecostal world view that speaker and audience share, many parts of the arguments were left unspoken, and as such, were completely missed by many outside observers.
Although the analysis here exclusively deals with Swaggart, I will demonstrate that such rhetorical strategies are not unique to Swaggart, Indeed, we will see that when any celebrity defends his or herself in the fact of scandal, similar themes tend to emerge. As such, the analysis proves to be as timely now as it was in 1988.
Michael J. Giuliano is associate professor of communication studies at Westmont College. He has earned degrees from Tennessee Temple University, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and Northwestern University.
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