Welcome to the official website of Jim Brown - New Column appears each Monday!
This site is part of Brown Publications and The Lisburn Press
You are visiting my site on: July 12, 2025
30
Jul

College Friend Jim Reston Passes!

0
Jim Brown Audio Player
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

My good friend from college days at the University of North Carolina died recently. Jim Rushton wrote 18 books. He was a historian and novelist, and he provided a 96-page “interrogation” memo for David Frost’s TV interviews that prodded Nixon to admit, “I let the American people down” over Watergate.  He was a great athlete at Carolina, and still holds the record for scoring the most goals in a soccer match there.  We last visited in Linville, North Carolina on his book tour a year ago.  During our Carolina days, Jim and I would have dinner each evening at the Phi Delta Theta fraternity house. I wish our conversations had been recorded as we made a gallant effort to solve most of the world’s problems.  Jim was 82 years old and died of cancer.  I will sure miss my friend of 70 years.  To read his full biography, Click Here.

 

05
Jul

REMEMBERING BROTHER JIMMY SWAGGART!

July 5, 2025

Wednesday, July 2ed, 2025

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

REMEMBERING BROTHER JIMMY SWAGGART!

Fifty Eight years. That’s how long ago it’s been since Brother Jimmy Swaggart’s father, also a minister, came into my small Ferriday law office where I was a sole practitioner, and asked me to incorporate his church.  He told me about his son who had recently been ordained as a Pentecostal minister in the Assemblies of the Lord Jesus Christ branch of the church.

Young Brother Swaggart chose to be an evangelist, rather than establishing his own church. He preached in Pentecostal churches throughout northeast Louisiana for several years before deciding to move to Baton Rouge.  He asked me if I was willing to move to Baton Rouge and do legal work for what he told me would be a major evangelical effort to build a full ministry that would include a high school and a college. I passed on the opportunity and felt he might be too much of a dreamer for me. Needless to say, his legal needs prove to be great in the years to come.

We stayed in touch as I became a state senator and eventually moved to Baton Rouge as the Secretary Of State. I visited him regularly at both his office and over the lunch table at two or three of his favorite restaurants on Bluebonnet right by his campus. During this time, I watched his dreams grow into the largest employer in Baton Rouge.

The Swaggart Ministries campus was quite a layout. There was a room the size of a basketball court lined with some 50 tables where ladies sat opening envelope after envelope filled with contributions to his ministry. There was also a large TV production studio lined with some 100 cubicles where translators sat preparing videos to be sent to over 100 countries where they would be played on local TV networks.

His private fleet of airplanes flew all the equipment transported to countries where brother Swaggart would preach, generally in stadiums filled with worshipers. He told me he had more T.V. cameras televising his ministries in these stadiums than were used on Monday night football.

I had what I thought was the dubious request of brokering a meeting between Brother Swaggart and another major televangelist, Rev. Pat Roberson. Swaggart and Robertson had had a falling out in 1988 when Robertson was making a run for the Republican presidential nomination. I was Secretary Of State at the time, and remember receiving a telephone call from someone I knew working in the Robinson campaign. He wondered if I could try to get these two religious icons together to try to settle their differences.

 

Robinson planned a major rally at one of the largest Pentecostal churches in Baton Rouge. He was hoping that Swaggart would meet him there. I went to see Swaggart at his office on Bluebonnet, but he was reluctant to come to Robertson’s rally. But after a long conversation, he agreed to do so. I was the lone observer to these two, meeting in a back room of the church where they talked over the differences at length. Swaggart finally agreed to settle their differences, and joined Robertson on the church pulpit before a crowd some 4000. I was glad to have been the mouse on the wall to listen.

Our last lengthy visit was at the funeral of Jerry Lee Lewis in our mutual home of Ferriday.  We both had lots to say about his first cousin Jerry Lee who was also my first legal client.

Brother Jimmy Swaggart certainly had his problems that have been well aired in The press. But whatever ones thinks of him, he proved to be a major figure in the evangelical movement throughout America. He made it to 90 years, and I’m not too far behind him growing old. It would be an understatement to say that Brother Jimmy Swaggart led a full life. I had the good fortune of sharing a number of special memories. 

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

 

 

Leave a Reply

Weekly Cartoon

Order Jesus, Jews, Jihad and Me
by Clicking Here

DATELINE LOUISIANA PODCAST

To Listen, Click Here!

A provocative look at the deepest of the  deep southern states by two veterans of  Louisiana politics. Thoughts that are informative, candid, humorous, and  sometimes controversial about life in  one of the most interesting and rabble-rousing states in the nation.

To hear Jim Brown’s new regular podcast, Click Here.

JIM BROWN MERCHANDISE