Religious Celebrity: An Analysis of Image Repair Discourse

Abstract

In all of the communication literature on crisis communication, not one study has been done that looks at the unique situation of a religious person or organization in crisis. This article uses the infamous 1988 crisis of the televangelist Jimmy Swaggart as a case study for religious crisis communication. The theories of Fink (1986) and Benoit (1997) are used to analyze the situation and explain how Swaggart constructed his image repair campaign. The article also illustrates how these two theories can be used in conjunction to offer a more complete understanding of the crisis situation, and offers a unique look at how religion impacts crisis communication.