Religious Celebrity: An Analysis of Image Repair Discourse

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 Fink , S. ( 1986 ). Crisis management: Planning for the inevitable . New York : American Management Association . Google Scholar]) and Benoit (1997 Benoit , W. L. ( 1997 ). Image repair discourse and crisis communication . Public Relations Review , 23 ( 2 ), 177 – 186 .Crossref], Web of Science ®] , Google Scholar]) 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.