n ( esp AmE )
an evangelist who has a series of religious programmes on television. Many have become very rich from money sent in by supporters. Such programmes lost supporters in the 1980s after Jim Bakker was sent to prison for financial crimes and Jimmy Swaggert admitted that he had visited prostitutes. In 2001 two well-known US televangelists, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson , made many people angry by suggesting in a television interview that Americans were partly to blame for the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center because of their immoral behaviour.
► televangelism n [ U ].