"Televangelism" refers to the specific style of religious broadcasting identified with conservative Protestantism and the Religious Right. Its roots are in the fundamentalist radio ministries of the 1930s through the 1950s, but televangelists took advantage of changing Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations, the increasing availability of cable television, and a changing cultural climate to build vast media empires, most significantly in the 1980s.
History
Evangelism, revivalist preaching, and simple Bible-based Christianity have long dominated the American religious landscape. While claiming to be "old-time religion," evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity, perhaps paradoxically, have often been on the cutting edge of technological development and the utilization of that technology to further their antimodernist ends. Such is the case with televangelism. Though televangelists are much criticized for their huckster, "Elmer Gantry"-type characteristics, their obsession with fund-raising appeals is a result of both pressure created by mainline religion in the early history of broadcasting and the techniques that enabled televangelism to grow at the pace at which it did.
Scholars trace the roots of televangelism to the revivalist preachers of the nineteenth century, especially Charles Finney, Dwight Moody, and Billy Sunday, who developed and perfected evangelical religious programming. By 1960 the fight for broadcast time had expanded to include television time as well as radio. It was in this year that the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) convinced the FCC to change its policy regarding public service broadcasting; from this point forward, the FCC determined that programming considered "in the public interest" was in the public interest whether or not the network was paid for airing it. Mainline religious broadcasters found it hard to compete with the fundamentalists, who were, by this time, skilled at raising money for paid airtime. Furthermore, the income-generating fundamentalists had funds to spend on the purchase and development of the latest technologies.
Major Ministries
From Baptist Jerry Falwell and Presbyterian D. James Kennedy to nondenominational African American Fred Price, important television ministries have included representatives of the entire spectrum of Protestant traditions that make up evangelicalism and fundamentalism. But the most colorful, controversial, and prevalent are (or have been) the pentecostal ministries of Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Bakker, Oral Roberts, and Pat Robertson.
While the television ministries of Falwell, Kennedy, Price, Swaggart, and Roberts have kept fairly traditional formats—broadcasting the church services of their respective congregations with their own sermons as the central focus of the program—it has been the pentecostal ministries of Jim and Tammy Bakker (Praise The Lord [PTL] Club) and Pat Robertson (700 Club) that have emphasized revivalist methods designed to evoke specific responses by their audiences. Rhetorical styles, the use of music, and even the orchestration of the physical environment were all carefully examined, planned, and controlled to bring about the desired response: fear, repentance, conversion, and dedication to the ongoing support of the ministry so that others might experience the same. When broadcast technology became available, the religious traditions grounded in revivalism had skills that readily lent themselves to the new media.
Early regulation of radio by the FCC required stations to provide free public service programming. The most popular forms were religious in nature, produced by mainline denominations, provided free to networks, and aired by the networks at no charge to the religious institutions. Finke and Stark (1992) argue that the Federal Council of Churches (through which the mainline churches had access to the media) worked to freeze out the fundamentalists by requiring radio networks that wished to use the council's programming to air only council programming during free time and not to sell airtime to other religious programming. Networks typically prohibited the solicitation of funds during free "public service" airtime. The exception to this "cartel" (as Finke and Stark call it) was the Mutual Broadcasting System, which sold commercial airtime to fundamentalist broadcasters who were willing to pay and who used part of their airtime to solicit funds to pay for it.
In 1944 the NRB was formed, in part to work toward securing access to broadcast media for innovation and responding to market demands. The Bakkers' and Robertson's ministries have used state-of-the-art technology, a strong emphasis on sophisticated production values, and a news or talk show format to develop unique niches in the religious broadcasting market. They have also diversified well beyond their interests in television evangelism. Robertson has founded the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and a university (formerly CBN University, now Regent University). The Bakkers, at the height of their influence, built a Christian theme park: Heritage USA.
It was also the Pentecostal ministries—Swaggart, the Bakkers, and Roberts—that were racked with sex and financial scandals in the 1980s. The Bakkers were criticized for their lavish lifestyle, paid for by their viewers, and then it was made public that Jim had had an extramarital affair that had been covered up with hush money from PTL funds. Swaggart's ministry faced similar controversy when it was made public that he had been a frequent visitor to prostitutes. Roberts's financial scandal reached its peak when he announced that if supporters did not contribute a specified amount of money within a specified time to his ministry, "the Lord will take me home" (i.e., he would die). These scandals ultimately brought down the Bakkers' ministry, as Jim landed in jail, Jim and Tammy divorced, and Tammy remarried. Swaggart was defrocked by the Assemblies of God. He made a televised emotional plea to God, his followers, and his family for forgiveness and refused to give up his ministry—although it has not recovered from the debacle and subsequent accusations of continued wrongdoing. Likewise, Roberts's ministry continued, but it never fully recovered from the scandal. The scandals affected all of televangelism for a time during the 1980s, but the ministry that came through the storm intact was Pat Robertson's 700 Club and CBN.
Cable access has also made regional and local ministries an important force. With few exceptions, the major televangelist ministries have been Anglo-Protestant, but local and regional evangelists who use broadcast media are much more representative of the racial and ethnic diversity in evangelicalism and fundamentalism.
Televangelism and American Culture
The first of the televangelists to attract widespread attention from the national media, scholars, and the nonevangelical public was Jerry Falwell. In 1979 Falwell founded the Moral Majority. Having previously preached that religious leaders should not become involved in politics, Falwell did a quick turnabout in which he became the national spokesman for the early New Christian Right (NCR), and the name of his organization became synonymous with that movement. In the initial flurry of activity surrounding the NCR and the 1980 elections, the size of the Moral Majority was significantly overestimated. It did, however, carry significant weight through the early 1980s. By mid-decade, however, it had developed insurmountable negatives in public opinion polls, and Falwell disbanded it.
Although Falwell replaced the Moral Majority with a new organization (Liberty Federation), it was Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition that grew rapidly and took the place of the Moral Majority as the flagship organization of the Christian Right. In part it was able to do so because of its role in Robertson's failed bid for the Republican nomination for president in 1988; the Christian Coalition was built as a grassroots movement, precinct by precinct. When Robertson's presidential bid failed, the organization remained in place and became involved in elections and legislative politics at every level, from local to national.
There has been much scholarly debate as to the actual size of the audience for televangelism as well as over the impact of such programming on religious viewers and on potential converts. There is scholarly consensus that the number of televangelism viewers is not as high as the religious broadcasters claim. According to Hoover (1988), reasonable audience figures range from ten million to twenty million, although there is still significant debate on this point, largely due to vastly different forms of audience measurement. There is also a scholarly consensus that the televangelists do little in terms of their goals of evangelization, as viewers tend to be already connected with the evangelical/fundamentalist subculture.
While the impact of televangelism outside the evangelical/fundamentalist subculture may be minimal, its impact within the subculture itself has been much more significant. As Wuthnow (1988) has argued, religious broadcasting has served to foster the development of intradenominational, parachurch ministries, which have, in turn, contributed to the decreasing influence and "restructuring" of American denominationalism. As a nationwide phenomenon, televangelism has also undermined the regional distinctiveness of the various forms of conservative American Protestantism and has been a force for national uniformity and identity.
Finally, televangelism has undermined scholarly theoretical assumptions about religion. Widespread popularity of religious broadcasting has been part of the critique of secularization theory, and the televangelist's emphasis on the use and development of cutting-edge technology has belied the argument that fundamentalism is essentially an antimodern phenomenon.
See alsoBelonging, Religious; Christian Coalition; Evangelical Christianity; Falwell, Jerry; Fundamentalist Christianity; Mainline Protestantism; Moral Majority; Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity;
Religious Right; Roberts, Oral; Robertson, Pat; Swaggart, Jimmy.
Bibliography
Finke, Roger, and Rodney Stark. The ChurchingofAmerica. 1992.
Hadden, Jeff, and Anson Shupe. Televangelism. 1988.
Hoover, Stewart. Mass Media Religion. 1988.
Wuthnow, Robert. The Restructuring of AmericanReligion. 1988.
Julie J. Ingersoll
