University of Virginia Library

Ch 3: Communications Revolution and the Rise of the New Christian Right

There is no dedicated group of viewers who are emotionally committed to an anchorman. On the other hand, there are millions of viewers who are personally committed to one or another of the electronic churchmen. Thus, they will sit in front of a screen and listen to a lengthy interview, and even try to understand. This puts a major educational tool into the hands of Christian leaders a tool which the humanists cannot match on television because of the "least common denominator" principle which governs the Nielsen rating wars.

Gary North,
Backward Christian Soldiers

The electronic communications revolution is a technological megatrend that is reshaping not just America, but our entire planet. Its marvels of instant global communications inundate us with massive quantities of new information and images in alluring new packages, challenging and even overrunning traditional values as it alters lifestyles around the world. It is transforming our allegiances. Yet few recognize its impact; still fewer understand.

More than two decades ago, media prophet Marshall McLuhan said,

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"The extension of any one sense alters the way we think and act the way we perceive the world." [1] In the past, the limitations of each individual's perception were largely physical (distance) and biological (the senses of sight, sound, speech, touch, and smell). There were real, concrete boundaries to our world.

But we are no longer bound by physiology. The expansion of the world open to our senses began with the telegraph; gathered speed exponentially with the advent of the telephone and radio; came into its stride with television, transistors, microchips, videotape, and computers; and is now roaring ahead its momentum undiminished with laser technology.

"Societies have always been shaped," wrote McLuhan, "more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication." [2] Thus the critical link between mass media and social movements emerges a link that has enormous implications for religion in the twentieth century.

The invention of the printing press in fifteenth-century Europe paved the way for both the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. Samuel F. B. Morse's telegraph, steam-powered railroads, and high-speed printing presses all developed within a few decades of each other in the mid-nineteenth century, together helping to improve the communication of interests, grievances, and dissent, and contributing to movements around the world for mass democratic politics.

In this century, likewise, modern electronic communications act as a catalyst for social movements. In the first two decades following World War II, television played a major role in mobilizing black Americans for the civil rights movement. Despite control over books, newspapers, and libraries, southern whites could not stop even illiterate blacks from seeing nightly television broadcasts of civil rights activity on "The Huntley-Brinkley Report. [3]

Nor could the Pentagon with all its image-making propaganda machinery, contain or stifle the news of unrest over the escalating Vietnam conflict during the 1960s. There is even good reason to believe that the archetypal American demagogue, Senator Joseph McCarthv was in large measure brought down by television coverage of his Senate hearings. [4]

It is a fundamental truth of our era that leaders who don't know

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how to use the mass media effectively see their movements stop dead in the water. By focusing attention on certain causes and crusades to the exclusion of others, by identifying one movement as "newsworthy" or another as hopeless, mass media can lend or withhold the publicity needed to attract members, achieve respectability, or stave off ignominy.

Almost without our recognizing it, this communications revolution is reshaping American religion. And American religion, in turn, is using this same electronic communications technology to reshape the country and beginning to reach out to reshape the world.

How could this be? The answer is simple. Evangelical Christians have developed the most sophisticated communications system on this planet. They did so in full view of the American public, but nobody was paying attention. Radical social activist Jeremy Rifkin is among the few who were taking note. In The Emerging Order, a 1979 book that deserved much more consideration than it received, Rifkin documents the development of evangelical political power in America and concludes:

But skeptics remain aloof from the evidence. And while they continue to snarl at any suggestion of ascending political power among evangelicals, those who would change America are going about the business of mobilizing their resources, unmolested by the ideological opponents of the New Christian Right.

Media manipulation is the key to understanding the realignment now underway in American religion and culture. Men and women who have learned techniques of media management, regardless of their educational backgrounds or formal credentials, are the ones whose causes, interests, and movements will succeed. Thus, the most profound social and cultural upheaval in twentieth-century America

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perhaps in our entire history is intimately intertwined with the larger transformation in communications from print to electronics.

To be without historical perspective is to lack any basis for sorting out the significant from the mundane in day-to-day events. But modern mass media foster culture without history. They put within our reach cultural artifacts beyond the dreams of pharaohs and kings and emperors. These are available to hundreds of millions of us at the flick of a switch for a minuscule charge for energy. Yet, without history, these artifacts are simply relics. And news without historical context is nothing but a set of images to amuse, confuse, persuade, and otherwise clutter our minds until another set replaces it moments later.

So superficial are the images of mass media that any reporter good enough to be holding down a job can, from knowledge base zero, in a few moments or at worst a few hours, produce visual or printed images that meet socially accepted standards for presenting the news. Deadlines the five o'clock news, the evening edition, the weekend supplement that must be pulled together by Friday evening demand this breakneck assemblage of the complex patchwork of events into a straightforward, simplified narrative called news. Reality that cannot be so packaged is either radically truncated into a "story" (distorted but digestible) or left alone by editors and producers.

The producers of news are not unaware of the problem. Notes Eleanor Randolph, feature writer for the Washington Post:

And James T. Wooten, ABC correspondent formerly with the New York Times, observes:

In-depth and feature coverage tends to be only slightly more demanding for the writer and provides little additional information for

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the reader or viewer. Further, the impact of repeated "depth analysis" tends not to he cumulative. For example, from 1981 through 1986 the authors performed a simple experiment. We videotaped fourteen "depth" segments on Islamic Jihad from network television newscasts. Except for an expanding chronicle of events attributed to "Jihad," a viewer learns little more from watching all segments than from careful study of a single segment selected at random. Image-rich, the episodes were information-poor.

Analysis of the scores of stories that have been printed and aired about the New Christian Right since it first became highly visible during the 1980 presidential campaign probably would produce a similar conclusion.

Mass media do not expand our knowledge about particular subjects so much as select certain issues and events upon which to focus our attention. But that focus is highly transient. Whatever else, the images in the box must sustain interest so that the viewer doesn't switch channels. To guard against boredom, the images must be fast paced, virtually ensuring their superficiality.

But pace is not the only reason that there has been little analysis of significant religious developments including the New Christian Right and the cultural revolution being fomented by disgruntled evangelicals. Media personnel generally do not consider religion a significant force in social change, making serious coverage therefore unnecessary.

The typical mass-media commentators print journalists, television's roving reporters and anchorpersons, and most editors are also captive to a secular mindset that is predisposed to exclude religion from news except when it is bizarre or sensational. Compare, for example, media attention devoted to covering the Jonestown cult suicides in 1978 or the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker debacle with lack of media analysis of major currents of religious change. Pope John Paul II has been the subject of much news because of his unprecedented globe/rotting, but there has been relatively little analysis of the meaning or implications of the pope's aggressive leadership.

Nor is the typical communicator well equipped to assess what information about religion may cross his or her desk. There are only about 250 religion newswriters in the United States. To the extent that religion is covered, the majority of journalists find themselves

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covering it between reporting assignments on natural disasters, crime sprees, traffic accidents, garden shows, and county fairs. And when a significant religious story does break, editors tend not to assign their religion reporters. 1~ or example, of the 270 members of the press corps registered at Heritage USA for the news conference following the second meeting of PTL's Falwell board, only five were members of the Religious Newswriters Association, the professional organization of religion writers in the secular media.

Not surprisingly, news coverage of religion tends to be superficial and lacking context. Reporters are ill prepared to probe beyond the surface of events. One result is that mass-media communicators tend to portray religion in a skeptical or even negative light, particularly if the newsmakers in question do not reflect establishment thinking. Faced with new religious developments, reporters tend to display a mixture of professional cynicism, ignorance, bemusement, and an offhand dismissal of the possible widespread or profound implications of religious change. At best, religiously grounded social movements tend to be misinterpreted when they run up against such journalistic narrowness.

This is precisely what has happened in the story of how the wedding of modern communications technology and Christianity is transforming American religion. The media frequently picture men such as Reverend Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson as amusing cranks, fanatics, megalomaniacs, or shrewd showmen. They have been caught unaware a professional sin worse than lack of objectivity by the surge of new and different religiosity. Thus, they have misconstrued what is happening.

The electric church and the multibillion-dollar enterprise of televangelism did not arrive overnight, born full-blown like the goddess Athena from the head of Zeus. Television preaching has organizational and strategic roots more than two centuries old. Out of the religious revivals that swept the American colonies that historians call the Great Awakening and the great nineteenth-century urban revivals arose new groups to plan, promote, and stage evangelistic crusades. These groups were different from existing churches and denominations. They were totally independent and autonomous. But they crossed sectarian

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boundaries and drew their support from Christians who belonged to a wide variety of churches. They were parachurches.

The modern electric empires of the Pat Robertsons, the Jerry Falwells, the Robert Schullers, and the Jimmy Swaggarts are the direct descendants of these parachurches in both organizational form and substance. The original parachurch revivalists devised successful strategies for manipulating conversions and staging huge, impressive public crusades. They build massive organizations and improved methods to raise money and mobilize believers by the tens of thousands.

Most important, the skills and managerial savvy they accumulated was not lost. Indeed, it was preserved and passed down through generations of evangelists.

Three giants of parachurch revivalism stand out in particular: Charles Grandison Finney, Dwight L. Moody, and Billy Sunday. These three men honed the skills for swaying large audiences into highly sophisticated techniques. They each made separate contributions to the growth of the parachurch phenomenon, but they also represent a cumulative process. Each of them (and dozens of lesser revivalists) built upon the wisdom of his predecessors.

Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875) has been widely acclaimed as "the father of modern revivalism." Trained as a lawyer, Finney literally wrote the book on the subject. His Lectures on Revivalism of Religion, first published in 1835, stood for generations as a how-to manual for conducting effective revivals. [8]

Finney saw evangelism and conversion as rational, logical outcomes of a deliberate process. Conversion, Finney argued, "is not a miracle or dependent on a miracle in any sense.... It is purely a philosophical result of the right use of constituted means. [9]

Finney thus turned the revival idea on its head: Man was responsible for producing revivals of spirit rather than the Holy Spirit for sending a revival to man.

Finney's strategies for working a crowd's emotions included lengthy meetings to produce fatigue; long, mesmerizing intercessory prayers; sermons instilling fear and hope alternately; and personal harangues at those wavering on the brink of conversion.

Just as important, Finney took great care to lay the groundwork beforehand. His assistants would recruit lay workers in the local churches and organize motivational prayer sessions. These workers would then

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post placards, take out newspaper advertisements, pass out handbills on street corners, and go door-to-door before Finney even arrived for the scheduled revival. He then arranged with local ministers to receive and sign up as members the "awakened sinners" who answered his altar calls.

Finney developed the first theory and rationale for mass evangelism and pioneered their use in practice. He created the first significant evangelistic parachurch.

But it was Dwight L. Moody (1837-99) who turned Finney's new principles into established, routine techniques. A successful businessman- turned-evangelist, Moody expanded Finney's rational model of revivalism with a marketing perspective. He went far he on(l Finney in creating a complex division of labor in his parachurch to ensure the smooth planning and execution of revivals. He also improved on the public relations techniques that Finney had begun. [10]

Moody 'sold' local businessmen and ministers on the benefits of a revival in their communities. He persuaded businessmen to underwrite the costs of the revivals. To ministers he held Out the prospect of new members and renewed commitment among the old ones.

Even as Moody involved influential people in elaborate planning and participation, he maintained organizational and financial autonomy from any church or denomination. Meanwhile, his parachurch spun off institutions such as The Moody Bible Institute. Moody had learned his lessons well from Finney's manual of a generation earlier.

When Billy Sunday (1862- 1935), the third "giant" precursor of modern-day televangelists, passed away of a heart ailment, he was hailed by one of his contemporaries as "the greatest evangelist since Martin Luther." [11] A former professional baseball player converted by a street-corner missionary, Sullday undoubtedly was the most colorful preacher in American history. In contrast to Finney's logical argument or Moody's calm, persuasive style, Sunday was all emotion. His behavior often bordered on the outrageous. But it was great entertainment.

Sunday was a showman. He would skip, gyrate, slide, and do cartwheels. He would stand on chairs, peel off' layers of clothing as he worked himself up into a lather, and do burlesque-style imitations. He was bombastic, loud, abusive, rancorous.

Sunday was also a shrewd administrator. He had more than twenty

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full-time specialists in his parachurch organization. One economics professor of the era claimed that Sunday's organization was one of the five most efficient businesses in the United States. When Sunday died, he was enormously wealthy. He may have been uncouth, hut Billy Sunday added the roles of entertainer and celebrity he liked to hobnob with leading businessmen and politicians to the urban evangelists' repertoire. From Billy Graham to Pat Robertson, the latter- day televangelists were to follow in his footsteps.

In sum, with the advent of electronic technology, evangelistic preachers already had an organizational form and strategy for ministry to follow. Without the developments in staging revivals and building parachurch networks in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, religious broadcasters would not wield the influence in American life that they do today. And the prospects for preachers launching national moral-political crusades, perhaps even a presidential campaign, would have been extremely remote.

The marriage of this particular organizational form to the emerging technology was possible because of another unique feature of broadcasting in the United States--its emphasis on free enterprise, which has shaped radio and television broadcasting more decisively in this country than in any other nation. Broadcasting is regulated, hut the Federal Communications Commission gives networks and local stations a great deal of liberty in setting their own policies and procedures.

It is assumed, first of all, that broadcasters have a right to pursue profit. As long as they devote some small proportion of their broadcasting to the "public interest," and their programming is not judged grossly offensive, stations and networks can more or less broadcast whatever they wish.

Almost from the inception of regularly scheduled broadcasting in the 1920s, religious programming has been considered to be "in the public interest." Most stations and networks offered religious groups some airtime on a sustaining (i.e., free) basis. From the beginning, the demand for free airtime exceeded the supply, so broadcasters had to develop policies governing access. [12]

The first national radio network was the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), formed in 1926. From the outset, NBC offered no commercial time for religious broadcasting and allocated what free time

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it chose to offer through the Federal Council of Churches (later the National Council of Churches) [13]

The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), formed in 1927, did offer commercial time out of financial necessity, but it switched to gratis time in 1931 as a way to get rid of the demagogic Catholic priest Father Charles E. Coughlin. [14] Thereafter, CBS used a combination of an in-house advisory board and the Federal Council to select persons to appear on the CBS "Church of the Air." By 1934, the Federal Council of Churches' Department of National Religious Radio, with twenty-four cooperating denominations, had some oversight over six regularly scheduled network programs. [15]

The Mutual Broadcasting System was the only network to offer commercial time without restriction from 1935 to 1944. [16] Two of its more notable programs were Charles E. Fuller's "Old-Fashioned Revival Hour" and "The Lutheran Hour," featuring Walter A. Maier and sponsored by the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church.

In 1944, the Christian Century, the leading liberal Protestant periodical, published an attack on "religious racketeers" for allegedly using radio as a medium for exploitation. The author accused Mutual of tolerating programs such as "The Lutheran Hour" because they were financially lucrative and called for the termination of all paid religious broadcasting, or, failing this, a "ruling from the Federal Communications Commission against the sale of time for religious broadcasting." [17]

At the same time, James DeForest Murch, a towering figure of evangelical Protestantism, accused Frank R. Goodman, chairman of the Department of National Religious Radio of the Federal Council of Churches, of leading a campaign to squeeze evangelicals off the air. Goodman, he claimed, had "signed up fifty or more radio stations 'with ironclad contracts obliging them to use the Federal Council approved programs and no other.'" [18]

Officials of the Federal Council of Churches have always denied that they pressured networks to develop programming under their aegis to the exclusion of evangelicals. But the evidence is clear that evangelical Protestants did not share in the free airtime granted by the networks and, further, that there existed a campaign to pressure Mutual into a "no commercial time" policy.

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In March 1944. Mutual announced changes in their paid-time broadcasting that severely curtailed access. Among the restrictions adopted were: (l) a limit of broadcasts to thirty minutes, (2) a prohibition against the use OT airtime to solicit funds to pay for the broadcasts, and (3) broadcasting on Sunday mornings only. The reason for this policy change'; Ralph Jennings, in the most comprehensive study of radio religious broadcasting, concludes: "Strong criticism from mainstream Protestantism as cases of alleged abuses mounted. [19]

Evangelicals understood what was happening and had been mobilizing to fight back. The first major step toward developing cooperation among evangelicals had been taken two years earlier, at the National Conference for United Action among Evangelicals, which in turn spawned the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). Evangelical broadcasters took a prominent role in the meeting [20] "whose keynote speaker was Harold Ockenga, pastor of the Park Street Church in Boston. Setting the mood for the formation of NAE Ockenga s heartstirring address returned several times to the theme of discrimination in access to the airwaves. Referring to a meeting he had had with the president of NBC, he concluded that in the absence of a united evangelical organization, there was "absolutely no opportunity of sharing equally in the broadcasting facilities of that great company. [21] We are discriminated against," Ockenga asserted, "because of the folly of our divided condition. [22]

In April 1944, just a month after Mutual announced its policy changes, 150 evangelical broadcasters met in Columbus, Ohio, and formed the National Religious Broadcasters. [23] Their first official act was to retain a Washington-based communications attorney to provide "counsel in the preparation of a Constitution and Bylaws and a general policy and program." [24] They met again in Chicago in September for a constitutional convention.

With the creation of the National Religious Broadcasters, the tide began to turn for evangelicals. NRB launched an aggressive public relations program and adopted a Code of Ethics, which they considered a "veritable Declaration of Independence from radio racketeers." They called on the Federal Communications Commission to help ameliorate the unequal distribution of airtime. They also petitioned the networks to reconsider their policies.

At least some results were achieved in short order. That same year,

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Mutual allocated six-and-a- half hours of free time to NAE. [25] NBC's Blue Network, which would become the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) also offered time to NAE on a restricted basis.

After an early burst of success, NRB lost some of its thrust and vitality, a typical pattern for social-movement organizations. Perceiving extensive victory in a few visible successes, participants lose their zeal, lower their financial, contributions and ignore appeals to redouble their efforts. As a result, a movement organization becomes vulnerable at the very moment its supporters appear to have won, or are about to win.

Liberal Protestants, now reorganized as the National Council of Churches, did not fail to note this vulnerability. As television expanded rapidly in the early 1950s, the NCI pursued an initiative to ensure their exclusive representation with the networks. CBS, leery of earlier conflict with evangelicals, added the Southern Baptists to its consortium of liberal Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, a conciliatory gesture not particularly appreciated by the NAB, since the Southern Baptists were not members. The other networks also developed interfaith programming, but evangelical Christians were basically excluded.

An exception was Billy Graham, whose phenomenal popularity enabled him to cut through the liberal church monopoly and acquire network time, both gratis and purchased. But the rank-and-file NAB evangelicals were effectively locked out, a situation unchanged even today; rather than deal with the networks, evangelical broadcasters must contract with individual stations.

Meanwhile, new opposition to paid religious broadcasting developed at the state level, a campaign endorsed by the Broadcasting and Film Commission of the National Council of Churches. [26] These renewed hostilities with the liberal Protestants and the failure to break into network television reinvigorated the National Religious Broadcasters. Beginning in 1956, under the leadership of James Moorish, NRB took new organizational initiatives. The most important step was bringing their annual meetings to Washington, D.C. Murch explained the rationale:

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Being in Washington paid such high dividends that the NRB has never since met elsewhere. The organization has established lobbying and liaison relationships with all the groups Murch hoped to contact, and more. There is an annual Congressional Breakfast that, with more conservatives in Congress, has been increasingly well attended. The group enjoys good relations with the Federal Communications Commission and holds an annual luncheon in its honor. The counsel who represents the NRB before the FCC is Richard Wiley, former chairman of the FCC. The presidents of the National Association of Broadcasters and each of the networks have accepted invitations to speak. And in recent years, the convention has benefited from the appearance of Ronald Reagan. In a word, the NRB has learned its way around Washington.

An important benefit of being in Washington came early, during the battle with the National Council of Churches. James Murch called on Sol Taishoff, editor and publisher of Broadcasting magazine, to plead NRB's case for the purchase of airtime.

"Why can't you Protestants settle your disagreements amicably and make some sort of compromise on broadcasting policies?" fired Taishoff.

"Well, you see," said Murch, "there are several kinds of Protestants and we are unwilling to give up our differing convictions for the sake of unity. May I illustrate? There are several kinds of Jews Orthodox, Reformed and Conservative...."

"With a hearty laugh," reports Murch, "Sol threw up his hands and immediately retorted, 'You don't need to argue your case any further. I know what you are talking about. You certainly have equal rights before the law and the sale of time is the easiest way to guarantee those rights.'" [28]

Broadcasting became a champion of NRB s campaign to purchase airtime.

The success of the National Religious Broadcasters and its constituent members has been a gradual process. But if there was a single

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turning point, it was a 1960 FCC policy directive that ruled that no important public interest is served by differentiating between gratis airtime and commercially sponsored programming.

To grasp the significance of this ruling, one needs to look back to the Communications Act of 1934, which authorized the FCC to grant broadcasting licenses. A license is, in effect, a monopoly to use a scarce commodity namely, a specific airwave. Simply put, it has always been presumed that stations "owe" some proportion of their broadcast time to the "public interest" in exchange for this monopoly. From the beginning, religious broadcasting was designated as one way of fulfilling that obligation.

The implication of the 1960 ruling was that local stations could sell airtime for religious programs and still get "public interest credit" in the eyes of the FCC. Two important developments followed. First, the ruling buoyed the commitment of evangelical broadcasters to buy commercial time, and fierce competition ensued. Second, this competition enhanced the value of the time slots, with the result that many local stations, which previously had adhered to network policy not to sell airtime for religious broadcasting, decided to cash in on the new demand.

While evangelicals were buying their way onto the air in unprecedented numbers, a technological innovation expanded the number of stations on which they could appear the invention of videotape. Because film was expensive, filmed programs were shown on one station, then mailed to another, and so on, around the country. Program content had to be planned carefully to keep it from appearing badly out of date. Videotapes could be mass produced and aired during the same week all across the country. Programming could now be scheduled to correspond to the calendar; Easter services could be broadcast on Easter, Christmas services on Christmas, and so on, thus greatly enhancing a program's appeal.

The FCC policy directive was devastating for programs that had been carried on a sustaining basis. Why should local stations give free airtime to religious programs when syndicated broadcasters were bidding against each other to buy time? As a business proposition, it made no sense. Station managers dropped sustaining-time programs produced both by their own network and by individual denominations.

The collective impact of these market decisions shows up dramat-

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typically in a 1979 report by the Communications Committee of the U. S. Catholic Conference. [29] In 1959, just before the FCC ruling, 53 percent of all religious broadcasting in America was paid- time programming. By 1977, that proportion had increased to 92 percent.

As a result, religious broadcasting since the mid-1970s has been firmly in the hands of evangelicals and fundamentalists who manage parachurch organizations. It is they, more than the mainline denominations, who can afford to commit huge percentages of their annual revenues to purchasing airtime and the hardware necessary to produce programs. Unhampered by denominational bureaucracies or any other "normal" church apparatus, the parachurch televangelists have drawn their sustenance from the mass audience, and, in turn, have been able to cater almost exclusively to it.

That some televangelists would one day utilize the airwaves to communicate a political message should not have come as a surprise. Indeed, from the earliest days of broadcasting, politics has never been very far removed from the agenda of some religious broadcasters. Late in his career, for example, Billy Sunday had become political. Father Charles E. Coughlin, probably the most successful broadcaster of the 1930s, and certainly one of the most controversial, was overtly political. In the early postwar era, the most visible were right-wing fundamentalists Carl McIntire and Billy James Hargis. In 1955, Carl McIntire claimed to be broadcasting on 600 radio stations. [30] In 1961, Tulsa based Hargis claimed to be on over 200 radio stations in forty-six states and a dozen television stations. [31]

The strident messages and flamboyant personalities of these men contributed to the stereotyping of all religious broadcasters. In comparison with their predecessors, today's politicized televangelists are distinct moderates. But part of the legacy they have inherited is the popular conviction that they are all political radicals or right-wing fanatics a conviction held by many Americans who have never seen or heard an evangelist of either era. The Elmer Gantry stereotype made an easy transition from canvas tent and sawdust floor to radio and television studios.

But if modern religious broadcasters appear more polished and seem more moderate than some of their predecessors, collectively they have become a potent force in molding conservative Christians into a social movement. The primary reason is that their programming, mostly or

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entirely undiluted by secular commercial interruptions, can create a religious context into which all their messages, as well as viewers' interests and concerns, can be packaged.

In other words, all topics not just sin and salvation can be brought under a religious umbrella. A host of social problems from abortion to the problems of the Social Security Administration to 250 U.S. Marines dead in Beirut can be interpreted in biblical terms of cause and effect. However simplistic the resulting perspective may seem to nonviewers or nonbelievers, supporters of such electronic ministries receive a coherent social ideology.

And what critics of televangelism demean as the "continual begging" for money does more than simply raise the revenues needed to continue broadcasting. Contributions go to a cause, and the contributors are bearing witness to that cause every time they give.

In order to appreciate the importance for a conservative social movement of the worldview imparted by televangelists, one needs to look at the consequences of the lack of any such context in secular television.

The electronic communications revolution has created a marvelous paradox. Via television, radio, computers, and satellites, messages can be transmitted instantaneously and simultaneously to any number of points on earth; yet the speed of transmission has decontextualized the content of any single message. The flood of information in the mass media tends either to go unnoticed or to overwhelm us if we try to consume it.

One thing is clear. The greater the attention the media devote to a topic, the greater are the chances that public sentiments will crystallize around it. This occurs because the normal flood of competing topics is temporarily reduced to a trickle; information becomes manageable. And it is then that television becomes a powerful communications tool.

The usual breakneck pace of news in the electronic media is one important reason that conservative Christians in this country have had to wait until recently to be mobilized for social and political change. Television, in particular, has dealt with many moral and political topics, but without much context and certainly not from an explicitly Christian perspective. This has worked against the consolidation of evangelical sentiment and opinion regarding national and international issues.

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Until now, evangelicals who did insist on interpreting their world along Christian lines (putting a biblical slant on issues such as prayer and curriculum content in public schools, national economic policies, or the U.S. military presence in the Middle East) found themselves estranged from the secular news establishment. It is difficult to maintain a coherent Christian worldview when the mass media offer no worldview at all.

Some Christians have responded simply by tuning out current events. Others have swum against the current, trying to reassert Christian values in the public forum (and getting labeled as eccentric or intolerant for their efforts). Still others have worked quietly, sharing their thoughts with like-minded friends and waiting patiently.

Waiting for what? The answer is now clear: some way some platform, some party, some candidate to crystallize their sentiments without having to depend on the secular media.

That is the essence of Pat Robertson and the growing political movement composed of the followers of televangelism. This movement is now well under way, thanks in substantial measure to the electronic communications revolution and the televangelists' mastery of it.

Notes