University of Virginia Library

Ch 7: In My Father's House . ..

The overall media ministry of Christ in America has not been as open and as accountable as we should be. We are getting our hands smacked and we deserve it. . . . [W]e have had a little sense of arrogance out there in the church that it is none of your business or anybody else's what we do or how we do it. . . [but] that sense of arrogance is over. . . [W]e are coming to the painful conclusion that if we are public figures leading Christian ministries, using public monies, contributions, then we are publicly responsible.

--Jerry Falwell,
Press Conference, April 28,1987

Revivalism never disappeared from American culture, but after the glory days of Billy Sunday and the disaster of the Scopes trial, it subsided temporarily. Billy Graham was well on his way to creating an effective evangelistic organization when he received an unexpected boost in 1949 from newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Hearst's celebrated two-word editorial directive, "puff Graham," triggered a flurry of media attention that hoisted the young evangelist into the national limelight.

The following year, Billy Graham decided to do a weekly radio program, "Hour of Decision," a move that firmly linked nineteenth century urban revivalism to modern religious broadcasting. Indeed, Graham's decision to go on radio was even more momentous to his career and the future of religious broadcasting than the great boost he got from Hearst's patronage. Almost immediately, he was preaching to the largest audience ever to hear a religious program. Within five

---

120

years, his program aired on a thousand stations with an estimated audience of 15 million. [1]

In 1951, Graham made another decision of paramount importance. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association began packaging his crusades for the powerful new medium of television. This gave Graham even greater visibility and success and transformed evangelical religion into a mainstream phenomenon.

Like Dwight Moody and Billy Sunday before him, Graham relished rubbing shoulders with the rich and powerful. He particularly liked U. S. presidents (until he became soiled by the carnage of Watergate). His role as the "preacher of presidents" lent legitimacy to the political status quo, whatever its sins, and he eventually came to realize it.

Graham's sermons have always had a ring of patriotism, although never the bellicose "100 percent Americanism" of Billy Sunday in his later days. Still, while Graham eventually would repudiate his own involvement in politics, he set the stage for others to become even more deeply involved. Indeed, Pat Robertson has gone Graham's presidential hobnobbing one better in becoming a candidate himself. But it was not until much later that the latent and overt political messages of modern urban revivalists were to become a significant feature of religious broadcasting.

At about the same time that Billy Graham decided to go on television, two itinerant evangelists from Oklahoma and Arkansas also recognized the medium's potential for saving souls. Oral Roberts brought television cameras into his Pentecostal revival tent. Rex Humbard sold his tent and built a cathedral especially equipped for broadcasting. A new era was born.

These three men played roles in the development of the electric church that parallel those of Finney, Moody, and Sunday in the development of urban evangelism. Building on the organizational principles that resulted in the institutionalization of urban revivalism, Graham, Roberts, and Humbard created yet another institution-the electric church.

The pastors of this electric parachurch found that their predecessors' legacy-the publicity, the organization, the fanfare of urban revivalism-was important not only in attracting souls to the Lord. It also brought in funds, enabling them to raise the millions of dollars needed to purchase and operate the new electric technology.

---

121

Essentially, technology circled back on strategy. Soon these preachers and those who followed them found that their enormous broadcasting costs dictated that they run continuous fund-raising campaigns. The "saved" and "born again" had to be continually offered new incentives to give to these ministries. Using computers, word processors, and toll-free telephone numbers, the electric ministers developed sophisticated ways of creating a sense of personal relationship between viewer and evangelist, between donor and parachurch. But, as we shall see, the medium began to affect the message.

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association modeled its crusades after the techniques of Finney, Moody, and Sunday: the engagement of local pastors and churches before the decision to conduct a crusade, advance-planning activities to arouse interest, topflight entertainment (albeit in a much more subdued form than Sunday's vaudeville antics), celebrity guest appearances, appeals to the emotions, emphasis on the urgency of making a Decision for Christ, and follow-up contacts. The Hearst boost gave Graham a competitive edge in access to evening prime-time television. Roberts and Humbard were never able to overcome that momentum, nor the reluctance of network executives to open their doors and airwaves to evangelical preachers. As a result they were forced to become innovators in the structure of programming and in the development of feedback with their audiences.

In spite of his reputation as the biggest and the grandest, Billy Graham has never been particularly innovative. His worldwide crusades are taped, and then edited for television. Whereas Roberts has been through five major format overhauls, Graham's programs have changed very little in thirty-five years. Because Graham has always drawn large audiences, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has never gone through the agonies of the boom- and-bust cycles experienced by all the other television ministries.

Of the other two evangelists, Oral Roberts has been the more innovative. He hired topflight secular entertainers to appear on his programs as a way of hooking audiences. He gauged audience size and aggressively bought the best time slots. He learned early that people get more excited about brick-and-mortar projects than they do about paying the bills for airtime. Special projects can elicit donations far in excess of what is needed; the surplus can pay the bills for airtime

---

122

and general operations. With this knowledge, he built a university. Then he built a medical center.

And Oral Roberts couched the expansion of his parachurch conglomerate in terms of visions, not corporate ledgers or cost-effectiveness. In May 1980, he wrote supporters to say that he had spoken with a 900-foot vision of Jesus Christ, who assured him that Roberts's City of Faith medical complex would be completed. Later, he reinforced that sort of spectacular revelation with a second message from God that his medical facilities eventually would find a cure for cancer.

That Oral Roberts eventually overextended himself with his medical center has not detracted from the principle that he established and almost every successful televangelist has copied: Major projects excite audience response.

Of the three electric-church pioneers, Rex Humbard was the most successful in mastering the art of parapersonal communication. He included his whole family in the act--wife, children, and grandchildren. They sang, read the Bible, and listened attentively to Rex's stories and sermonettes. A whole generation grew up with the Humbards and, for many of them, the Humbard family was a part of their own--or they a part of the Humbard family. Humbard developed an audience that was intensely loyal. They stuck with him for a very long while.

The Cathedral of Tomorrow Humbard built in Akron, Ohio, served as the base for a local congregation and his television ministry until the early 1980s, when he moved his television studio to Callaway Gardens in Georgia. Especially constructed for television production, the Cathedral of Tomorrow was a spectacular achievement. It boasted a 220-foot domed roof without interior support and a huge cross suspended from the ceiling with 4,700 red, white, and blue lights.

In the early 1970s, it appeared that Humbard was way ahead of his televangelist peers in developing a ministry that mixed preaching with spectacular brick-and-mortar projects. In 1971, he broke ground on the construction of what was to have been the tallest building in Ohio. Atop the 750-foot structure would be a revolving restaurant and a television transmitting tower. At about the same time, Humbard purchased property on Mackinac Island, Michigan, with plans to open a college.

Challenges by neighbors to the construction of the tower, by the

---

123

Ohio Commerce Department to his sale of securities to finance his projects, and by the Internal Revenue Service regarding the tax status of a girdle factory owned by the ministry in New York, among other financial headaches, left Humbard with little stomach for the highrolling, high-pressure lifestyle that would later consume some of his colleagues.

Humbard turned away from that road and stuck to preaching the Gospel. After his flurry of activity in the early 1970s, Rex Humbard never took on another building project. This fact, perhaps more than any other, accounted for Humbard's being the first to fold his Big Gospel Tent of the airwaves in 1986. Humbard himself seemed to understand this. In a television interview granted only weeks before he closed shop, he sadly laid bare the truth: "People will not give a dollar to win a soul or bring a person to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. They give their dollars to build giant cathedrals, projects, schools." [2]

In 1985, the cost of airtime exceeded the revenues coming in from his shrinking audience. When it became evident that he couldn't pay, television stations all over America canceled his program. Almost without notice, Rex Humbard's long and illustrious television career passed from the scene.

An army of competitors-as the economics of Arbitron and Nielsen ratings and syndication costs would inevitably make all televangelists-arrived in the 1970s and 1980s, spurred by the catalyst of cable television. Some were clones of the better-known personalities; some were originals. Liberals could look on in bemusement at the likes of Lester Sumrall, with his lackluster camera presence and constant struggle with diction; stoop-shouldered, toupeed Ernest Angler healing the hard-of-hearing by smacking them between the eyes with the heel of his palm; or Dr. Gene Scott, the white-haired Ph.D. with his cigar and funny hats, berating his audiences and refusing to preach if they didn't telephone in their gifts immediately.

But there were others, bigger and more recognizable, who created the public image of televangelism.

Based on average quarter-hour audience ratings, Jimmy Lee Swaggart is the biggest. In 1983, Newsweek proclaimed him "King of Honky Tonk Heaven." Swaggart hails from the backwaters of Louisiana, and his greatest appeal is among his own kind-people who have been

---

124

left behind by the whirlwinds of change. His populist appeal reminds one of Huey Long, and his aroused preaching style comes about as close to Billy Sunday's as that of anyone on the scene today.

Swaggart is an unabashed Assemblies of God Pentecostal who has no use for Coors beer, Penthouse and Playboy, the "Solid Gold" program's scantily clad dancers, Roman Catholicism, and contemporary country music-and frequently tells his audiences so. It was Swaggart who blew the whistle on fellow Assemblies of God televangelist Jim Bakker. Bakker, in turn, accused Swaggart of attempting a hostile takeover, but as the unholy wars of televangelism unfolded in the spring of 1987, it became evident that Swaggart didn't want to run the PTL ministry. He just wanted his wayward brother out of the pulpit and out of the business of deceiving the faithful.

An accomplished pianist and singer, Swaggart's gospel albums sold more than 12 million copies while he was building a $30 million World Ministry Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and accumulating more than a half-dozen radio stations. Swaggart's southern drawl, loud exhortations about sin, and three-piece suits have made him the archetypal televangelist.

Robert Schuller is Swaggart's antimatter counterpart. He is cool, rational, and optimistic where Swaggart is sweaty, emotional, and premillennially pessimistic. Schuller preaches "Possibility Thinking," which is an unapologetic play on Norman Vincent Peale's "Positive Thinking." Swaggart preaches hellfire and brimstone and is trying to save all the souls he can before the battle of Armageddon.

Schuller is the only television minister who is a member of a mainline Protestant denomination. Ordained in the Reformed Church in America, Schuller arrived in Southern California's Orange County just as that part of the country was beginning to boom. When he began his "missionary" ministry, the only place he could find to hold church services was a drive-in movie theatre. The novelty of a drive-in church attracted media attention and folks who were curious to know what it was like to go to worship in their automobiles.

Schuller's Calvinist work ethic and charisma did the rest. He soon moved his congregation across the freeway and gradually built one of America's great superchurches. In 1979 he launched the construction of the Crystal Cathedral, one of architect Philip Johnson's crowning achievements and one of the great religious edifices of this century.

---

125

From here his "Hour of Power" is transmitted to more than 150 stations.

Schuller is the closest thing to an intellectual and a liberal in televangelism. In a profession that has more honorary doctorates than any other, Schuller's doctorate is earned. He doesn't appreciate being lumped in with the rest of the televangelist crowd.

"God's angry young man," as Texas Monthly once described him, is James Robison of Hurst, Texas. A Southern Baptist with a Pentecostal's pulpit-pounding style, Robison has been a loose cannon on the decks of the video vicarage. In 1979 he outraged homosexuals in Texas by attacking local Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex gay-rights organizations. They in turn forced WFAA-TV to provide them with equal response time under the Personal Attack and Controversial Public Issues provisions of the Federal Communications Commission's Fairness Doctrine. Tired of his tirades directed at specific groups (the station had already been forced to provide equal time to the Mormons, Christian Scientists, and Garner Ted Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God after similar attacks), WFAA-TV canceled Robison's weekly program, though later they reinstated it.

Then, in 1980, Robison took to politics. He fell in with Jerry Falwell, and for a while served as vice president and media sage of Religious Roundtable, a group with aims and goals similar to those of the Moral Majority. "I'm a preacher, but I'm no longer just going to be talking about going to heaven," he told everyone who would listen. Then, after a brief period of high visibility, he renounced politics just as emphatically as he had seized the political pulpit. He had come under the influence of charismatics and took up their ways

One of Robison's most celebrated converts was millionaire industrialist Cullen Davis. The conversion took place while Davis was on trial for the attempted murder of his wife and a judge in Robison's divorce trial. Together, Robison and Davis gained more notoriety when they claimed to have smashed $1 million worth of rare Oriental art objects and dumped them in Lake Worth because they were pagan "religious idols."

In spring 1983, Robison added demonology and exorcism to his repertoire after meeting Milton Green, a Baptist layman from Tennessee whose followers were dubbed "Greenies." In the furor that followed, Robison left the Euless, Texas, church where he was a mem-

---

126

ber and took his ministry, now Pentecostal in all but name, deep into the charismatic land of tongue-speaking, healing, and prophecy.

An evangelist with a much lower profile but a growing following is Kenneth Copeland, another Texan. Once Oral Roberts's personal pilot, he is a former pop singer and now a successful recorder of gospel albums. Copeland's sermons are Pentecostal, with a heavy dose of fitness and health advice (he is a vegetarian) and a wide range of humorous, satirical characterizations that he uses to drive points home. Copeland has recently moved onto the list of the top ten televangelists in the country.

Then, of course, there were the cherub-faced Jim Bakker and his wife, Tammy Faye. Even in exile, Jim and Tammy remain the couple that liberal watchers of the electric church love to scorn. Remarkably, their antics did not succeed in disillusioning many among their army of loyal viewers. Even as the excruciatingly bizarre details of their unheavenly deeds unfolded in the mass media, loyalists formed a group called the PTL Partners Association. Their goal: to oust Jerry Falwell, the man hand-picked by the wounded Bakker to save the ministry. From the beginning, the chances of salvaging the PTL Network and Heritage USA were exceedingly dim. The guerrilla tactics of Bakker and his loyalists make the mission virtually impossible.

Once employed by Pat Robertson, the Bakkers left CBN to join Paul and Jan Crouch in creating Trinity Broadcasting Network in Southern California. After a quick falling-out between the Crouches and the Bakkers, Jim and Tammy Faye returned to the East, where they founded the PTL Network. To Bakker's critics, PTL has always stood for Pass The Loot. After Bakker was revealed to have paid hush money to a church secretary with whom he had a sexual encounter, PTL stood for Pay The Lady. Other uncomplimentary meanings of PTL are best left unstated.

The Bakkers' most ambitious project was Heritage Village, USA, a hybrid of a spiritual Disneyland, an old-fashioned Pentecostal camp meeting grounds, and a late-twentieth-century resort. Whatever else it may be, or have been envisioned to become, Heritage USA was meant as a "total Christian living center" where people could escape from the evils and annoyances of the secular world.

From ground-breaking ceremonies in 1978 until the Bakkers' hasty departure on March 19, 1987, Heritage USA grew to include the 504-

---

127

room Heritage Grand Hotel (with a 513-room tower addition under construction), a shopping mall, a village church with a 5,000-seat auditorium, television studios, a replication of the Upper Room (site of the Last Supper), a recreational village, a farm, a residence for disabled children, a child-care and adoption agency, a prison outreach program, a drug rehabilitation center, time-share units, retirement housing, condominiums, a dinner theatre, and more.

Megan Rosenfeld, feature writer for the Washington Post, described Heritage USA as "a place somewhere between the Land of Oz and a straitlaced Club Med." She notes further that Heritage USA is:

"What is Heritage USA/PTL?" the promotional material asks. The answer: "A unique 21st century Christian retreat and campground, and so much more."

It was the "so much more" that got the Bakkers in trouble. The Bakkers and their closest associates enjoyed an opulent lifestyle bevond the reach of all but a few of the world's jet-setting "beautiful people." It is doubtful that anyone will ever know how much money they spent on themselves. Rolls-Royces, Mercedeses, Jaguars, vacation homes in Florida, California, and Tennessee, and especially bonuses. Notes Jerry Nims, the chief executive officer under the Falwell administration of PTL, "There were birthday bonuses, Christmas bonuses, Valentine's Day bonuses, Saturday morning bonuses . . . unscheduled bonuses." [4]

Along with their penchant for the spectacular, the Bakkers cultivated the impression that they were developing and contributing large sums of ministry money to social-service projects. In reality, these projects often had low priority, and initial enthusiasm quickly waned. For example, in 1983 Ronald Reagan singled out an emergency socialservice project called People That Love Centers as a sterling example of volunteerism. The exact amount of money allocated to PTL Centers is not known, but within three years Jim Bakker had lost interest in the project and cut off support for the centers.

---

128

In 1986, only 2.9 percent of PTL's $129 million budget was earmarked for social-service and charitable programs. The Bakkers' own passion for high living took precedence over even the glitzy, highvisibility projects at Heritage. In the end, they were quite literally robbing the corporate treasury.

And all of this was financed with $10 and $15 and $25 contributions from a grateful and unsuspecting crowd of loyal parachurch followers. It was also financed with Life Partnerships, in effect a time-share condominium scheme. Heritage USA sold, at $1,000 a clip, more than 120,000 Life Partnerships that were supposed to entitle holders to three free nights each year at the Heritage Grand Hotel or the Heritage Grand Tower.

It was the most successful of many fund-raising schemes created over the years, but it was a scam and a fraud. A little simple arithmetic will show that there was no way they could ever have honored those commitments. In fact, they didn't try. Only fifty rooms were set aside to service the Life Partners' demands for free rooms. At one point, when there was a rash of complaints, Bakker said they had miscalculated the demand for rooms during peak season. To quiet the criticism, he offered a refund to anyone who wanted one.

The monies raised exceeded the combined cost of the two hotels, but when Jerry Falwell took over PTL management, the corporation owed vendors more than $14 million and the tower was incomplete. There was no cash in the treasury, so construction had to be halted.

Bakker is the closest thing to a manic-depressive in the electric church. In front of live audiences, he can be cheery and ebullient one moment and then plunge into deep depression the next. Near the top of the list of what can plunge him into near-despair are cash-flow shortfalls and criticism of his lifestyle. His insatiable desire to make PTL and Heritage USA bigger and better virtually assured frequent cash shortfalls.

Bakker handled criticism of how he spent viewer donations the way water runs off a duck's back. His on-air talks to the camera bemoaned the imminent bankruptcy of the PTL Club. Pleas of insolvency usually were mixed with self-pity and paranoia, particularly when the Charlotte Observer and its investigations of Bakker's ministry were mentioned.

"I think we ought to want the best for our pastors. I believe a pastor

---

129

should live at least, at least, as good as the wealthiest member of the congregation. When you bless the man in the pulpit, you will be blessed," he explained. [5]

Many people seem to agree with this assessment, for they have stood with Jim and Tammy Faye through thick and thin. Some of the couple's appeal is no doubt a vicarious pleasure in a lifestyle most supporters cannot afford. But the Bakkers also elicit a lot of empathy; they are real people who let it all hang out.

Jim's personal struggle with ambition, his sometimes-ecstatic-sometimes-whiny approach, Tammy Faye's incredibly open on-air discussions of their marital difficulties, and her unforgettable singing have always been right there for viewers to see. Sometimes the Bakkers' problems were so overwhelming that one or both of them had to get away for a few days. And when they did, there often was no attempt to hide their emotional and spiritual exhaustion. All of these are elements of real people opening their lives to public examination in ways that we see in soap operas, but rarely in real life. It is possible that the Bakkers' greatest weaknesses are also an important source of their strength.

All of the televangelism ministries have at least two features in common. First, they are oligarchies, organizations governed by a very few. The Greek origin of the word implied the notion that the few were superior to the masses. They understand better than the masses what is best. And they are accountable to no one. Although the electric churches have boards, the charters and bylaws of the organizations are written to give the founder/leader the power of appointment and dismissal. Thus, the leader of the oligarchy often borders on being a despot. A benevolent despot perhaps, but a despot nevertheless.

Given this organizational form, the scandals of PTL are not so surprising. All the money, all the building projects, all the "yes men" are doing the bidding of leaders accountable to no one but "God." In retrospect, it seems almost inevitable that someday, someone would stumble badly and that the fallout would cast a dark shadow across the whole of religious broadcasting.

The Bakker tragedy could not have happened if the empires of televangelism were not oligarchies, allowing individual entrepreneurs a great deal of freedom to follow their instincts. From this fact stems

---

130

both irony and paradox. Without such a system, the electric church would not have grown and developed into the important force it has become in America in the late twentieth century.

The second feature common to all these ministries-and one that has revolutionized religious broadcasting-is a unique relationship to the audiences. They have perfected parapersonal communication in a way undreamed-of by commercial television. Whereas commercial broadcasting sells advertising to support programming, the electric church sells Jesus, itself, and usually some wonderful project.

When Johnny Carson breaks for a commercial, even if Ed McMahon is hawking the product, there is a psychological distance between the "real" program and the selling of a sponsor's product. For religious broadcasters, the tasks of preaching, entertaining, and selling are all intertwined. A devoted listener feels good about Jesus, the minister, himself or herself, and the project that is being promoted. The concept of "partner" has a very powerful meaning. People get involved. They are indeed partners in the venture. Together with the televangelist and his staff, they are cofunders and coproducers-not just of a television program, but of the much broader ministry.

Televangelists solicit support from their audiences for their projects, offering premiums in exchange for donations. While some electric churches utilize professional fund-raising organizations, others have developed a sophistication that exceeds the capabilities of many such organizations. And many critics would relish the opportunity to employ the skills of the electric church to raise money.

With increased competition, airtime has become very expensive. And with costs increasing faster than audiences, there is an everpresent prospect that the whole process could crumble. Broadcasting seems to have become an instrument to pay off bills incurred in the pursuit of other projects rather than an end in itself. Billy Graham's biographer, Marshall Frady, found the same inverted process at work with the Graham crusades, which originally existed for the purpose of saving souls. Then, over time, they came to exist "for the sake of their own self-propagation." But with the passage of still more time, they "existed for their televised reproductions. " Hence, "the television event . . . existed to produce more television event," [6]

The reason is clear: Theology does not exist in a vacuum. It exists in a medium, a context. And the values and pressure of the context

---

131

help shape the theology. The medium is not neutral to the message. The fund-raising tactics of the televangelists-of Pat Robertson no less than his colleagues-are a prime example of this truism. These tactics undoubtedly have been the most controversial aspect of the electric church. Indeed, fund-raising has become an integral part of prime-time religion's theology.

There are numerous variations on the theme, but most televangelists end up at a common point: the Gospel of Prosperity. God wants you to be financially prosperous and content. Poverty and illness do not stem from God's Providence; they come from problems in a person's Christian attitude and understanding. Sacrifice and suffering have little to do with the contemporary Christian message.

Many televangelists say the keys to financial success are actually embedded in the New Testament. By supporting their particular ministries with donations, they assure viewers, anyone can learn what these keys are.

Pat Robertson calls these rules "Kingdom Principles," taught by Jesus Christ and "as valid for our lives as the laws of thermodynamics or the law of gravity." They are in the Bible, but you need the Virginia Beach televangelist as a guide for discerning them. Then the Good Book becomes a potpourri of information that can be applied to all sorts of secular situations. Says Robertson, "The Bible, quite bluntly, is a workable guidebook for politics, government, business, families, and all the affairs of mankind." [7]

In particular, God works on a principle of reciprocity. The more money you send to Him (presumably, in Robertson's case, through "The 700 Club"), the more God will return materially on your investment. In The Secret Kingdom, Robertson writes:

Oral Roberts refers to his twist on the same theme as "seed-faith." Contributions to his ministry have the potential to return mighty dividends, spiritual and material, within this lifetime. (He once wrote

---

132

an article in his Abundant Life magazine entitled "You Sow It, Then God Will Grow It.") While the concept can be applied to various aspects of life, it gives viewers a special justification for contributing to Roberts, since he claims to have uncovered the dynamics of how God apportions miracles.

In Miracle of Seed-Faith (1974-the twenty-fourth printing), Roberts discusses Three Key Principles of seed-faith and how to make "blessing-pact covenants" with God. There is, for example, the Law of Sowing and Reaping ("Remember, only what you give can God multiply back") and his frank admonishment: "If you want God to supply your financial needs, then give SEED- MONEY for Him to reproduce and multiply." [9]

On the other hand, Kenneth Copeland, Roberts's pupil, preaches "Prosperity Theology" based on biblical laws. He has written a string of best- selling books on the subject, including The Laws of Prosperity. His wife, Gloria, recently wrote one entitled God's Will is Prosperity.

In the weeks immediately following the Roberts and Bakker scandals, a half-dozen national polls made it abundantly clear that televangelists are not a very popular lot among the general public. As we read these polls, it is fund-raising more than anything else-including the sex scandals and the mixing of religion and politics-that has given religious broadcasters a black eye.

Oral Roberts's "donate or God will call me home" gimmick was but the latest in a long series of fund-raising scams he has perpetrated upon his viewers. Unfortunately, it is not just Roberts who has utilized fund-raising tactics that are, to say the least, of questionable integrity.

The scandals may have hastened an eventual, perhaps inevitable, backlash against their very strategies for success. Before the scandals broke, even Billy Graham criticized televangelists' endless projects, money-raising campaigns, and tearful warnings of bankruptcy.

Sociologist Razelle Frankl studied video telecasts of Oral Roberts, Robert Schuller, Jim Bakker, Rex Humbard, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, James Robison, and Pat Robertson in 1981 and found that no preacher used less than 10 percent of broadcast time for direct fundraising appeals. Two-thirds of the televangelists' appeals for money were targeted at the personal needs of viewers.

"In addition," she discovered, "television preachers made funding appeals that were integrated into the program content and were not

---

133

as easily distinguished as commercial appeals." The result was what Frankl termed a "hybrid" of traditional revivalism and television. "The ministries are combining religious norms and broadcasting norms." [10]

Thus have the financial exigencies of the televangelists become part of the Great Commission. Their theology is closely intertwined with the budgets of their electronic empires. Electric Christianity is not simply traditional Christianity broadcast across cable channels and beamed around the globe by satellites. It is a transformed message, befitting the needs of those who purport merely to serve it.

The subtleties of theology do not carry well over television. The medium is fundamentally visual, not cerebral. It is not an easy medium to master. Perhaps that is why many liberal critics are so quick to mistakenly dismiss what they see as raw hucksterism.

Whatever one may think about the televangelists, it is helpful to understand the unique free-market position they occupy in the world of broadcasting.

Commercial television is paid for by advertising. Public television, on the other hand, is funded by a combination of government grants, philanthropic gifts from corporations and foundations, and private contributions or subscriptions from individuals.

Religious television occupies a position in between these two models. It is commercial in the sense that televangelism is selling a product- Jesus Christ. The funds don't come from commercial sponsors but, rather, directly from viewers. But the viewers have to be coaxed into giving. And, as mentioned earlier, people are more willing to give to specific projects than they are to pay for airtime. Hence, projects become the means to raise money to support the television ministries. Unfortunately, fund-raising has virtually become the tail that wags the dog, even to the point of dominating, in some instances, the theologies of some of the televangelists.

The downfall of Oral Roberts's ministry comes from the fact that his projects have exceeded the capability of his audience to give. The root of his demise goes back to the late 1970s, when he undertook his most ambitious building project. Falling behind on the revenues needed to keep on schedule, Roberts stepped up the amount of time devoted to appealing for funds. It finally reached a point where he did nothing but beg for money during the entire program.

And for this he paid a heavy price. People turned off their television

---

134

sets or tuned in to a program that would afford them some spiritual uplift. Throughout the period of the medical complex construction, Roberts's ratings slipped. And they continued to slip. From 1980 through 1986, Roberts lost 59 percent of his audience. He obviously could not use any more heavily mortgaged brick- and-mortar projects to dun his shrinking pool of supporters for funds. So he portrayed God as an extortionist (never mind his pious protestations to the contrary).

The "ceiling" or upper boundary of funding for religious broadcasting is still unknown, but Oral Roberts's troubles strongly suggest there are limits. It needs to be said, on the other hand, that there are dangers in failing to build. Rex Humbard's experience confirms that.

If we step back and look at the process, without normative sentiments, it is evident that it conforms remarkably to the American free-enterprise system. There are still lots of new syndicated programs going on the air and trying to plug into the success formula. While some are failing, others are on the ascent.

Viewed as a market activity, the sham and scam of the Roberts and Bakker ministries reveal a system that is working. When American automobile makers produced an inferior product and the top executives raked off huge bonuses, the American people began buying foreign cars. And, similarly, when raw ambition and greed turned preachers of the Gospel into hucksters, their motives were discovered and their clients sought another product.

Of course, a lot of people have been deceived by a televangelist. They gave funds believing in the purity of the motives of those who asked for them. But people get burned in a lot of ways. Some who can't afford it put down hard-earned money on lottery tickets that have a minuscule chance of winning. The telephone rings daily with dozens of get-rich-quick schemes that are pure-and-simple telefraud. Good friends encourage involvement in substance abuse that can kill. And many charitable organizations and social causes use fund-raising techniques that are not much different from those used by televangelists. It all boils down to a matter of perspective.

No one has to like any of the hundreds of ways people separate other people from their money. But the huckstering of some televangelists takes on a somewhat different complexion in the context of lots of other hucksterism in society. And what may appear as huckstering

---

135

by a televangelist may not be so construed if we are approached by a charity we approve of.

Clearly, American televangelism is a unique organizational hybrid. Its unique oligarchic form has provided a structure for its growth and development within a free market. As a religious institution, it is protected by the First Amendment and, hence, has been relatively unmolested by critics who would rather see the entire enterprise dismantled.

If the electric church were not meeting important needs of those who watch and contribute, it would have gone out of business long ago. And if televangelists do not move quickly to regulate themselves and their peers, it is unlikely that public opinion will permit them to continue without some kind of government regulation. But it seems unlikely that this step will be necessary. Those who have placed their trust in individual television ministries, regardless of which one, felt a little more cautious about their support in 1987 than they did in 1986. A condition of their continued trust and support will be public accountability of how money is spent.

Time will be the test of how committed Jerry Falwell and his fellow televangelists are to a new openness. The authors think he does appear serious and his colleagues, whether or not they like it, will probably be caught up in a new mode of public accountability.

This new accountability, assuming it is forthcoming, will substantially check initiatives for government oversight of religious broadcasters. For the foreseeable future, televangelists will continue to go about the business of building their empires-perhaps a little less oligarchic than in the past, yet essentially the products of highly motivated and talented individuals. And the organizations they are creating seem destined to have a significant impact on the future of American society.

A closer examination of two of the most significant television ministries will reveal that there are different routes to success. Comparing and contrasting the parachurches and the organization-building strategies of the two best-known televangelists-Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson-reveals how growth can be accomplished in different ways.

Reverend Jerry Falwell, an independent Baptist and a graduate of

---

136

Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, founded the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1956. From an initial membership of thirty-five members who met for services in a former Donald Duck soft-drink bottling plant, Falwell built Thomas Road into one of the nation's largest congregations.

Soon after he began Thomas Road Baptist Church, Falwell initiated a radio ministry, and then one in television. His ministry prospered and expanded: Within five years the organization included a Christian academy, a bus ministry for children, and an expanded 3,000- seat sanctuary. He created Liberty Baptist College in 1971 and Liberty Baptist Seminary in 1973.

Liberty Baptist College has mushroomed-from a few students meeting at the Thomas Road Baptist Church into Liberty University with an enrollment of approximately 6,500 students. Falwell's twentyfive-year plan projects an enrollment of 50,000 men and women in both undergraduate programs as well as in professional schools of law and medicine. The campus already has thirty-three buildings valued at $30 million, with another $10 million of construction underway. Although tuition, room, and board cost about $6,00O per year, the average per-student subsidy is $2,000. All these funds are covered by the $72 million-plus that Falwell's broadcasting and direct-mail appeals bring in from sympathetic viewers and supporters.

This growth undoubtedly has been stimulated and abetted by the "Old Time Gospel Hour," Falwell's weekly telecast of church services from Thomas Road. The creation of the controversial Moral Majority in 1979 gave Falwell's emerging empire further visibility.

The "Old Time Gospel Hour" is a critical cotter pin in Falwell's parachurch empire, but it is not the raison d'etre of the ministry. Likewise the Moral Majority. Both are means to other ends. Falwell was several years into his ministry before he clearly understood what he was doing. But he understands perfectly now. He has unabashedly proclaimed, "It is our goal to be the Harvard of academics, the Notre Dame of athletics, and the Brigham Young of religious schools to evangelical and fundamentalist boys and girls." [11]

There are not very many people who would quarrel with the proposition that these are ambitious, if not grandiose, goals beyond any reasonable expectation of achievement. But Falwell doesn't think so.

The Liberty University complex is the key to understanding Jerry

---

137

Falwell's plan for expanding his parachurch empire and his influence on American history. Already the Liberty University complex is emerging as more than just another conservative educational institution on the order of Bob Jones University or Oral Roberts University, where accepted features of campus life are curfews and student pledges never to smoke, drink alcohol, or listen to rock music.

In 1980 Falwell claimed that his former students had already founded 200 new churches; his goal for the decade is to establish 5,000. Toward this goal Falwell in 1981 organized the Liberty Baptist Fellowship for Church Planting, whose purpose is to provide "a degree of monthly support for pastors who start local autonomous, fundamentalist Baptist churches." Such financial aid would eliminate the need for pastors of small, struggling churches to take a second job in order to support their families. The extra money would free them to concentrate their energies on church growth.

In order to be eligible to receive between $100 and $600 a month for up to six months of the start-up phase, the pastors must agree with Liberty's evangelistic mission to "capture their towns for Christ." By late 1985, the fellowship provided financial assistance (the bulk of which came from donations by Liberty alumni and their churches) to fifty-four new pastors, most of them graduates of Liberty Baptist College/University. [12]

A total of 688 graduates took part in the May 1985 commencement exercises of Liberty University. By now thousands have matriculated and gone on to establish careers and families. Thousands more will follow in the next decade.

Female alumni cannot pursue the goal of becoming a fundamentalist minister (though to be the supportive wife of such a pioneering man is explicitly encouraged). And many male students are preparing for various careers other than the clergy. Yet a persistent minority of every class of Liberty graduates, loyal to the "base" institution as they go about setting up new congregations, is all it takes.

Falwell`s estimate of 5,000 churches by 1990, or even by the end of this century probably is wishful thinking. But a par; church based on a core of loyal ministers and their churches' support, as well as individual television viewers, is not.

Liberty University is more than simply a training ground for young missionaries, and Jerry Falwell knows exactly what he is doing. He

---

138

understands that his university will send out literally thousands of graduates who have been trained to think about the world in a manner highly consistent with his own religious beliefs and socioeconomic philosophy. His graduates will enter every walk of life. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, will establish "independent" Baptist churches. A fair proportion of those churches are likely to be called Liberty Baptist Church. But neither are these churches an end in themselves. They are a means to the goal of changing America. Jerry Falwell thinks big and believes in long-term projects and goals.

Whereas Jerry Falwell's religious conglomerate began with a church and gradually shifted its epicenter to an institution of higher learning, Marion G. "Pat" Robertson's strategy for developing a world- transforming base has, from the beginning, depended heavily on communications technology. His move into broadcasting may well have been influenced by his involvement after law school in an electronic components business.

Based in Virginia Beach, Virginia, the Christian Broadcasting Network has not always possessed state-of-the-art technology. In 1961, Robertson felt "called" to purchase a defunct television station in Virginia Beach with a minimal down payment and only the meagerest of assets. [13] From that modest start, Pat Robertson has built CBN into one of the most sophisticated communications networks in the world.

The $230 million CBN empire has become the nation's third largest cable television network (behind Ted Turner's Cable News Network and ESPN sports), and it may eventually become, as Robertson once prophesied, the fourth national network.

"The 700 Club" program, for which Robertson is best known and which helped launch his network, took its name from a 1963 fundraising telethon- still one of Robertson's favorite tactics for obtaining viewers' donations. Robertson asked for 700 viewers to each pledge $10 a month to meet the operating budget of his station. He got the money, and the response inspired the program's title.

"The 700 Club" has evolved in some important ways since its initiation in the fall of 1963, when it copied the format of Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show." In 1980, the program was radically restructured, from a "talk show" to a "magazine" format. The new structure included a combination of entertainment segments, most closely modeled after "PM Magazine," along with in-depth investigative reporting along the

---

139

lines of"60 Minutes." Also included, to varying degrees, has been a news summary. In 1986, Robertson's commentaries on the news were formally packaged in a segment called "Pat Robertson's Perspective on the News."

Whereas the program once was exclusively live, approximately threequarters of it is now pretaped. This innovation proved to be particularly valuable as Robertson stepped up his public appearances across the country in a preliminary exploration of a presidential candidacy. With two co-hosts, the program could be spliced together so that Robertson's physical absence from CBN studios in Virginia Beach was hardly discernible.

Robertson's parachurch conglomerate includes several television stations, a satellite earth station, and modern television studios in Virginia Beach. Other facilities include a newly established university-with a law school and a library-of more than 940 students, a conference center and hotel, and the World Outreach Center, which houses Robertson's computers, printing and mailing facilities, offices, and space for counseling. CBN's 1,500 full-time and part-time employees manage production of "The 700 Club" (broadcast five days a week to forty-three countries in various languages), handle his fundraising/counseling telephones, and process donations.

Robertson is interested in pushing his electronic enterprise beyond merely state-of- the-art communications into more innovative technologies and strategies. To this end, his university's graduate school aims to produce a special elite generation of Christian communicators.

Like their secular colleagues, they will be technically sophisticated. Unlike the secularists, however, they will possess both the skills and the perspective to fit news into a distinctly Christian context. They will not have to dilute their reporting on religious subjects because they don't understand it, nor avoid the Christian inferences to be drawn from the news stories they report and present. In that sense, they portend an acceleration of the crystallization of Christian sentiments that the electric church has already set in motion. Their news, packaged in a Christian context, will have maximum impact on mobilizing evangelicals for future social and political activism.

More so than Falwell, however, Robertson depends heavily on the telephone. Indeed, the telephone is one of the linchpins in Robertson's parachurch growth; he has created a massive telephone prayer and

---

140

counseling network throughout the United States. The toll-free counseling hotline receives an estimated 4.4 million calls annually.

People call for a variety of reasons, although usually they request prayer and advice for personal problems such as unemployment, alcohol and drug addiction, marriage/romance difficulties, and poor health. Counseling centers for "The 700 Club" have been established in forty-four metropolitan areas. Typically, these are small, unobtrusive offices whose local telephone numbers flash at the bottom of the television screen during the program, particularly during Robertson's telethons. Slost important for Robertson's parachurch empire is the fact that these counseling centers also serve as referral agencies to direct "unchurched" callers to local congregations. CBN has a church referral list of more than 15,000 churches in all denominations.

CBN offers a powerful means for producing a motivated parachurch following. After all, viewers seek out Robertson's counselors, not vice versa. To put it another way: What salesman wouldn't like to have a list of 4 million or more prospects who have already volunteered that they are interested in his product?

Still, ambitious ministers building electronic parachurch empires have to be careful. They are faced with the delicate matter of being accused of siphoning monies, if not members, from existing denominations. They might even be charged with creating new denominations themselves, something both Falwell and Robertson have vigorously denied.

It is conceivable that Falwell and Robertson are not consciously aware of how easily a parachurch grounded in electronics could slip over the line and emerge the next moment as a denomination. In any case, televangelists such as Robertson have been insistent that their only purpose is to evangelize and support local churches' outreach. They stress that they have no wish to compete with local congregations for members' royalties or donations. They have strong reasons to deny publicly (and even to themselves) that denomination-building is a goal or might ever result unintentionally from their ministries. Many audience members would be shocked or outraged to discover that they were contributing to an emerging new denomination, and support might recede.

Televangelists, through broad grass-roots support of their parachurches, speak for a constituency of Americans interested in a con

---

141

servatively directed cultural revolution. It is unlikely that this revolution will meet the fate of the youthful protest movements of the "Woodstock" generation, coopted as they were, or commercialized into insignificance. As Jeremy Rifkin points out in The Emerging Order, change-oriented evangelicalism now has "its own communications structure . . . formidable enough to withstand a frontal assault." [14]

If a television ministry could build colleges, cathedrals, hospitals, and spiritual Disneylands, it seemed likely that it could also be used to pursue projects that are not necessarily direct offspring of religious broadcasting. Jerry Falwell's decision to create the Moral Majority was the first bold attempt to test this proposition. While Falwell made a great deal of separating his role as leader of the Moral Majority from his role as preacher on the "Old Time Gospel Hour" and pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church, there is no question that his multiple roles of preacher and politician reinforce one another.

Pat Robertson, too, used his religious television role to demonstrate his political acumen to the world, and his local Freedom Council chapters (disbanded in 1986) to build a following for his political views. Whatever his fate as a politician, there is no question that Robertson's blending of religion, politics, and economic analysis on "The 700 Club" has elevated his personal status as a respected conservative spokesperson. His potential to capitalize upon this status is considerable.

Other televangelists, such as Jimmy Swaggart and D. James Kennedy, are also positioned to channel their audiences toward explicit political projects. As long as the Federal Communications Commission, the Congress, and the courts do not change broadcasting rules, religious broadcasting has strong potential as a base for social and political movements. Indeed, for the evangelicals who are discovering their activist heritage and feeling "mad as hell," it may prove irresistible.

Notes