 | Chapter 3 The Electronic Communicants Prime Time Preachers: The Rising Power of Televangelism |  |
Chapter 3
The Electronic Communicants
This chapter presents the first systematic data ever published on the audience size and demographic characteristics of the audience of the electronic church. Also examined in the psychology of parapersonal interaction which fosters attachment and commitment.
Jim Bakker is like a member of the family, or we are members of his family. He is full of empathy, sympathy, understanding, and we love Jim Bakker.
DEIDRE PATRICK:
We feel we know him intimately. He's a real person in our lives.
FRANK PATRICK:
He's more than just somebody who appears on TV.
During the winter and spring of 1980, Jerry Falwell proclaimed
widely that 25 million people watched "The Old-Time Gospel
Hour" every week. Then, in the middle of July, at the
Republican National Convention in Detroit, while Falwell was
engaged in some heavy politicking over the platform and the
vice-presidential choice, the word slipped out from one of his
associates that "OTGH" really had an audience of 50
million viewers! How did Jerry Falwell get a viewing audience
of 50 million? The same way he got 25 million: by proclamation.
The truth is, fewer than 1 ½ million people tune in Jerry Falwell
each week. One and a half million. That's 3 percent of the audience
Falwell's man claimed in Detroit in the summer of 1980.
Falwell isn't the only TV preacher to get carried away estimating the size of his audience. Virtually all of them do. E. J. Daniels hosts a program called "Christ for the World," and in his ministry magazine for February 1980 he allowed as how, doggone it, he just didn't know how many million (emphasis added) listened to his show. Professional audience estimates for that same month indicate he had a total audience of 135,000.
Virtually all the televangelists exaggerate their audience size. Many of them sincerely believe that they do reach literally millions. How do they come up with their estimates? Not all of them join Falwell in the fine art of proclamation. Some confuse potential audience with real audience. They seem not to grasp the fact that only a fraction of all television sets in a given viewing area are turned on at one time, and of those, only a very small percentage are tuned to their show.
Many have formulas they believe to be reasonable yardsticks for estimating audiences. The most common formula pivots on some ratio between letters received and number of viewers. Don Hull, who formerly headed James Robison's audience response division, told a group of Southern Baptist broadcasters that he estimated 3,000 viewers for each letter. By that formula, 1,000 letters would mean 3 million viewers. Some organizations believe the ratio of letters to viewers is as high as 7,000 to one. The major broadcasters measure their volume of mail in the tens of thousands of pieces per week. Applying the audience-to-mail ratio could produce some pretty phenomenal audience sizes for the majors, dwarfing even Jerry Falwell's proclamations.
Jerry Falwell uses the phrase ministerially speaking to joke about his exaggerations of audience size and other numbers. It's as if the preacher's cloak gives him license to embellish in the name of the Lord. Yea, for the glory of the Lord. Bigger is better, even in religion.
All of this truth stretching may seem pretty harmless, hardly different from the weekend fisherman who says you should have seen the one that got away. The difference is that when he tells you about the one that got away, you nod your head and smile, but you know that he's fibbing. It's all a game, and you're willing to go along with him because nobody gets hurt—nobody's really fooling anybody.
Television preachers, on the other hand, have succeeded in fooling almost everybody. The vast majority of press reports on TV religion in 1980 highlighted audience figures that, although not always as preposterous as the exaggerated claim of 50 million for Jerry Falwell, were nonetheless inaccurate. The
October 1980 issue of Playboy magazine ran a cynical, sarcastic article about the prime-time preachers. It chastised Ernest Angley for his amateurish toupee. It questioned the money doings of Rex, Oral, and Jim Bakker. It ridiculed fundamentalist beliefs and preaching styles all in one breath. But there at the bottom of the spread were capsule descriptions of the superstars and their shows—with audience figures easily three and four times the actual size.
Why is it that the same press that hounds these ministers on their every statement and move has simply accepted as truth the data they give out concerning their audiences? Is it holdover reverence for men of the cloth? Are they so busy hunting for the forest that they can't see the trees? Whatever the reason, this is one case where the country boys have taken the city slickers for a ride.
The TV preachers certainly aren't the first in the broadcasting industry to exaggerate the size of their audiences. TV and radio advertising rates have always been geared to audience size, just as print journalism advertising rates are a function of circulation. Thus, both radio and television broadcasters are prone to make exaggerated claims whenever they can get away with it. The mental gymnastics some go through to justify those claims can make the proverbial used-car salesman seem like Honest Abe Lincoln himself. Independent audience measurement organizations like the A. C. Nielsen and Arbitron companies emerged because they offered an invaluable service that permits advertisers to keep the radio and television industries honest.
But the prime-time preachers don't sell advertising. What tangible benefit could they derive from stretching the truth? The television ministries do not carry commercial advertising, but they do implicitly make advertising appeals in their solicitation of funds. Christians are charged with the responsibility of spreading the gospel message into all the world. When the electronic ministries solicit funds, they remind their audiences—either explicitly or implicitly—that a gift to the ministry is a contribution to the fulfillment of that great commission.
In a sense, these appeals for contributions are also advertisements for the ministries. The greater the success a ministry can claim, the more worthy it is of a viewer's support: it is spreading
So it isn't surprising that the electronic preachers engage in a little hyperbole when it comes to estimating audience size. Viewers are much more likely to contribute to a thriving, significant ministry than to one that is struggling along, reaching only a few viewers.
Just how many people do tune in the prime-time preachers? During an average week in early 1980, Arbitron estimated the total number of persons viewing all sixty-six syndicated religious programs to be 20,500,000—less than the weekly audience size claimed by Jerry Falwell alone. Such huge discrepancies are the stuff of which controversy arises. Generally, the people of the electronic church claim their audiences are larger—some insist they are much larger. The critics of the electronic churches, wanting to downplay their importance, claim this figure is inflated. There are arguments to be made for both sides, but when the dust settles, the arguments pretty much cancel each other out.
Arbitron and A. C. Nielsen are two companies that have their fingers on the pulse of American television-viewing habits. Their continuous research into which programs get what share of a viewing audience, and how large it is, can literally spell the life or death of a program. And what they learn about the age and sex composition of audiences helps determine advertising rates.
Their clients pay handsomely for this information, which except in very broad terms remains a closely guarded trade secret. Like yesterday's newspaper, however, last month's Arbitron or Nielsen ratings are generally considered obsolete. How many people watched the Beatles on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1964 is of interest to few people. And who could possibly care how many watched "M*A*S*H" in the second week of November 1979, and whether that audience was larger or smaller than the previous week's or previous year's? Much of the information Arbitron or Nielsen so meticulously gathers is self-evident as far as most people are concerned. Everybody knows that kids watch
When something like the electronic church captures the interest of the American public, however, as it has during the past couple of years, that otherwise dull information becomes both interesting and important. And when the television preachers themselves make claims about the size, geographical distribution, and other features of their audiences, a systematic and objective approach to those statistics becomes essential. Until now, little factual information has been available to the public.
According to data for February 1980 supplied us by Arbitron, the following are the top ten religious television shows and their estimated audience sizes:
| RANK | SHOW | PREACHER | AUDIENCE SIZE |
| 1 | "Oral Roberts and You" | Oral Roberts | 2,719,250 |
| 2 | "Rex Humbard" | Rex Humbard | 2,409,960 |
| 3 | "Hour of Power" | Robert Schuller | 2,069,210 |
| 4 | "Jimmy Swaggart, Evangelist" | Jimmy Swaggart | 1,986,000 |
| 5 | "Day of Discovery " | Richard De Haan and Paul Van Gorder | 1,519,000 |
| 6 | "Old-Time Gospel Hour " | Jerry Falwell | 1,455,720 |
| 7 | "Singing Gospel Jubilee" | host varies | 939,200 |
| 8 | "Davey and Goliath" | children's drama | 672,000 |
| 9 | " The PTL Club" | Jim Bakker | 668,170 |
| 10 | "Insight " | drama | 497,920 |
These shows, which include two mainline programs ("Davey and Goliath" is a children's program produced by the Lutheran Church of America, and "Insight," a Catholic drama show, is
Let's look at these figures—and a few others supplied by Arbitron—a little more closely. One of the most striking revelations from these data is that Jerry Falwell is in sixth place. Given his penchant for self-promotion and his incredible visibility throughout the 1980 election season, one wouldn't have expected him to be eclipsed by Rex, Oral, and the others. But Oral Roberts and Rex Humbard, both of whom have been involved in paid religious telecasting since the mid-1950s, have held their respective number one and two slots for the past decade. And although Roberts's crown may be somewhat in jeopardy of late, he still commands almost double the audience Falwell does.
The other surprising thing is the absence of "The 700 Club" from this top ten chart. The flagship show of Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network is one of the most sophisticated and slickest religious programs offered on TV today. A blend of "The Tonight Show," "Today," and the annual Jerry Lewis telethon, "The 700 Club" is the cornerstone of Robertson's $50-million-a-year enterprise. Yet its audience, according to Arbitron, is a mere 380,460, ranking it thirteenth in the religious roster. Aware of the need to attract a broader audience, Robertson began in the fall of 1980 to transform "The 700 Club" into a magazine-type format. Guest interviews have been shortened, and film clips about the guest or the topic of conversation are now often used to introduce guests and break up interviews. Investigative reporting, from a Christian perspective, has become a regular feature of the program, and there are "departments" that provide such things as cooking and consumer hints. All in all, the objective is to give the program more variety and a more upbeat, fast-moving pace.
James Robison, the fiery evangelist who gained national visibility during the 1980 political campaign because of his outspoken views, draws 464,800 loyal followers. Ernest Angley, the short, stubby Pentecostal healer who wears white suits and
As we said earlier, there are those on both sides of the fence who would question all these figures. Perhaps the most persuasive argument comes from those who point out that the numbers include repeat viewers. If you were to turn on your television set one Sunday morning and watch five consecutive religious programs, you would be counted five times; total audience size isn't synonymous with the number of different people. It's like a football team reporting how many people attend its games in a given season—a season ticker holder gets counted once for every home game, not just once, period. Taking this factor into account, Ben Armstrong, who heads the evangelical religious broadcasters trade association, estimates the average weekly unduplicated audience to be 14 million. William Fore of the National Council of Churches, however, a natural "adversary," says 10 million is a more likely estimate. Nobody, of course, can know for sure.
On the other hand, there is an equally strong argument which suggests that the Arbitron numbers are too low: the relative absence of cable systems from Arbitron's input. At mid-1980 there were 4,200 operating cable systems in the United States with approximately 15 million subscribers, representing about 20 percent of all households in the country. Many cable systems are in markets that can receive television without cable, but in other communities cable is the only reliable source of TV reception. Arbitron measures some cable viewing but overlooks an indeterminate proportion. It is more likely to measure cable viewing in communities where virtually everyone receives television by cable than in communities where it is an option, and the optional subscription services are more likely to include an expanded number of specialized channels, including sports, news, and
So there are arguments that would alter the Arbitron estimates in both directions, but given the methods of estimating, and even allowing for a small margin of error, we find it unlikely that Arbitron's data are very far off the mark. And those data add up to a very different picture of the electronic churches from that portrayed by the mass media, which have uncritically accepted the exaggerated proclamations of the television preachers. Furthermore, the Arbitron data are very close in order and magnitude to those published by Nielsen.
Still, the audience sizes are not insignificant. Virtually all the televangelists make enough money from their viewers to sustain their broadcasting. In addition, they conduct a variety of important outreach activities. But they need to be seen in perspective. Their combined efforts reach only a minority of the American population, a minority, even, of the evangelical community. Economically speaking, they are not a Fortune 500 enterprise. Compared with prime-time evening television, they are minor leaguers. "M*A*S*H," a situation comedy with strong moral messages, commands a weekly audience a little larger than the combined audiences of the electronic churches. So does "The Muppets." And "Donahue," which leads the variety talk shows, has an audience three times larger than Oral Roberts's. The audience size the electronics reach, thus, is not insignificant, but it is not especially impressive by comparison with other audiences.
What about another claim the prime-timers make: that they are growing by leaps and bounds, saving more and more souls every day for Jesus? Is there evidence to prove that they are, in fact, a growth industry? This claim is implicit in their talk about expanding onto additional stations and cable systems, broadcasting overseas by satellite, and so forth. So also do their financial figures suggest rapid growth. Financial data released by several electronic church organizations indicate annual budget growth of
The great period of growth in the electronic church ministries occurred between 1970 and 1975, when their combined audiences more than doubled from just under 10 million to just under 21 million. Since 1975, however, the overall audience size has fluctuated within a fairly narrow range. The following table shows the audience size, as measured by Arbitron, for 1970 and for each year from 1975 on. Also shown is the number of syndicated religious programs, which has also fluctuated within a fairly narrow range since 1975.
| YEAR | NO. OF SYNDICATED PROGRAMS |
COMBINED AUDIENCE SIZE |
| 1970 | 38 | 9,803,000 |
| 1975 | 65 | 20,806,000 |
| 1976 | 68 | 22,812,000 |
| 1977 | 62 | 21,998,000 |
| 1978 | 72 | 22,538,000 |
| 1979 | 66 | 21,477,000 |
| 1980 | 66 | 20,538,000 |
Source: The Arbitron Company
Although it is too early to call it a trend, the total audience size actually declined form 1978 to 1979 and from 1979 to 1980, with a net loss of 2 million viewers.
These overall figures, of course, are for syndicated programs only. In addition to these, many of the major television figures do occasional "specials" on evening prime time, which no doubt attract significantly larger audiences simply because more people watch television at that time. Special programs, however, aren't monitored for audience size. There are also scores, perhaps hundreds, of religious telecasts that are aired locally, mostly broadcasts of local church services. Many are poorly produced,
The rapid growth of syndicated religious programming in the early 1970s corresponded with significant reductions in video production costs. As this happened, the major programs that were already on the air commercially expanded their markets rapidly. They included Oral Roberts, Rex Humbard, and Richard De Haan's "Day of Discovery." Among the commercial television programs that survive today, those of Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, James Robison, and Robert Schuller have undergone major expansion.
Other programs were built up during that period which, for a variety of reasons, either did not survive or now command only small audiences. Garner Ted Armstrong, for example, built the television program of the Worldwide Church of God, "World of Tomorrow," to the point where it had an audience in excess of three-quarters of a million. Herbert W. Armstrong continued a television program after he excommunicated his son, Garner Ted, in 1978, but the program is but a remnant of what it was. Katherine Kuhlman, the only female televangelist, was attracting approximately three-quarters of a million viewers when she died in 1976.
While paid religious programming grew phenomenally during the first half of the 1970s, there was attrition among religious programs produced by mainline church groups which were aired on free or sustaining time as it is called in the industry. One program that lost ground was a religious drama, "This Is the Life," produced by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. At one time this program had an audience in excess of 1 ½ million. The program survives, but despite the high quality of the production, it appears on only less than half as many stations, at basically undesirable times, and commands only about one-fifth of the audience it once had. "Insight," the drama program with religious messages produced by the Paulist Fathers, has managed to retain approximately the same audience size it had ten years
The two developments, of course, are related. The mainliners' programs that were aired on gratis time were pushed off the air as a direct result of the evangelicals' coming along and offering to pay for that time. One can much more easily appreciate the deep anger of mainline Protestant and Catholic broadcasters when one has examined the simultaneous growth curve of paid religious television and the sharply declining curve of sustaining-time audiences.
The airwaves, of course, are considered to be owned by the people; the government licenses and regulates their use in the public interest. From the perspective of mainline church leaders, part of that public trust involves the responsibility to make available free public service time for religious programming. When the evangelicals moved in and offered to buy the time, and the television stations accepted, that public trust, in the eyes of the mainliners, was violated. To be unaware of this, or to forget it, is to miss one of the important sources of tension between mainliners and evangelicals.
Oral Roberts's loss of audience is by far the most serious. His audience peaked in 1977 with an estimated 4,356,000 viewers. His February 1980 audience was measured at 2,720,000, a net loss of more than 1 ½ million, or 38 percent, in just three years. He lost almost an additional 400,000 in the May 1980 ratings. Part of that can be explained as seasonal adjustment, but his audience is off by a greater percentage than the average seasonal loss.
There are three general explanations for the Roberts audience decline. First, its beginning corresponds roughly to his changeover from a format with a heavy component of entertainment, featuring big-name stars, to a format that is more like a regular worship service. Second, Roberts has faced problems with the city of Tulsa, the state of Oklahoma, and the federal government over his medical center. From each level he has received complaints that the project is not needed, and there have been several political and legal maneuvers to block it. Third, he has been the subject of personal bad publicity. The divorce of his son, Richard, didn't help the public image of the Oral Roberts
Roberts tried to handle the matter by pretending it didn't exist. He refused to talk to reporters. One of his top spokesmen also refused our repeated requests to visit the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association headquarters and speak with officials about the ministry's operations. Other persons formerly associated with the Oral Roberts organization have told us that Sholes's expose only "scratched the surface." Some of what upset Sholes, and some of what upsets other former associates, may be matters of taste. Still, Roberts's refusal to address serious charges that have been leveled against him, and his refusal to permit legitimate investigators to talk to his personnel, creates at least the appearance that he has something to hide. Evidence that people within the Roberts organization were responsible for derogatory rumors about Sholes added further doubts in our minds about the integrity of the Roberts operation.
As a result of diminishing audiences and rising financial liabilities associated with the medical complex, Roberts's appeals for contributions have appeared to become more and more desperate. In the fall of 1980 he claimed that he personally encountered and conversed with a 900-foot image of Jesus who instructed him to seek help in building the medical center. This caused the Reverend Carl McIntire, a right-wing radio evangelist, to comment, "Oral Roberts, I'm afraid, has gone berserk on these visions of his."
Oral Roberts's downfall, if that is indeed what is happening, may be substantially of his own making. Roberts is a man who speaks about and encourages his audiences to expect miracles in their lives. It may take one to get him out of the pinch he currently appears to be in.
Let's look at one more claim the televangelists make—that they are no longer a southern phenomenon. People have long associated fundamentalist-evangelical religion with the Bible Belt, which is more or less synonymous with the South. That isn't so anymore, say the prime-time preachers. "There's a Bible cloak in America that covers the whole blooming republic," Jerry Falwell told his audience at the National Affairs Briefing in Dallas in 1980. Here's what he told that same group in support of his contention that the Bible Belt exists no more: "The number one city in America in our ministry in the number of persons and financial support is Los Angeles. Number two is Philadelphia. Number three is Boston. Number four is New York. Number five is Chicago. You come down to number sixteen before you get to a southern city, and that's Greenville, South Carolina."
We don't know what kind of formula Falwell used to mix people
and dollars and come up with these figures. But here's what the
February 1980 Arbitron figures show about his audience:
| RANK | CITY | AUDIENCE SIZE |
| 1 | Los Angeles | 63,000 |
| 2 | Roanoke-Lynchburg | 42,000 |
| 3 | Philadelphia | 27,000 |
| 4 | Washington, D.C. | 27,000 |
| 5 | Knoxville | 25,000 |
At least Falwell was right about Los Angeles being his top market. And if we were to grant him that it's not fair to count his hometown audience, then Philadelphia would be second. But Boston, which he said was his third-biggest market, didn't appear in the top twenty. And New York, which he said was fourth, was actually tied with Atlanta, Kansas City, and Monroe, Louisiana—El Dorado, Arkansas, for the eighth spot. And as for his claim that you don't find a southern city until position sixteen, we counted eight before we got to the sixteenth position. As for his top five markets, we've always thought Roanoke and Knoxville were in the South, and although many southerners don't want to claim it, so is Washington, D.C., for all kinds of official government purposes including the census.
The incredible aspect of Falwell's hyperbole, however, is that he was presumably comparing his total audience size in metropolitan areas like New York, with 20 million people, and metropolitan Los Angeles, with a population in excess of 10 million, with the audience size in southern cities. On the basis of audience size as a percentage of total population, of course, Falwell has scarcely penetrated major metropolitan areas.
Certainly, all the major religious television programs appear on stations in every region and metropolitan area in the United States. But when you examine the distribution of their audiences in comparison with the distribution of the U.S. population, it is immediately obvious that the electronic church is still heavily a Bible Belt phenomenon, as the accompanying table demonstrates. Whereas the eastern region of the United States contains 22.5 percent of the total population, most of the electronic churches fail to draw even half that proportion, or approximately 11 percent. Robert Schuller, the only mainline Protestant preacher in the group, is the exception to the generalization. In the Midwest, the home base of his own denomination, the Reformed Church in America, Schuller also does well.
All the television preachers except Schuller draw a disproportionate
percentage of their audiences from the South. The South now has
nearly one-third of the U.S. population (32.4 percent), and Oral
Roberts draws almost 54 percent of his audience from there. Jimmy
Swaggart also draws just over half of his audience from the South
(51.3 percent). Rex Humbard, Jerry Falwell, and
| Program | East | Midwest | South | West |
| Oral Roberts | 10.3% | 24.6% | 53.9% | 11.2% |
| Rex Humbard | 14.7 | 23.8 | 46.5 | 15.0 |
| Robert Schuller | 24.0 | 33.2 | 30.1 | 12.7 |
| Jimmy Swaggart | 11.5 | 23.0 | 51.3 | 14.2 |
| "Day of Discovery" | 10.8 | 28.3 | 43.8 | 17.1 |
| Jerry Falwell | 12.9 | 26.9 | 44.9 | 15.2 |
| % U. S. population in region |
22.5 | 26.7 | 32.4 | 18.4 |
Source: The Abritron Company, February 1980
All of the electronic preachers are underrepresented in the western region. Schuller, whose home base is near Los Angeles in Orange County, did worse in the West than anyone except Oral Roberts. If Los Angeles, and a few other pockets of heavy southern migration, were excluded, the western region would show even poorer penetration than the eastern region.
Jerry Falwell may have a point about the Bible cloak spreading across America, because people from the South have migrated to the Midwest and West, even as the rest of the country is finding its way into the Sun Belt. But there is still very little migratory flow from the South to New England, and this area has been extremely difficult for the electronic churches to penetrate.
For as long as sociologists have gathered statistics on religious behavior, it has been consistently observed that women attend church more than men. Also consistent is the pattern of greater church attendance among older people than among the young. In light of this, it should not come as a surprise to learn that women also watch religious programs on television more than men do and that older persons do so more than young people.
What we found surprising in the Arbitron data is the consistency of age and sex composition from one religious television program to the next. Virtually all the syndicated programs have audiences of which two-thirds to three-quarters are fifty years of age or over. Entertainment and drama programs tend to have somewhat younger audiences. Among the top ten programs, three (Swaggart, "PTL," and "Gospel Singing") have a substantial element of entertainment. Sixty-two percent of their audiences is fifty or over, compared to an average of 74 percent for the religious service format of the other top ten programs. No program, except the children's programs, attracts a substantially younger audience.
Audiences also tend to be disproportionately female. Among the top ten programs, the percentage of females in the audience ranges from a low of 60 percent for "Gospel Singing Jubilee" to
Among those persons fifty and over who watch religious television programs, about two-thirds are female. The variation, program to program, is fairly narrow, but there are some notable exceptions. Jimmy Swaggart, for some reason, attracts as many males fifty and over as he does females. By contrast, both "The PTL Club" and "The 700 Club" attract more than 70 percent females among their over-fifty audience. This, no doubt, is because these programs tend to be aired early and late in the day. Older people are more likely to suffer insomnia and hence be up when the programs appear, and there are more older females than males.
The data, thus, do confirm the stereotype that audiences of the electronic churches are disproportionately older and, among that group, disproportionately female. Extreme caution must be exercised, however, in jumping to another widely held conclusion—namely, that it is necessarily an exploitative relationship that exists between the electronic churches and their elderly audiences. Let's examine what evidence there is that may shed light on this important issue.
First of all, virtually every indicator available points to the conclusion that people become more deeply involved in religion as they grow older. This deeper involvement includes both belief and practice. People over fifty attend church more frequently, and they are more likely to say that religion is important in their lives and that Sunday has a particular religious or spiritual meaning. Moreover, the elderly are more likely to express evangelical, as opposed to liberal or mainline, beliefs and practices. Thus, they are more likely to report that they have had a "born-again" experience, believe the Bible to be the literal word of God, and to have "witnessed" their faith to another.
In light of this evidence, it should not be surprising at all to find the elderly more deeply involved in the electronic church than younger age groups. They are simply more involved in all kinds of religious expression. Moreover, females are more involved than males for the simple reason that as a group they survive males by an average of 7.7 years.
There is another important reason to expect the elderly to be more deeply involved in the electronic church. As people grow older, they are more likely to experience illnesses, accidents, degenerative diseases, and other fates that restrict their mobility. In a society that has become age-segregated, we tend to forget this fact. One of the initial rationales for radio broadcasts of religious services was that they provided a way to reach the sick and elderly.
Whether there is a tendency for elderly people to find the electronic church an "easier" way to worship and have a sense of religious experience is not known for sure. We can speculate that the drift toward the electronic church as the primary or sole source of religious involvement is more likely to occur when elderly people fail to find a meaningful experience in their local congregations. Another factor that affects an elderly person's involvement in his or her local church is the degree to which that congregation makes an effort to care for and involve the elderly.
In July 1980 TV Guide published an article by William Fore entitled "There Is No Such Thing As a TV Pastor." Those who wrote the "Letters Department" disagreed overwhelmingly with this negative assessment of the pastoral possibilities of the electronic churches. Letter after letter extolled the virtues of this or that favorite TV pastor. But quite a few letter writers were also explicit in their disappointment, if not downright anger, with the failure of their local church to meet their needs. One expressed what is no doubt the experience of many of the elderly in the United States: "My own church, which I support as much as I am able financially, has really failed me. Now that I have recovered from an illness due to a successful operation, I want to go to church and mix with fellow Christians. Although I called the church office and explained I had no transportation and also told the pastor, nothing was done. No one ever offered to take me, although I offered to pay for gas. Where else can I turn but the electronic church?" Clearly, there are many churches that would never knowingly permit this kind of neglect of elderly members. But just as certainly, there are others that lack a sense of community and caring for their members, young and old alike.
John Gilman spent twelve years with Pat Robertson and played an important role in building the Christian Broadcasting Network
Whatever else may be said about the electronic churches, it does seem evident that they fill an important need of older people. Our society has too long neglected the elderly, so those who do address their needs are certain to find a following. Although we have no doubt that most members of the electronic churches serve out of sincerity and devotion to their ministerial callings, the relationship between serving and the extraction of tithes from their followers needs to be examined. The electronic churches minister to their elderly followers. In return, the elderly contribute significantly to financing the multimillion-dollar empires of the stars of the cathode church, most of whom, to date, have been extremely reluctant to reveal any financial details. The question of the stewardship of the electronic preachers will be treated in Chapter 6.
The question about the electronic communicants that remains, however, is motivation. What is there in the psychological makeup of the televangelists' audience that draws them to this method of worship—not just draws them, but encourages the bonds they feel, bonds that include substantial donations? Frank and Deirdre Patrick, the couple whose comments open this chapter, are retired and live in a suburb of Boston. He is an
Are the Patricks particularly susceptible? If they are, there are an awful lot of people out there who are potentially just as susceptible. Or are we overlooking the unique "psychological makeup" of television that helps cement the bond between viewer and broadcaster?
"One of the most striking characteristics of the new mass media," wrote Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl in Psychiatry a quarter of a century ago, "is that they give the illusion of face-to-face relationship with the performer." Theater, at its best, draws members of an audience into feeling intimate with what is happening onstage. But the relationship ends when the play ends, and we usually identify with a character or a role, not with an actor. In movies, people identify with individual actors independent of the roles they play. In its early days Hollywood exploited this by creating fan clubs, and actors and actresses tended to get stereotyped in roles that were already proven box office successes.
But modern methods of mass communication, especially television, can create a continuing face-to-face relationship, and over time the performer becomes familiar to the audience. The audience, in turn, feels a certain intimacy with the performer, an intimacy that breeds trust, caring, and dependency. (Remember the reaction when the producers of "M*A*S*H" had McLean Stevenson killed on his way back to Bloomington, Illinois, from the 4077th? Viewers were outraged that their beloved Colonel Blake didn't survive the war.) "In time," wrote Horton and Wohl, "the devotee—the `fan'—comes to believe that he `knows' the persona more intimately and profoundly than others do; that he `understands' his character and appreciates his values and motives . . . . The persona may be considered by his audience as a friend, counselor, comforter, and model."
Horton and Wohl gave the term parasocial interaction to this rather widespread phenomenon in mass culture. Before television, radio developed many illusions with which various age
Television greatly expanded the capacity of performers and their producers to let the audience participate. In drama this is accomplished by creating characters who are real, rather than celebrities who can be viewed only from afar. The phenomenal success of Norman Lear's "All in the Family" and all its spin-offs in the 1970s can substantially be attributed to the creation of characters that were true to life as a significant segment of the viewing audience knew and experienced it.
In nondramatic programming, a variety of techniques or strategies may be used to create and sustain the illusion of intimacy between performer and audience. The first is to make the performance as casual as possible in a setting that appears appropriate for informal face-to-face social intercourse. Second, members of the supporting cast are treated as intimates. Using first names or nicknames as well as sharing off-camera experiences gives credibility to the appearance of intimacy among performers. Another way to sustain the illusion of intimacy between performer and audience is to use live audiences and to blur the distinction between the audience and the stage set. Perhaps no show has ever done this as successfully as the Phil Donahue show, where the audience is the set. Still another way that television has created the illusion of intimacy is through what television pioneer Dave Garroway called the "subjective camera." The camera goes down the ramp from the football stadium and follows the players to the dressing room. The camera, situated backstage, follows the orchestra conductor as he leaves the stage and moves with him to his dressing room. A camera fixed to a roller coaster can do more than create the visual experience of a roller-coaster ride; it can create the physiological sensations for the viewer as well. It's as though the viewer weren't really confined to his or her living-room chair.
The audience, of course, has to be a willing participant in this
The electronic churches have moved beyond parasocial interaction to parapersonal communication. Television is only one component of the religious broadcaster's parapersonal network, however. The producers of religious programming have added the capacity of the computer to produce all those thousands of direct-mail letters that begin by addressing the recipient by name. There are a lot of people who believe that their favorite televangelist really does answer his mail personally. And there are many, many more who may know better but choose to incorporate the illusion of personally answered mail into their generalized identification with and belief in the stars of the electronic churches. Still others are conscious of the fact that the TV preachers cannot personally respond, but they view their helpers as extensions of a family of persons who love and care.
The members of the audience are thus transformed into communicants—loyal members of the television ministry's family. Alone in the privacy of their living rooms, the electronic communicants are able to transcend their sense of loneliness and little worth. As financial partners and emotional participants in the television ministries, they become part of God's plan to fulfill the great commission.
| Chapter 3 The Electronic Communicants Prime Time Preachers: The Rising Power of Televangelism | |