University of Virginia Library

Chapter 5
The Sermon from the Satellite

The messages of the religious broadcasters are examined and analyzed from the perspective of the logic of television.

Ben Armstrong, The Electric Church

The electronic church has created a new counterculture in the United States, one that is grimly determined to halt the spread of liberal, laissez-faire attitudes and policies in society, culture, and government. Whereas the counterculture movements of the 1960s pushed America toward the left, the counter-counterculture of the electronic church is pushing equally hard—in its own way—to the right.

Its goals are restorative: To restore morality to America. To restore dignity to the family. To restore fear of God and Jesus' Second Coming to all sinners. As such it is an aggressive morality that dictates monitoring the sins of others as closely as one's own. You can't be saved unless you know you're a sinner. The prime-time preachers feel a responsibility (and a genuine one) for the salvation of individual souls.

This salvation will come only when America is rid of its many ills, ills that the prime-time preachers are fond of classifying as secular humanism. Tim LaHaye, a Californian who serves on the governing board of Moral Majority, is credited with identifying secular humanism as the archenemy of the New Christian Right. Shunning broader historical meanings of humanism, LaHaye conceived of secular humanism as "man's attempts to solve his problems independently of God." He and other fundamentalists

place responsibility for the rising crime rate, rebellious youth, identity crises, high divorce rates, coddled criminals, drug addiction, situational ethics, a deteriorating educational system, and a whole host of other social blights squarely on the shoulders of the humanists. In an interview with the Wittenberg Door LaHaye said: "We have been led to Sodom and Gomorrah by a hard-core group of committed humanists who set out over a hundred years ago to control the masses. They have us in a stranglehold. There are only 275,000 of them, but they control everything—the mass media, government, and even the Supreme Court. " The politically active LaHaye also stated in the introduction to his book, The Battle for the Mind, "We must remove all humanists from public office and replace them with pro-moral political leaders."

LaHaye's thesis is that secular humanists control state and national governments, news networks, the radio and TV industries, newspapers, magazines, public education, colleges and universities, textbooks, and such organizations as the ACLU, NOW, and the Ford Foundation. Secular humanism is thus a rather broad category that would appear to include just about everything religious conservatives don't like.

In 1979 many fundamentalists had not even heard of secular humanism. It was not mentioned in sermons and writings. But by the end of 1980 nearly all had adopted it as their enemy. All social movements need enemies, and the fighting fundamentalists recognize this. Jerry Falwell said in a speech at the National Affairs Briefing, "A man from whom I took great inspiration used to say, ‘Fellows, if you're going to be successful, keep a fight going all the time. You do pretty well at that.’ " The New Christian Right found a good enemy when it latched onto secular humanism.

Edward John Carnell, past president of Fuller Theological Seminary, an evangelical school of some repute (named for Charles E. Fuller, the evangelical radio broadcaster), has said, in effect, that fundamentalism's distinctiveness is found in its attempt to maintain its own house by the negation of others. When fundamentalism started dwelling on the negative, according to Carnell, it changed from a religious movement to a religious mentality. It never developed an affirmative world view

and made no effort to connect its convictions to the wider problems of society. Said Carnell: "Fundamentalism is a lonely position. It has cut itself off from the general stream of culture, philosophy, and ecclesiastical tradition. This accounts, in part, for its robust pride. Since it is no longer in union with the wisdom of the ages, it has no standard by which to judge its own religious pretense. It dismisses non-fundamentalist efforts as empty, futile, or apostate. Its tests for Christian fellowship become so severe that divisions in the Church are considered a sign of virtue. And when there are no modernists from which to withdraw, fundamentalists compensate by withdrawing from one another."

When fundamentalism changed from religious movement to religious mentality, it did so at the expense of its vitality. Mentalities do not affect the world the way movements do. Access to television has given fundamentalism a power it never had before. It has once again become a social movement, and its vitality is now being restored.

Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other leaders of the Protestant Reformation established firmly in Protestantism the doctrine of sola scriptura—the Bible, not the church, was the sole guide to authentic religion. The Bible had been inspired verbally by the Holy Spirit, almost by dictation, and therefore was without error. Furthermore, anybody who could read could understand it, because it could be interpreted by a literal reading of its words. Nobody in either the Catholic or the Protestant church questioned the literal truth of anything in the Bible. Indeed, to do so could get one burned at the stake by either side.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, rationalism questioned such absolutism. Rationalists considered human intelligence to be as God-given as the Bible and sought to reconcile religious belief and reason. The process led to the allegorizing, if not to the rejection, of certain. scriptural passages. With time, subjective religious experience was joined to reason as another way of validating or establishing scriptural meanings.

Most of the rationalists and the experientialists were in universities, however, not churches, and they had little effect on religion in the pews. But in the nineteenth century came the discovery of very old biblical manuscripts that differed from

modern versions. Bible scholars began to face the fact that if the original Scriptures had been dictated by God, they had not been copied all that faithfully. The sciences of biblical "lower" and "higher" criticism emerged. Lower criticism, in a process still going on today, seeks to penetrate history to find the oldest and presumably most reliable manuscripts and the best translation of them. Higher criticism studies those manuscripts in the light of history to try to determine the meaning biblical writers originally intended in their own times.

In the mid-nineteenth century there were few religious people on earth who questioned a literal reading of the Bible. The questions of rationalism, experientialism, and biblical criticism were known only to scholars. Darwin's theory of evolution had not been popularized, astronomy was little more than a fuzzy hobby, and geology was largely interpreted in the light of Noah and the Flood. But the gradual intrusion of these matters into the consciousness of Christendom in the late nineteenth century began to threaten—at least in some minds—the popular religious understanding based on an inerrant Bible. To accept what science was saying would have been to doubt the Bible and shatter a world view that had been shaped by it.

The term fundamentalist entered the American lexicon shortly after World War I. It was drawn from the name of a series of volumes called The Fundamentals. Lyman and Milton Steward, wealthy Los Angeles businessmen, financed the printing and free distribution of more than 3 million copies of these books, beginning in 1910. Each volume set out certain tenets of the orthodox Christian faith with the objective of defending them against any erosion from religious modernism. Fundamentalism was a reaction against what the fundamentalists perceived as assaults on the true, revealed Christian religion of biblical purity. By the advent of radio, the issue facing the theological conservatives, the fundamentalists, had become clear: Is the Bible to be believed? For most TV preachers decades later, that issue has remained central.

It would be impossible to describe a complete set of specific beliefs that characterize the electronic church today. Some of its practitioners were educated in mainline theological seminaries.

Others were self-taught and self-ordained. A few are blatantly political, although most are not. Some are charismatics who speak in tongues and hold healing services, whereas some others would be very uncomfortable in the presence of such activities. But it is fair to say that most are fundamentalist in theology and thus rely on the Bible for both general guidance and answers to specific issues.

The fundamentalists' attitude toward evolution is a prime example of their unswerving commitment to what they consider the plain meaning of a book that is utterly sacred to them. Most fundamentalists would subscribe readily to this statement of the International Council of Biblical Inerrancy: "Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God's act in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God's saving grace in individual lives."

Fundamentalists today still fight the teaching of evolution in the public schools, and everywhere else. In 1978 the Smithsonian Institution assembled an exhibit on the evolutionary "Emergence of Man" in its Museum of Natural History. Two groups, the National Foundation for Fairness in Education and National Bible Knowledge, Inc., brought suit in federal court, claiming that the Smithsonian, as a government institution, had violated the First Amendment guarantee of the separation of church and state. The groups sought an order requiring the Smithsonian to allocate equal sums to explaining Creation in terms of the biblical account. The suit was unsuccessful.

The Bible also instructs fundamentalists that a rationale for life apart from God cannot exist. Nothing in life is an accident; rather, all is a part of God's plan. Bad things happen as God's chastisement of us or as God's way of closing doors on mere human plans. Good things are the blessings of God. God is always good, but His goodness is sometimes rather terrible.

The terrible goodness of God as experienced by some fundamentalists was described by reporter Joel Saiatin in a 1980 Associated Press story: "God didn't like it when they broke their promises, Carroll Baggett and his wife, Edna, feel. As children, each made commitments to the Lord and didn't keep them.

Cumulatively, they went through two divorces, two children who died in a car wreck, a son born deaf and retarded, a nervous breakdown, the loss of three fingers, and paralysis. But now they're honoring those promises.... They say God took them through death, disease, divorce and distress before they surrendered." The surrender the Baggetts made was to give up performing country music to start singing gospel.

Fundamentalists cannot think or speak of their history, their present, or their future apart from God as deus ex machina who makes all things happen. God thus is credited, without anger, for accident, human waywardness, and natural disaster. On balance, however, God is to be thanked for all happy occurrences, the results of industriousness, good fortune, and the as yet unknowable benefits that will come out of what only appears to be misfortune.

Fundamentalists, who see God as relating one on one with all human beings, cannot find an explanation for catastrophes that overtake whole regions, races, and tribes. Indeed, they rarely think about the cause of large-scale disasters or misfortunes except, perhaps, as signs and wonders signaling the approaching end of the world. Fundamentalists thus feel little or no responsibility for those not of their own tribe because whatever has happened is God's doing.

To evangelicals, one of the most important messages in the Bible is in Mark 16:15: "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel." The word evangelical itself is from the Greek verb euangelizo, meaning "to announce the good news" and generally translated in English Bibles as "to preach the gospel." Evangelicals take this biblical message seriously and feel a distinct obligation to evangelize. Matthew's Gospel too refers to this "great commission": "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Matthew 28:19,20). These verses, together with other, similar instructions from the four Gospels and the Pauline letters, form the keystone of more than 1,900 years of Christian missionary and evangelistic activity. The missionary impulse to make converts is the raison d'être of all Christian religious

broadcasting, and most especially of evangelical broadcasting.

Evangelism is understood to mean proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ and thereby evoking decisions or commitments to him. To "be saved" is to accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, the Son of God. One's sins are canceled through this act of faith; Jesus comes into one's heart, and a new life begins. This is called being "born again." The phrase is found only in the Gospel according to John: "Jesus answered, and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God " (John 3:3). Being born again means to have the life-changing experience of turning one's life over to Jesus.

The term born again began to be popularized during the first presidential campaign of Jimmy Carter. In the past five years it has moved from being an evangelical phrase describing spiritual regeneration to a secular term used to describe all kinds of evangelical activities and involvements—as in born-again politics. Billy Graham used the phrase throughout his preaching career, but in late 1980 he announced that it had been so much abused that he was dropping it. Henceforth he would speak of "being born from above."

This conversion, or second-birth experience, is essential to salvation. Through it, one is saved from everlasting punishment in hell, which is the fate of unrepentant sinners. But one is saved also from personal futility and meaninglessness. Here are the words of a "700 Club" volunteer worker who had the experience: "My life had come to a place that I couldn't handle it anymore. Being a military wife, I had turned to alcohol and Valium, so I came to the place within my own mind, within my own will, that I said, ‘Lord, I can't handle my life anymore. And I take hands off my life and I let you take control of it.’ And in my den, in Virginia Beach, we sat—and the Lord moved in and baptized me in His Holy Spirit. The whole den lit up, with a Shekinah glory, and I had a tremendous release of happiness and joy and laughing and crying that day. I even know what day—in the morning, you know—that it happened!"

Shekinah is a Hebrew word meaning "the glory, radiance, or presence of God." It is the Old Testament equivalent of being "filled with the Spirit." The phrase means to have an ecstatic experience of the nearness of God and sometimes is used to refer

to a special quality of life that follows the born-again experience.

Persons who are filled with the Holy Spirit often are heard to say things they would not normally say, or to "prophesy." Jim Bakker, in a fund-raising letter, described the experience of his daughter: "Under the power of the Holy Spirit, Tammy Sue began to speak: ‘Jesus is coming very soon . . . . We will all be in heaven with Jesus soon . . . . He is coming . . . . He is coming . . . . ’ Can you imagine the joy in my heart, and Tammy's [Bakker's wife, Tammy Fay], as we listened to these prophetic words pour out of the lips of our ten-year-old? And as we listened, she began to say things far beyond her knowledge and years. "

As ideally characterized on the TV programs, the evangelical religious experience is warmly emotional and joyous, and it confers a sense of spiritual and social community or belonging. Much of the conversation on the programs proceeds in a kind of evangelical code, with liberal sprinklings of words and phrases in praise of God.

Being "baptized by the Holy Spirit" is a euphemism for the charismatic religious experience of "speaking in tongues." "Unknown tongues" or ecstatic utterances (glossolalia is the correct term) are foreign and frightening to all but a handful of charismatic evangelicals. Several televangelists practice glossolalia in private, but only occasionally does it burst forth on the air. Generally, even conversation about it is downplayed, and one cannot detect references to it unless one is familiar with the code words.

The same is true of "divine healing." Many of the televangelists believe in supernatural healing, and a few engage in the "laying on of hands" as a part of the healing ritual. They talk about healing a good bit on their broadcasts, but only a few engage in the act on television. Ernest Angley is the only figure with any following who makes healing a significant feature of his program.

Oral Roberts began his television career with healing services filmed in the "world's largest gospel tent." When he adopted a new television entertainment format (plus the credentials of the Methodist Church), he dropped healing from his act—at least on the air. He still practices it in crusade meetings around the

country. The July 1980 issue of Oral's magazine, Abundant Life (formerly Healing Waters), featured nine pages, filled with color photographs, of an Oral Roberts healing service in Norfolk, Virginia. According to the magazine, the lame were made to walk, the deaf to hear, the blind to see, and cancer was cured.

Oral has always made much of the healing power of God flowing through his right hand as a "point of contact." "My hand tingled all over with a hot feeling from my wrist through my fingers when the presence of God would move through it," Oral said. As a fund-raising ploy, he has even sent to contributors the imprint of his hand on a piece of cloth. In the Norfolk service, however, he discovered a new device that was less limiting than having to touch everybody with his right-hand "point of contact." Now he simply speaks "the word of power" over the whole audience. He reported in Abundant Life that "it was wonderful not to be confined so much by His presence in my right hand." Another issue of Abundant Life reported recently that Oral's son, Richard, also now has the gift of healing.

Ernest Angley is the most flamboyant of the healers. His television program features "healings" videotaped during "Ernest Angley Miracle and Salvation" crusade meetings. Atlanta Constitution reporter Jim Auchmutey described one such meeting: "For the next three hours, Ernest Angley ‘healed,’ squealed and ranted in the name of God. A line of the afflicted formed at one side of the stage, and the faith healer attended to them, usually one at a time, laying hands upon their foreheads, casting out ‘foul demons’ and ‘loosing’ them from Satan. Many were so overcome by Angley's cathartic commands that they collapsed to the floor, ‘slain in the spirit,’ and rose stunned, sometimes murmuring gibberish— ‘speaking in tongues.’ The multitude applauded frequently, urged on by Angley: ‘Give God a big hand, everybody! ’ " Auchmutey also reported that a North Carolina woman died of a heart attack moments after receiving Angley's healing touch for her weak heart.

Evangelist Kenneth Copeland takes the power of healing through the laying on of hands very seriously. He told, in one of his sermons, of deciding to buy a used airplane: "I walked all the way around it, putting my hands on it. I'm talking to this airplane, and I said, ‘I'm speaking to you in the name of Jesus.

And I demand any kind of corrosion or malfunction to get out of you right now—in the name of Jesus—you're not going to have that!’ "

Among faith-healing fundamentalists, much of life's misfortune, tragedy, and even illness is caused by Satan and his minions. Satan is seen as a personal enemy of the Lord and thus of the Lord's people on earth. Copeland also described on one of his television programs how he had marched around his home ordering Satan to leave the premises and to "keep off!" Since that time, said Copeland, "our doctor bills have been zero."

A belief in the Devil and in the demons and evil spirits who serve him is widespread among evangelicals and nearly universal among fundamentalists. The Devil is Lucifer, the fallen angel, the personal, active enemy of those who would find and serve God.

Oral Roberts regularly blames his financial problems on the Devil. His fund-raising letters include such statements as: "The Devil has launched an all-out attack to stop this ministry." "The Devil has tried everything to stop us. Now he is trying to stop us financially." "The Devil is pushing harder and harder to keep us from obeying God." "We can't let the Devil win in this emergency." Roberts also is careful to explain on his programs and in his letters that Satan is working in his viewers' lives as well. But Oral promises to help: "I will command the Devil, in the Name of Jesus and in the authority of His name, to stop stealing your HEALTH from you, . . . your FINANCES and WORK . . . your PEACE OF MIND . . . the WELL-BEING of your loved ones. Then when I feel peace about it, I will KNOW the Devil will be STOPPED in your behalf.

To fundamentalists, the world is one giant battleground for the struggle between good and evil, which rages in all realms: moral, religious, social, spiritual, and political. There is no room in fundamentalism for differing social perspectives or political systems. Compromise is sin. This outlook informs their view of U.S. national defense and foreign policy. Many of them fully expect a final apocalyptic war between the United States and the Soviet Union—and they support this expectation with what they regard as specific prophecies in the Bible.

Not all the TV preachers believe and say the same things about

the coming "end time." Some (notably Robert Schuller, who is not a fundamentalist) would disassociate themselves completely from any such speculation. Many of the major TV preachers, however—Falwell, Robertson, Robison, Bakker, Swag art, and most of the lesser lights of gospel broadcasting—do believe in some form of millennialism.

The "millennium" is a prophesied thousand-year period of events on the earth surrounding the Second Coming of Jesus. Premillennialists believe Jesus will come before the millennium, to reign for a thousand years, finally defeat all the forces of evil, and claim the world for God. Postmillennialists believe that Jesus will come to reign after the thousand-year period of seeing the gospel finally conquer the world. Most TV preachers are premillennialists.

But before the millennium begins (some say seven years before), the last trumpet will sound and all the saved will be caught up instantly into heaven. This event is called the rapture, a belief that has given rise to bumper stickers that say, "Warning! In case of the rapture, driver will disappear. " Charles R. Taylor, speaker of "Today in Bible Prophecy, " has written in World War III and the Destiny of America: "Millions of people will suddenly disappear from the face of the earth, including infant children. From all walks of life there will be people missing. The freeways, subways, airports and streets will be a shambles as many engineers, pilots, bus drivers, and a multitude of private car owners shall suddenly be caught up out of this world."

In the classic view of these events (which has many modern permutations), the seven-year tribulation after the sudden rapture of the saints will be filled with two major happenings. The gospel of the kingdom will be preached (by believing Jews, it seems, since all Christians have departed), and Israel will be converted. The second major event is the rise of the Anti-Christ, who will attack Israel. After the defeat of the Anti-Christ, Jesus will come down to establish his earthly throne at Jerusalem.

It is a complicated doctrine, and many of the TV preachers have their own variations on it. What makes these millennialist beliefs important to analysts is their connection to the U.S.S.R. and Israel in the modern world. Evangelical political support for Israel has been noted widely. Support of Israel, to the fundamentalist

preachers, simply is cooperation with God in the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. A Christian America cannot do otherwise.

Many of the seekers after prophecy identify the Soviet Union with the hordes that will come "out of the uttermost parts of the north" (Ezekiel 39) to fight against Israel. The fundamentalists have noted that the Soviets side with the Arabs against Israel and refuse to let Jews emigrate to Israel. The conviction among many, if not most, TV evangelicals is that the U.S.S.R. is an implacable enemy of God, of the United States, and of Israel. If war is not inevitable, a lack of defense preparedness certainly invites it. Most of the fundamentalists therefore urge, on biblical grounds, a tough military line against all Communist countries—especially the Soviet Union, since it is Israel's enemy.

Pat Robertson of CBN has identified the European Common Market countries with the ten-nation confederacy mentioned in the prophetic vision of Daniel in the Old Testament (Daniel 7:24). According to Robertson, the entry of Greece into the European Common Market brings its membership up to ten countries and sets the stage for the rise of the Anti-Christ, a charismatic and winning person who is simply Satan in disguise, it appears. This person, Robertson says, will promise to lead the world out of the economic and social collapse toward which it is headed: "Undoubtedly, God's purpose is a world harvest. Nevertheless, He has set other forces in motion. Within five years there will undoubtedly be a currency collapse and world depression of alarming proportions. During the same period, Russia will probably invade the Middle East and strike at Israel, causing a major war. On top of that, some astronomers forecast unusual gravitational pull on our planet when all the planets line up in 1981—the so-called Jupiter effect. This planetary activity could trigger earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanic eruptions, and other widespread natural disasters. In short, we will soon be entering turbulent days and what is done in Jesus' name must be done quickly. "

Not all fundamentalists analyze the fulfillment of prophecy as being so imminent, but the consensus is that the importance of the United States has never been greater. TV preachers believe without question that God caused the founding of America in order that this country might carry out His purposes in the world.

Their patriotism is unabashed in its expression and white-hot in its fervor. The United States was created by God to fight the Anti-Christ.

The fundamentalists often identify the Anti-Christ with communism. How communism will give birth to the person or spirit of the Anti-Christ is not clear to them just yet, but the preachers can hardly think of one without the other. They would have all Americans understand that communism is inextricably linked with atheism and thus is the enemy, not only of America, but of God. Jack Van Impe, for example, explains regularly why a person cannot be a Christian and a Communist at the same time. An America cleansed of all Communist influence and standing in opposition to such godlessness is, they are convinced, what God Himself desires.

The America the preachers have in mind, however, is idealized somewhere in the nation's past, the strength and glory of which must be resurrected. They do not see this country moving forward to greatness; rather, they see it falling from it. The decline has been caused by immorality of all kinds, socialism, communism, the welfare state, and a weak national defense system. The idealization of the American past is revealed in the evangelicals' insistence that this nation was founded with God in mind and in words which they use constantly as they speak of returning, rebuilding, restoring, and saving America. James Robison's words from Save America are typical: "America's star is sinking fast. If Christians don't begin immediately to assert their influence, it may be too late to save America from the destruction toward which it is plunging. And, since America now stands as the key base camp for missions around the globe, to fail to save America now would almost certainly be to miss its last opportunity to save the world."

TV religion, accordingly, has developed and refined a set of battle cries, an agenda for the 1980s to conquer the sins of society and restore to America the strength it needs to fight the Anti-Christ. If the millennium is approaching, the need to save as many souls as possible beforehand is crucial. And the urgency the prime-time preachers feel is genuine.

The first of these battle cries is against the threatened destruction of the family by the forces of ungodliness. TV preachers

seem to have a heightened sense of the utility of "glad words" and "bad words. " Family is a glad word, and to be pro-family is to be in favor of everything that is good and decent and commendable. According to the more political stream of TV religion, the family is under attack by the forces of secular humanism, ungodliness, homosexuality, and the Equal Rights Amendment.

To most fundamentalists, the traditional concept of the maledominated nuclear family is sacrosanct. The family is, of course, the basic unit of society. That there could be any change in the traditional Western view of the family as a social unit in which women are subservient to men is simply unacceptable to the fundamentalist mind. This view is based on certain New Testament passages as well as on cultural conditioning. The notion that male supremacy accords to women an inferior status is incomprehensible to fundamentalists. They maintain fervently that they accord women superior status. Said Jerry Falwell: "I'm a Christian and all Christians believe that women are special and that God made men to take care of women, to protect them, to help them with their jackets and to make sure nobody else messes with them."

An equal rights amendment for women is anathema to the fundamentalists. The locus of their objections is that women might lose what the fundamentalists perceive as their preferred, protected status in society. They simply cannot see anything that women would gain from such an amendment, but much that women might lose. In a Moral Majority fund-raising letter, Jerry Falwell said, "Our women have a constitutional right to be treated like ladies, mothers, and wives under our family laws." That women might want to be anything else does not seem to be a topic of discussion among fundamentalists. Nor has any question arisen about the rightness of male dominance.

Fundamentalist fervor about certain issues is illustrated in the abortion question. The fundamentalists of television believe devoutly that abortion is murder. To them, the abortion of a fetus (except for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest) is simply and surely the killing of an unborn human. They hold this belief in common with nearly all Roman Catholics and millions of other nonfundamentalist Protestants, and they are quite willing to join

with them in the struggle for laws that would outlaw abortion. They cannot by any means be said to like Catholics or liberal Protestants, but on a single issue they are able to put aside all other differences and work diligently with them to achieve a common goal. Jerry Falwell often has chided his audiences, saying, "For far too long we left the Roman Catholics to fight the abortion battle alone. Now we've got to join with them in this fight. "

The issue that most quickly enrages fundamentalists is homosexual rights. They consider that homosexuals have no right to practice a deviant life-style. The issue is clear to the preachers: homosexuality is an ungodly perversion that is specifically condemned by the Bible. In a Moral Majority fund-raising letter, Jerry Falwell decried the laying of a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by homosexuals as turning that shrine into the "Tomb of the Unknown Sodomite." When Anita Bryant fought homosexual rights legislation in Florida, she received massive support from the TV preachers, who believed she was upholding the God-given order of heterosexuality. Praise from the pro-family partisans was universal.

Evangelist James Robison's attack on homosexuality as "despicable" and "perversion of the highest order" led to a challenge under the FCC's Fairness Doctrine. Dallas television station WFAA granted a gay group equal time—and canceled Robison's program, reinstating it only when he agreed to abide by the Fairness Doctrine. Throughout the episode, however, Robison expressed difficulty understanding why he should be penalized for preaching what he called the plain message of the Bible: "I did not attack an individual or any group, but rather a life-style condemned by the Bible." He believed his freedom of speech had been violated.

Pornography is another of TV religion's battle cries. The fundamentalist definition of smut is broad enough to include sex education in public schools as well as many popular TV programs. Jerry Falwell enclosed in a Moral Majority fund-raising letter a sealed envelope marked with the warning that it contained sexually explicit material. The contents of the envelope proved to be paragraphs from a sex-education curriculum. Although some of the ideas in a given sex-education course might be disturbing

to some parents, the preachers of TV tend to view all sex education as an attempt by anti-family forces to corrupt youth and destroy American ideals of the family.

When civil liberties groups began to challenge the appropriateness of prayers in public schools, they found support for their position among some liberal Protestants who reasoned that in a pluralistic society religious instruction belongs in the home and the churches. Not so the fundamentalists. They believe this nation has a special relationship to God and that it was the intent of the founding fathers that we acknowledge His sovereignty over our affairs. Pushing prayer out of the schools is just one more case in which the secular humanists have gained an upper hand in American culture. God is displeased with this development, and it is the responsibility of Christians to fight to return prayer to the classroom.

Fundamentalist social and political views are products of fundamentalist theology. Fundamentalists are passionate about social and political matters precisely because they are passionate about theology. And they believe earnestly that their positions are totally biblical. They can quote biblical texts to prove every point. The notion that they could be reading meaning into those texts is incomprehensible to them.

The fundamentalist mind cannot accept the notion that a true "Bible believer" could interpret Scripture from the perspective of a social or political tradition. Fundamentalists believe that only liberals read the Bible that way. And if there is any conflict between their reading of the Bible and the rest of the world's, it is the rest of the world that is wrong.

The manner in which the televangelists sell their message must conform to the logic of television, whose stock-in-trade is an endless stream of easy answers to difficult questions. The most difficult human problems are brought to satisfactory resolution in one hour. Many require only a half hour. Many more are handled in just thirty seconds, the length of most television commercials. Christian broadcasters understand this lesson of the thirty-second solution. One commercial on the Christian Broadcasting Network shows a handsome young man in a red roadster winding confidently down a mountain road. As he floors the gas pedal and

passes other cars, a voice-over begins addressing the man and his accomplishments. "You're smart, you're confident, you're on top of the world," the deep bass says. The scene shifts occasionally and we see the same young man dancing with an equally lovely young woman, lunching with the boss, playing tennis. "You're attractive, you're the boss's favorite, you've got the best backhand in the club." Suddenly the scene shifts back to the roadster, and we see the car take a tailspin onto a beach. When the car comes to rest, the young man has his head in his hands and the voice says, "But you're not happy." Fade to clouds and sky, out of which emerges a Bible. "Read the Bible," the voice admonishes, "and you will be."

TV preachers must say what they have to say quickly and simply, and it must be entertaining and supportive of viewers' values and sense of self-worth. These requirements result in three basic themes that run through their messages.

The first is that the world and the self are to be understood in unambiguous terms. God has a message and a plan. Believe in Him. Trust in Him. A successful TV preacher must relieve viewers of ambiguity in spiritual, ethical, and moral matters. He must communicate the impression of absolute certainty.

Most mass communications research has shown that television is inefficient as a way of changing people's minds. What it does best is reinforce the opinions and beliefs that viewers already hold, and thus the TV preachers who do not challenge viewers' beliefs are the most successful. They accomplish this, in part, by offering only the bare rudiments of faith, leaving aside complex theological issues about which people might disagree. In addition, they emphasize an active sense of the demonic to relieve guilt; Jesus washes away all sins and the Devil is responsible for all backsliding.

A second theme in the messages of the electronic preachers is the enormous benefit to be derived from taking a positive approach to life. In one sense this appears to be little more than a warmed-over rendition of Norman Vincent Peale's "power of positive thinking." Robert Schuller clearly conveys this message in its most pristine form. Acknowledging his indebtedness to Peale, he calls his brand possibility thinking: "Every person is either a possibility thinker or an impossibility thinker." Schuller

takes serious exception to the criticism that he preaches "mere" psychology. It is the principles of psychology, rather, that are grounded in firm theology. There is nothing wrong with self-confidence, Schuller believes, and "finding and following God's plan for your life is the soundest, surest way to self-confidence. "

If Schuller's version of positive thinking is the most easily discernible, the same message is pretty pervasive in the sermons, songs, and testimonies of almost all electronic church programming. If you would just let God be in command of your life, everything would be super A-OK. Only the Devil can mess up God's glorious plan for your life. But the Devil cannot win, and his daily encroachment on Christians' lives can be checked if they would just stick together.

The third message of the electronic preachers is that it's all right to look out for yourself; human selfishness, properly viewed, is not a sin. Few have ever flaunted this theme quite as blatantly as Reverend Ike. "You can't lose with the stuff I use," he tells his audiences. You can have money, health, happiness, love, and just about anything else your heart desires if you join his "God's Success and Prosperity Club." This takes a little long green, but the benefits are yours "as fast as you want God to start blessing you"—that is, as soon as Reverend Ike has your money.

Among the major preachers on television, Oral Roberts comes closest to equating personal desires with God's will and the success of his ministry. "God wants to bless you with blessings—good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over! " reads the banner headline on the cover of a recent issue of Roberts's Abundant Life magazine. Rex Humbard offers a book to his viewers, Your Key to God's Bank, whose subtitle is How to Cash Your Check for Spiritual Power, Physical Healing, Financial Success.

As a medium that fuses message with method, television is the perfect forum for the fundamentalists, for theirs is a simple message—the old, old story, passed through the ages in unchanging form. That access to the airwaves is largely controlled by a free-enterprise market system is no real problem to them, for this economic philosophy is compatible with their world view. They believe in free enterprise, and they have something to sell—the Good News of Christ's atonement for the sins of mankind.