University of Virginia Library

Chapter 10
Digging in for the Struggle

The goals of the televangelists at the beginning of the 1980s were ambitious; nothing less than transforming America—religiously, socially, and politically. Their resources to do so, and the liabilities revealed by the history of religious broadcasting, are examined.

Martin Marty

The evangelical social movement illumined by the flickering light of TV screens is now seeking to grab with gusto the power it has so long been denied. The televangelists have tasted success—and they like it. They want more and are determined to have it. The power to change America—religiously, socially, and politically—is their ambition.

But power is never given; it is always taken. Power must be taken from somebody who surely does not want to give it up. It seems clear that the practitioners of the electronic church threaten government power over the media and moderate evangelical and mainline religious power in the media. Also at issue is government power to regulate the social order and the power of moderate evangelicals and mainliners to preside over the national religious ethos.

Unless the technology that brings in the big dollars fails the televangelists, their pursuit of power will not slacken. But for every mobilization there is a counter-mobilization on. The responses to the electronic church—from government, moderate evangelicals, mainline Protestants, Catholics, and secular groups—will do much to shape the future.

It is yet too early to gauge the muscle that will be wielded by

secular groups—old established groups like the ACLU and new groups created to combat the influence of the televangelists, like People for the American Way. There are two sectors of society, however, that can certainly be counted on to wage serious struggles against the rising power of the televangelists—the established churches and various government agencies.

In the past there has never been much enthusiasm among regulators for tackling the thorny problems sometimes presented by religious broadcasters. This reluctance is likely to change, however, both because the independent sector will pressure the government to regulate and also because some of the changes the electronic church leaders would make in government, if they had the power, constitute a real threat to entrenched government bureaucracies. Mainline church leaders, on the other hand, will not hesitate to take on the televangelists, and it is very likely that established conservative churches, like the Southern Baptists, will side with them to check the power of the TV preachers.

Mainline Protestantism never used to be very concerned about the Night Riders of the high-voltage radio stations because they perceived that those preachers appealed to a different clientele. Many a liberal Protestant, in fact, had a good laugh listening to the fiery soul savers blaring forth their messages into the night from 250,000-watt station XERF across the border from Del Rio, Texas. Comedian Andy Griffith broke into show business back in the late 1940s with a hilarious caricature of a fundamentalist preacher. His routine probably wouldn't have been very funny were it not for the fact that we had heard his likeness before on the radio.

As we have seen, mainline religious groups initially were the recipients of most free time allocated by networks and local stations for public service. Not until the early 1970s, when evangelicals began buying up big hunks of the Sunday morning "religious ghetto" time, did mainline Protestants take up arms. In all arenas of social interaction, concern for one's adversaries or competitors is directly proportional to their perceived threat. By the mid-1970s it was obvious to those in Protestant communications that the evangelicals' brand of commercial religion was having devastating effects on their religious broadcasting time. Although some stations still refuse to sell time for religious

programs, more and more have discovered that Sunday morning can be very profitable. Why should they give away this valuable time? They can find other slots in their broadcast schedule to fulfill their public service obligations. As the free time disappeared, so also did the programming produced by various sectors of the mainline Protestant and Catholic faiths.

By the end of the decade there was deep and growing concern that the highly successful nationwide television programs were also having adverse effects on local congregations of mainline churches. Concern was aroused, in part, because the growing success of the entrepreneurial religious broadcasters coincided with an incipient decline in mainline Protestant membership and attendance. It seemed a reasonable assumption that at least part of the difficulties they were experiencing could be attributed to the fact that some of their congregation were now getting their religion in the comfort of their homes. And to that assumption could be added another—the financial contributions of those stay-at-home Christians were being rechanneled to the cathode church.

Add to this the fact that mainliners and many evangelicals consider the theological messages of the electronic churches to be shallow and simplistic, and you have all the ingredients of a pretty good conflict. The tremors of an impending eruption were already being felt before some of the TV preachers made their entree into politics. Some of the critiques that appeared in religious periodicals and conferences were pretty spicy. Robert Cleath, for example, wrote in Eternity that "most religious TV programs have become dispensers of religious junk food as marketable as the Super Whopper . . . ." Martin E. Marty, usually a calm voice, who for years has been a bridge between the conservative and liberal religious communities, decried the "completely private ‘invisible religion’ " being fostered by the electronic church. Few persons who attended the Consultation on the Electronic Church sponsored by the National Council of Churches in February 1980 disagreed with psychologist Robert Liebert's view that the conflict over the electronic churches "has every hallmark of an intensifying war of survival among battling Christian groups."

The TV preachers realize that the most dangerous charge that

can be made against them is that they are competing with the organized churches. A little public criticism might actually be good for the electronic churches. It calls attention to them, and that may cause the curious to check them out. But those who labor in the electronic vineyard can't afford to get stuck with the criticism that they are taking people out of the pews and dollars out of the collection plates. So they can be expected to fight these charges. Their argument, of course, is that their broadcasting is meant to complement and augment the activities of the local congregations. And almost all of them can point to the fact that they make repeated appeals to their audiences to get involved in local churches.

Speaking at the 1980 convention of the National Religious Broadcasters, Jerry Falwell told his fellow broadcasters: "We must convince the pastors and laity in the churches that television is an arm of the church and not a church unto itself; that we are here to help get the unsaved into the church and work in unity one with another. We have got to get over the fear that television is an alternative to the church. It is not. It is a part of the church."

We have encountered no one who actually thinks of the electronic church as a church per se, but mainliners have worried that this movement might offer some kind of substitute for participation in local organized churches. The joining together of individuals in congregational worship and work is central to Protestant and Catholic doctrines of the "visible" church. Any movement that tends to pull people away from or weaken allegiance to a local church is inimical to mainline ecclesiastical doctrine. And there is a certain aspect of belonging readily detectable among many of the viewers of and contributors to the electronic church. The contributors have invested something of themselves in something larger than themselves; their giving seems to reflect a need for community, a literal "joining of the club." Questions are raised by the notions and phrases that run through the movement: "club members," "partners," "Prayer Key Family members," and other comparable terms.

Ben Armstrong certainly did not intend to touch off a storm when he coined the concept of the electric church, but that is what he did. Plainly, he considered the religious broadcasting explosion of the 1 970s to be completely praiseworthy. Said

Armstrong, "In this vision, I saw the electric church as a revolutionary form of the worshipping, witnessing church that existed twenty centuries ago . . . . In the electric church, as in New Testament times, worship once against takes place in the home. "

Examples of electronic congregations abound. Rex Humbard, who has often referred to himself as "your TV pastor," presents an annual communion service on television. He invites viewers to participate with their own loaves and cups in front of their TV sets. Lester Sumrall, head of the LeSea Broadcasting Network, has conducted a communion service on his television program and invited his viewers to run to the refrigerator for the necessary supplies so that they can follow along. One mainline minister reported the request of a family for a telephone hookup to a funeral parlor so that a deceased family member's favorite TV preacher could deliver a eulogy by long distance.

Mainline fears about this kind of thing are only exacerbated by Ben Armstrong's assessment in Christian Century of electronic church viewer—supporters: "They are really joining the electronic church. It's like joining the local church. They are loyal to it and support it with their gifts."

The leaders of the electronic churches deny any intent of competing or interfering with local congregations. Still, they are extending their influence not only by offering an array of services for their partners, but also by reaching directly into local communities. "The PTL Club" refers people to specific local congregations. So does "The 700 Club," which has teams of prayer counselors in scores of cities across the country. Robert Schuller's church is in Orange County, California. Listeners to his "Hour of Power" telecast founded a sister church in Orange County, Florida. Graduates of Jerry Falwell's independent Liberty Baptist Seminary are fanning out across the country and establishing new churches that mirror Falwellian theology.

It is not at all beyond reason to speculate that the next surge of new denominationalism in America will be the franchising of churches that meet standards laid down by the televangelists. Although there are clear differences in the theologies of Oral Roberts, James Robison, and Pat Robertson, if all three were to go into the business of franchising local congregations labeled by

their respective surnames, there certainly would be a lot of confusion among prospective communicants.

Nearly every mainline spokesman has had something to say about TV religion. An examination of speeches and periodicals, however, reveals that nearly all have been saying the same things: entrepreneurial TV religion presents a dangerously abbreviated version of the Christian gospel and is a threat to the congregational Christianity of the New Testament. Additionally, many of the values displayed in the electronic church were considered inimical to the Christian ideals of self-denial and service to others. There were also considerable questions whether the electronic church was achieving success at the expense of organized churches—that "bucks and bodies" were being stolen from plates and pews of local churches.

From our hundreds of hours of viewing religious television programs, we have concluded that the critics have a point. But the crucial question remains unanswered-are local congregations losing ground to the electronic churches? The fact of the matter is that there is very little evidence of this, and what little evidence is available leads to ambiguous conclusions. For example, in 1978 the Christian Broadcasting Network released the results of a study conducted for it by Market Research Group of Detroit. A survey of 1,300 of CBN's regular contributors revealed that they gave an average of $190 per year, while another survey of former 700 Club Partners revealed an average annual contribution of $107.

In both surveys, the CBN contribution was estimated to be about 20 percent of the individual's total contribution to religious organizations. The implication in the news release was that the balance of giving was to local congregations. We were unable to determine whether other questions on the surveys would permit this conclusion, but we are inclined to think it is unwarranted. One source of skepticism is that in yet another survey conducted during the same time, Partners were asked about their viewing habits with respect to other religious programs. Almost half (48 percent) reported that they had watched "The PTL Club" an average of twelve times during the previous month. Nearly seven out of ten (68 percent) reported watching Oral Roberts, 60 percent watched Billy Graham, 49 percent Rex Humbard, 48

percent Jimmy Swaggart, 43 percent Robert Schuller, and 30 percent Jerry Falwell. Those who watched other programs viewed them on the average of three times per month.

All this adds up to a lot of viewing of religious television. We have no hard data, but it seems reasonable to infer that some of the contributions of these people go to other religious programs. If this is true, there is still no way of knowing whether these people are giving more, or redirecting some of their former giving from a local church. The 700 Club. Partner survey reported that nine out of ten are involved in a local church. Thirty percent say their involvement in a local church has increased, and only 2 percent report a decline as a result of their involvement in the 700 Club. That leaves about two—thirds reporting no change.

In a questionable methodological procedure, the survey asked respondents to assess the behavior of others. Eighty-six percent of the 700 Club Partners agreed with the statement "Most Christians that I know would support their local church financially first, and then ministries like CBN...." And 82 percent agreed that "Ministries like CBN have actually helped increase support for local churches rather than take away support." Both statements assume knowledge of what other people do, knowledge that they cannot reasonably be expected to possess. Thus, the questions must be seen either as designed to be self-serving or as the products of careless social science research.

Such reservations about the CBN survey notwithstanding, if its returns are representative, and if the respondents correctly reported their own behavior, the net increase in local church involvement as a result of becoming involved in the 700 Club is by no means insignificant.

A study entitled "Profile of the Christian Marketplace" (PCM) conducted by Gallup for the American Research Corporation in 1980 reached different, but not altogether dissimilar, findings with respect to the effects of religious television on involvement in a local church. Among those who said they had made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ, 18 percent reported that TV viewing had increased their involvement in the local church, as compared to 9 percent who reported decreased involvement. These figures don't control for the amount of viewing, nor are we able to determine whether these people contribute to television

ministries. Younger people in the PCM survey are about twice as likely as people over fifty to report that their involvement in a local church has declined as a result of watching TV religion. The results of both the CBN and PCM studies point toward a net gain for the local churches as a result of TV viewing, but the data do not permit the conclusion that this means a net increase in financial support.

The PCM survey provides the only data we are aware of that estimate the proportion of the U.S. adult population who contribute to electronic church ministries—an estimated 2.3 percent contribute to Christian television more than once a year. That figure comes out to about 3½ million contributors to all the electronic churches. When combined with information on the amount of giving per individual, that appears to be an adequate figure to account for the combined reported budgets of the electronic churches. The PCM survey asked people what their choice would be if they were going to contribute to only one organization. Churches beat out health organizations by 37 to 35 percent for the first choice, followed by the United Way with 12 percent. At the bottom of the list was religious broadcasting with 1.5 percent. Those over fifty years of age were slightly more likely to pick religious broadcasting as their first choice than were those eighteen to thirty-four, but they were significantly more likely than young people to pick churches as their first choice.

There is one other piece of information that provides insight into the effects of the electronic churches on the life of the local congregation, and that is the simple matter of when the electronic church programs are scheduled. Those who were critical of the role of the churches in the struggles for social justice in this country used to like to remind folks that 11 a.m. Sunday is the most segregated hour of the week. That may still be true, but 11 a.m. Sunday is certainly not the most popular hour for the producers of religious television programs. Most of them would prefer to be on anytime but that traditional hour of worship.

Oral Roberts has maintained his hold on top of the audience charts for more than a decade. He has done so while broadcasting on far fewer stations than some of his competition. In February 1980 only one of the 165 stations on which Oral Roberts appeared scheduled him at 11 a.m.! Only 3 percent of the time slots for the

top six syndicated religious programs are on at that hour. The most important reason the electronic preachers do not broadcast at 11 a.m. Sunday is that they have learned through experience that a significant proportion of their potential audience turns off the television set and goes to church. This time slot is not profitable in terms of either audience or revenue. Between them, Kenneth Copeland and Jack Van Impe purchased new time on more than 120 stations in a brief period near the turn of this decade. Neither purchased a single 11 a.m. time slot.

Combined, this evidence doesn't clear the electronics of the charges that they are having deleterious effects on attendance and the coffers of local congregations, but it does suggest that the news is not as bad as many had imagined. The electronic churches are supported by a very small percentage of the population. Some of those people give a significant proportion of their income, and in some cases this is no doubt done at the expense of the local church. But the statistical evidence doesn't point to a wholesale robbery of the local congregations' treasuries. Where that has happened, there is probably as much room for examining the shortcomings of the local congregation in meeting the needs of its lost sheep as there is for examining the seductive techniques of the electronic churches. One North Carolina pastor wrote, "In my ministry, as I talk with those who watch and listen regularly, both active church members and nonmembers, one accusation keeps coming up: the church is failing to offer them a balanced diet, so they feel the need to supplement their spiritual diet—or replace it."

The electronic churches probably have had more negative impact on local congregations than their leaders would be willing to admit, but less than the critics contend. It is important that systematic research be conducted so that the real and alleged effects of the electronic churches can be more accurately assessed. But even if it should turn out that the electronics have no measurable effects on the life of mainline churches, the struggle will not end. It will take the mainliners a long time to get over the bitterness of having lost valuable air time to the evangelical entrepreneurs. To the extent that the airwaves are seen as a way of supplementing and bolstering the offering of the local congregation, the mainliners have lost their opportunity for outreach.

The theological disputes between the mainline and electronic church leaders will also remain a long-standing source of conflict. Mainliners have tried to reconcile their theologies with science, which in turn necessitates interpreting at least some segments of the Scriptures as theological rather than literal history. The gospel according to TV they see as a dangerously abbreviated version of the Christian message. The fundamentalists, on the other hand, give primacy to the Bible as the ultimate authority. Scriptures are the inspired and inerrant word of God not only in matters of faith but also in historical, geographical, and other secular matters. And they look upon the "liberals" as people who have capitulated the most essential aspects of the faith to secular humanism.

Although bound together by this fundamental belief, the televangelists do present great diversity in their theology—even though most of it is conservative. More important, though, all the central figures of the electronic church promote, whether consciously or unconsciously, a privatized faith. Belief does not involve a relationship between the believer and a fellowship of believers. Rather, it is a private affair. People construct a faith that suits their own interests and needs. When it no longer satisfies immediate needs, it is reconstructed or abandoned. This, not the protection of a specific theological doctrine, is at the heart of Martin E. Marty's concern about the "completely private ‘invisible religion’ " being fostered by the electronic churches.

Marty recognized that the creation of private religion is rather widespread in contemporary society. In an interview about the effects of the electronic churches, Marty drew an analogy between the kind of privatized secularized religion college educated youth create and the privatized religion constructed by those who watch the electronic churches. The college-educated, he writes, "will take a little dab of the Judaism they were brought up with, a little bit of Catholicism from their wife, a bit of Zen Buddhism they got in college, a weekend of est, a half-baked belief in astrology, a love for jogging, and a macrobiotic diet and kind of make up a religion out of it." Then he goes on to say: "In a way that's not recognized, that's what's happening in these programs, too [the electronic churches]. You take a little bit of one kind of belief in the Bible, another kind of belief in the Holy Spirit, another kind of borrowing of a psychological technique of

motivation, another technique from sales, and you put it together, but you are in control."

Ours has become a very privatistic culture. (We prefer the concept privatism to narcissism or hedonism because it doesn't seem quite as value-laden.) But there is great irony in this. There is irony, first of all, in the concepts that Marshall McLuhan gave us about the impact of modern communications technology. We have become a global village, but we receive the messages of the village in cool, discontinuous blips. The medium is incapable of transmitting messages of any depth or complexity. We have come together in the sense that we are aware of global happenings, but inasmuch as the medium deprives us of depth, continuity, and authority to help us understand the world, we fall back upon our own resources to locate meaning. The self becomes the ultimate authority, the ultimate expression, the ultimate meaning. And the irony of the electronic churches is that although they mean to transmit a message to all the world that is unchanging through the ages, they may simply be transmitting blips—blips packed in ways that satisfy immediate needs, but blips that have little relationship to a major world religion that has survived two millennia.

At least some segments of mainline church leadership recognize these ironies. Today, however, their solutions to the dilemmas are hardly spelled out in programs or policy. There is much astir, however. In addition to their fighting with the electronics, we can expect mainliners to fight a good bit among themselves.

Some are certain to argue for head-on competition with the electronic evangelicals—to fight fire with fire. But there are several obstacles that collectively may constitute an insurmountable obstacle to this approach. The first is organization. By what authority might such an approach be undertaken? Assuming it were possible to get past the question of the efficacy of the task, the matter of who should do it could keep the project tied up in committee for years. And then there is the question of supporting religious programming. Again, if one could assume it were possible to put aside the question of the broadcasters' "duty" to provide free time and accept the fact that air time would have to be purchased, there is the question of how the programs would be supported.

Organizationally, the finances of Protestant denominations are transmitted upward from the local churches through the intermediate dioceses and synods. Even if the authority existed, neither denominations nor the National Council of Churches has adequate contingency funds to launch, much less sustain, a major religious programming effort. And the question of utilizing the same fund-raising methods as the evangelical electronics is certain to cause much rancor, because many mainliners view those techniques with considerable abhorrence. And if, finally, all these problems could be solved, there would still be the knotty problem of deciding who would be the star of the mainliners' cathode church. Imagine what kind of heat that would generate!

The only probable way that mainliners are going to enter the big time of the electronic churches is if one or more pastors with a local telecast receive consent from their board to syndicate and then, through luck and hard work, build an audience adequate to cover the costs of growth. In a sense that is what Robert Schuller has done. But attractive though he may be to some elements of mainline Protestantism, his heavy emphasis on "possibility thinking" is distasteful to many mainliners and he is unlikely to become "their man on the tube."

With the cost of TV time rising steadily, the obstacles to breaking into Sunday morning prime time are ominous but not impossible. And there is always the chance that a rising star will come along just at the right moment and capitalize on the misfortunes of someone on the way down. In the world of television, all stars have their ups and downs; no one survives indefinitely. Both Oral Roberts and Rex Humbard are past sixty. Both would like to pass their ministries along to their sons. As in other walks of life, however, this dream is not always realized. There may be opportunities for those of different theological orientations to work their way onto the TV gospel train.

Competition that is not head-on in nature seems a more likely option. The United Methodist Church has approved a project to raise $25 million to purchase a high-quality commercial TV station. Profits from the operation, if the project materializes, will be used for program production and possibly the purchase of other broadcasting units. The project was the brainchild of Charles Cappelman, head of CBS's Television City in

Hollywood and president of the board of United Methodist Communications. Precisely what type of religious programming would be produced has yet to be clarified.

Some hint of where the mainliners may be heading may be gleaned by looking at what they have done in the past as well as what has survived from the 1960s when mainliners were much better represented in the repertoire of religious offerings. Drama with a religious message seems a likely direction. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod did this with considerable success for many years with a program entitled "This Is the Life." The objective of the series was to reach the unchurched through quality drama in a "natural" setting without a hard sell of religion. Tommy Thompson, executive vice-president of Religious Heritage of America, believes the Missouri Synod can attribute a significant proportion of its growth to the success of its radio and television programming.

"Insight," produced by the Paulist Fathers, is the longest running dramatic series on television and one of the few free-air time programs to survive the onslaught of commercial religion. Produced by Father Ellwood Keiser, the program has attracted top writers and actors who work for the minimum wage because they respect the kind of social messages communicated on the program. Many of the programs are not religious dramas per se, but they explore questions of faith and meaning.

Keiser sees television as having passed through two periods in its brief life. The first belonged to businessmen who utilized the airwaves aggressively to sell their products, the second to politicians who applied the same media concepts to sell themselves. He believes television is now moving into a third phase, which will belong to those who will use the airwaves to humanize society.

Keiser is critical of television and feels it has abdicated its responsibility and squandered much of its humanizing potential. He feels it has too frequently conveyed the message that "consumption is the meaning and fulfillment of life." Yet, there is nothing intrinsic in the logic of television that necessitates this message. The humanizing revolution Keiser now sees unfolding is being forged by many organizations and individuals—institutionalized religion being only one of many participants. He

sees in contemporary programming many humanizing messages. For example: "Thematically, ‘The Waltons’ says that people are more important than things. ‘Family’ says that love and honesty are not only possible but necessary in an affluent and sophisticated family. ‘All in the Family’ says that bigotry is absurd, yet bigots are lovable. ‘M*A*S*H’ says that it is possible to retain one's human dignity in an essentially inhumane situation, especially if you have a sense of humor."

For all its critical acclaim, "Insight" has never attracted large audiences, seldom over half a million total. Russ Reid heads a highly successful marketing organization that specializes in servicing nonprofit clients. He shares Ellwood Keiser's enthusiasm for the potential of television to humanize culture, but he would like to see Christian organizations play a more than incidental role in the production of television drama. The greatest potential for getting the messages of the Christian gospel across is on evening prime time and not on the Sunday morning "ghetto" hours. He believes prime-time television is ready for quality religious drama and is already at work developing the concept. If the programs are properly done, he thinks the networks " . . . will pay us to produce the movie of the week and they'll get a sponsor for it." An expert in direct-mail fund raising, Reid thinks this is also an option for raising funds to produce religious programming, but more difficult and less satisfactory than getting the networks to pick up the tab. This way, he says, "it won't take a dime of the Lord's money."

The evangelical preachers dared to think big when they made the leap from syndication on a few stations to nationwide syndication. Whether mainliners compete head-on or in other ways, it will take no less vision, daring, and imagination to have an impact as dramatic on American culture as that of the evangelicals.

The relationship of nearly every sector of our society to government has changed rather dramatically since 1925 when evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson fired off the following angry wire to Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover after inspectors had temporarily closed her station because it was unable to stay on its assigned frequency: "Please order your minions of

Satan to leave my station alone. You cannot expect the Almighty to abide by your wavelength nonsense. When I offer my prayers to Him I must fit into His wave reception. Open this station at once." Regulatory authorities have never expected the Almighty to abide by their "wavelength nonsense," but they certainly have expected broadcasting stations to do so.

Today we more or less accept the legitimacy of the government's role in regulating and enforcing the law. Although we may sometimes be annoyed, even enraged, by regulations and what we perceive to be unnecessary "meddling" in our lives, it is hard to imagine anyone today ordering a cabinet-level official to do anything. Even if we thought some high-level government official were deserving of our rage, the mere thought of the power of government bureaucracies to investigate or require paperwork would surely temper our public utterances.

Not so with the television preachers. They don't like the idea of government telling them what to do any more than did Aimee Semple McPherson. And when the government does something they don't like, they let the government know—usually through their constituencies. They also maintain strong legal counsel through the aegis of the National Religious Broadcasters, whose present chief counsel is a former FCC chairman.

In 1979 the Federal Communications Commission charged PTL with soliciting money for foreign missions and spending it to pay bills for U.S. operations. Jim Bakker fought back and accused the FCC of a "back-room witch-hunt" and a "fishing expedition." While resisting the efforts of the FCC to open his books, he regularly denounced the FCC government bureaucrats, equating them with satanic forces: "I don't believe all the demons in hell, I don't believe all the astrologers, I don't believe all the bureaucrats in the federal government can stop God from sending revival to this generation."

Bakker's attacks on the federal government brought tens of thousands of letters flooding into the FCC mail room. But the amount of mail generated by PTL viewers was infinitesimal compared with what evangelical Christians are capable of when they get aroused. In December 1974, Jeremy D. Lansman and Lorenzo W. Milam, two noncommercial broadcasters, filed with the FCC a petition to halt the assignment of noncommercial

educational FM radio frequencies to religious groups. Viewed as a "petition against God," it brought 700,000 pieces of mail to the FCC before it was dismissed in August 1975. The dismissal of the petition, however, did not end the deluge of mail. It got worse. And worse. And worse. Somehow, the story began to spread that atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair had petitioned the FCC to prohibit all religious broadcasting. The rumor probably had a direct lineage to the Lansman and Milam petition, but it also spawned additional rumors of its own.

Congress gave the FCC a quarter of a million dollars to combat the rumor, but it refuses to die. By the end of 1980, the FCC had received more than 12 million pieces of mail opposing a nonexistent petition! And the FCC continues to receive daily deliveries, ranging from several hundred to several thousand letters, depending on the swirling of the rumor.

In 1977 a bill introduced in the House of Representatives, HR-4 1, would have placed fund raising by religious and charitable institutions under the supervision of the U.S. Postal Service, which would have access to the financial records of the nonprofit organizations. Many organizations opposed the bill, but it was the TV preachers who spread the word and buried the House Post Office Subcommittee under letters and telephone calls. HR-41 never emerged from committee. Fund-raising broadcasters know that similar legislation could be proposed again. If that happens, it is certain to be met with a massive counterattack from the electronic churches. Given a little time to work on it, the preachers of the electronic church could probably drop a million letters on a lawmaker on a given day.

Legislators know this. Regulators know it as well. Both have learned through experience to think twice before taking on the wrath of evangelical Christians who feel they are being wronged by their government. This notwithstanding, it is inevitable that there will be future confrontations between the electronic preachers and the government, and this promises to be an important page in the history of religious broadcasting in the United States. There are several reasons why this struggle cannot be averted.

First of all, the government, under the aegis of the Federal

Communications Commission, is responsible for licensing and regulating the use of the airwaves. Broadcasting is largely a laissez-faire industry, but it is possible to get in trouble with the FCC, and over the past fifty years several radio and television preachers have. If it can be proved that a station is not operating "in the public interest, convenience, and necessity," the FCC can revoke its license. Evangelist Carl McIntire learned this in 1970 when his license to operate WXUR in Media, Pennsylvania, was revoked because of his unrelenting one-sidedness toward persons and organizations unsympathetic to his far-right political and religious views.

Except in cases where the television preachers own stations, and some of them do, the FCC's relationship to them is indirect. The FCC licenses and regulates stations, not program syndicators. The Fairness Doctrine, issued in 1963, is one of the principal means whereby the FCC oversees station activities. This directive states that when a program includes a personal attack on an individual or organization, the station must transmit the text of the broadcast to the person or group with a specific offer of time for a response. Since 1967 the station must make that offer within one week or face the possibility of a $10,000 fine for each offense.

The first real test case of this doctrine came in 1964. Evangelist Billy James Hargis, in a program aired over radio station WGCB in Red Lion, Pennsylvania, attacked author Fred J. Cook, who demanded time to reply. WGCB offered to sell him the time, or give it if Cook could show that he was unable to pay. Cook would not accept either condition and the case went to the Supreme Court. The Court affirmed the Fairness Doctrine in 1967.

In practice, the Fairness Doctrine operates usually only when somebody complains, as was the case in Dallas when James Robison made comments about homosexuals that brought a complaint to station WFAA-TV. Fearful of reprisals from the FCC, the Dallas station simply put Robison off the air. It wasn't until Robison organized a demonstration and proceeded to drag the case through the courts that WFAA-TV reinstated his program.

None of the television preachers particularly likes the Fairness

Doctrine. The politically minded among them, in particular, consider it to be an infringement of their freedom of speech. Jerry Falwell has called the Fairness Doctrine "the most unfair doctrine ever created by mortal men."

But the necessity for legal restrictions and a governmental response mechanism is illustrated by the broadcasting career of Father Coughlin in the 1930s. Pastor of a Catholic church in Royal Oak, Michigan, Cough in gathered amazing political power all through the 1930s. He began broadcasting a Sunday afternoon children's program in 1926. On Sunday, October 30, 1930, when America was sinking into the fear and bewilderment and anger of the Great Depression, he went political. On that day Coughlin spoke to the parents, not the children, with a stern denunciation of "money changers" and "subversive socialism. "

Coughlin received a flood of mail. He sounded as if he had some answers, and people wanted to know more. He kept speaking and the people kept writing, and a lot of his mail contained dollar bills. Coughlin expanded to more and more stations. His radio audience was estimated to number in the tens of millions.

He jumped on the Roosevelt bandwagon in 1932 with the slogan "Roosevelt or Ruin." He fully expected to be in Roosevelt's circle of advisers, and he offered radical economic theories about how to cure the depression. When Roosevelt accepted neither Coughlin's personal approaches nor his economic theories, Coughlin became Roosevelt's bitter enemy.

Coughlin's demagoguery, arrogance, and power continued to grow; a single speech in 1932 drew 1,200,000 letters. Computers had not been invented, but 106 clerks and four personal secretaries were able to handle his mail. Coughlin did not send letters; he only received them—and many contained those dollar bills.

Coughlin founded his own political lobbying group, the National Union for Social Justice. He established a weekly newspaper, Social Justice. And in 1936 he established his own political party, the Union party, with "Liberty Bill" Lemke of North Dakota as its presidential candidate and the principles of social justice as its platform. Coughlin did not expect Lemke to win, but he did expect to set the stage for an even stronger push in 1940. He boasted that he would deliver 9 million votes to Lemke,

but Lemke received fewer than a tenth of those promised. Coughlin suspended the activities of the NUSJ and retired temporarily from the air.

He returned in early 1937, more strident than ever. He reconstituted his NUSJ chapters as a group of Christian clubs, then as a "Christian Front" organized into platoons. Coughlin's anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi sentiments began to emerge, and the Christian Front began to act out some of those sentiments. Coughlin's speeches and writings grew steadily more vehement and his supporters more gang-like.

The nation could no longer tolerate the Coughlin brand of fascism after the start of World War II. His newspaper mailing privileges were revoked under the Espionage Act of 1917. The Roosevelt administration, not wishing to indict a priest for sedition, persuaded Coughlin's archbishop to silence him. Coughlin's public career ended in April 1942. He lived out his days as pastor of the Shrine of the Little Flower, the Royal Oak church from which he had arisen.

Charles J. Tull has said in his book about Coughlin that he "was never a serious threat to American democracy, but the mere fact that he could win the support of so many Americans for such incredible notions should alarm any American who believes that our democratic system is worth saving."

Could another Coughlin arise? We do not think it likely, for three reasons. First, there simply are too many preachers on TV, each with a following; there were no competing radio superstars in Coughlin's time. Second, there was no Fairness Doctrine to regulate the content of broadcasting then. Third, it is not likely that the social and economic conditions of the 1930s will ever be duplicated. Coughlin arose in a time of national despair.

Still, it would be wise, as Wallace Stegner has said, " . . . to ponder the enormous following he [Coughlin] had at his peak. It would be well to consider how vague, misty, uninformed, contradictory, and insincere his program was, and yet how it won the unstinting belief of hundreds of thousands, even millions. It would be well to remember that even a people like the Americans, supposedly politically mature . . . can be brought to the point where millions of them will beg to be led . . . "

There are two other government agencies that have an important

stake in the activities of the electronic churches: the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Internal Revenue Service. The SEC has moved against Falwell and Humbard, but not for broadcasting reasons. Both sold church bonds in violation of SEC rules, but after corrective measures were agreed upon, no punitive action was taken. The IRS is concerned with seeing that the electronic preachers follow regulations that govern tax exempt organizations. The electronic church seems to be well aware of such regulations, which are basically fairly lenient, and they follow the letter of the law.

The movement of a few television preachers into politics is almost certain to have a dramatic impact on the present relationship between religious broadcasters and the government. Tax regulations are constantly being rewritten, and there is no reason to presume that current regulations governing tax-exempt organizations are immune to reexamination. The large sums of money raised by the television preachers are currently off limits to all government agencies unless there is reason to suspect wrongdoing. Whether the Congress will continue to view these large sums of money as beyond the concern of government is questionable.

Groups that now see the television preachers as a threat to traditional American institutions and values will lead the assault and will place the electronic churches increasingly in an adversary relationship with various government agencies. The Fairness Doctrine is probably the likely point of attack for liberal groups. It would take little organized effort to make radio and television station owners as leery of, say, People for the American Way as librarians are of ultra-right groups that want to burn a book for Jesus. Station owners would rather not have to deal with a barrage of complaints about the violation of the Fairness Doctrine. But they want even less to deal with the FCC looking over their shoulder. And they can be certain that the electronics will fight back if station owners lean on them too hard.

In these and other areas, perhaps yet unimagined by anyone, the government will be entangled in a series of struggles involving the electronic churches and their leadership. Generally we think of the government as a disinterested party that processes grievances between two or more other warring parties. To the

extent that the electronic church leadership persists in advocating political change, it is hard to imagine that the government will be an altogether disinterested party. Government employees themselves have become a significant interest group in America. They are large in number, and inasmuch as their well-being is tied to the continuance of the government bureaucracies they run, they have a definite interest in resisting many of the changes advocated by the conservative television preachers and their followers. Before counting the electronics down and out against the onslaught of liberal forces, it would be wise to examine recent developments in California. That state's reputation for the unusual, the unorthodox, and often the bizarre is certainly well deserved when it comes to religion. California is headquarters for one-third of the more than 500 identified cults in the United States, more than the next seven states combined. One of the more incredible news stories of the 1970s was the tragedy of the People's Temple, a California group that had set up a colony in Guyana led by Jim Jones. Following a variety of leads about wrongdoing, including complaints from relatives that people were being held in Guyana against their will, California Congressman Leo Ryan flew to Jonestown to conduct a personal investigation. He and three American journalists were murdered, and thereafter more than 900 persons followed Jones in carrying out a mass suicide which had been previously rehearsed.

In October 1980 California Attorney General George Deukmejian dropped investigations against twelve religious groups, among them the Worldwide Church of God, Synanon, and the Faith Center. Herbert W. Armstrong and church treasurer Stanley Rader were under investigation for allegedly diverting up to $80 million of Worldwide Church of God funds for personal use. The church went into receivership for seven weeks in early 1979 after allegations were made that church records were being destroyed. Charles Dederich and other Synanon officers were under investigation for allegedly diverting $300,000 in solicited monies to nonchurch activities. A month earlier Dederich had been convicted of plotting to kill a lawyer with a rattlesnake but escaped imprisonment when a judge cited failing health as justification for probation. Faith Center, headed by the Reverend W. Eugene Scott, owns two California television stations that broadcast

around-the-clock live and taped marathons of "Festival of Faith. " Scott had been accused of raising money for one purpose and spending it for another, and he had steadfastly refused to open his books for the attorney general, vowing to carry his case to the Supreme Court if necessary.

Deukmejian's reason for dropping these and nine other cases was the passage of a bill that in effect stripped the attorney general of the power to investigate and prosecute cases involving tax-exempt religious organizations. Deukmejian was accused of overreacting in dropping the suits, and the criticism appears to have some merit. Nevertheless, no one disputes the fact that the new law does significantly restrict the powers of the attorney general to investigate and prosecute. According to the new law, allegations of improper use of internal funds can be brought only by a member of the governing body of a religious group. The rank-and-file membership cannot initiate action for civil fraud.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this affair was the uncanny coalition that formed to support the legislation restricting the investigative powers of the government. The National Council of Churches, the American Civil Liberties Union, and a broad spectrum of liberal Protestant denominations in California joined with Herbert W. Armstrong, Charles Dederich, and Eugene Scott in favoring the legislation. Their justification, of course, was the protection of First Amendment rights.

If California is a bellwether for the ensuing struggle between secular and religious liberals, on the one hand, against conservatives led by a few television preachers, on the other, we may expect some interesting, but agonizing, alignments and realignments. When liberal groups stand up to protect the interests of groups that may be tainted, indeed downright scandalous, that action may be viewed as protection of their own interests. Sentiments for maintaining the separation of church and state and protecting First Amendment rights run high. There are a lot of people, liberal and conservative alike, who are prepared to tolerate a little fraud and abuse of liberties on behalf of a few to protect the rights of the many. Granted the validity of this proposition, it is also fairly clear that the groups supporting the California legislation were not seriously affected by any wrongdoing of the groups under investigation.

When liberals square off against the New Christian Right, they are likely to use a different scorecard. The interests of liberals are much more clearly at stake. The conservatives want to change the country in ways that threaten both material and life-style interests of nonconservatives. Furthermore, there are many who believe the conservatives are prepared to trample upon the First Amendment rights of others to get their way. The tension between protecting principles and real interests, perceived to be threatened, promises to be one of the most significant issues of this decade. The electronic churches and their leaders are destined to be in the center of the controversy.