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In an earlier age, when radio was the medium, the question was raised, "Should Churches be Shut Off the Air?" The Christian Century, May 12, 1927.

See the discussion in Jeffrey K. Hadden and Charles E. Swann, "Born-Again Politics," in Prime Time Preachers: The Rising Power of Televangelism (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1981).

Aspects of religious competition and cooperation were earlier discussed by Peter Berger, "A Market Model for the Analysis of Ecumenicity," Social Research 30, no. 1 (Spring 1963): 77-93.

Dean M. Kelley, Why Conservative Churches Are Growing (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).

It was an informal religious program sent from Massachusetts to the ships at sea on Christmas Eve. See A.F. Harlow, Old Wires and New Waves (New York: Appleton-Century, 1936).

The audience of the "Radio Priest" was estimated in the tens of millions. See Wallace Stegner, "The Radio Priest and His Flock." in Isabel Leighton, ea., The Aspirin Age (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1949); also Charles J. Tull. Father Coughlin and the New Deal (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1965).

See D.P. Noonan. The Passion of Fulton Sheen (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972).

The chief charismatic predecessors of contemporary televangelists are studied by David Harreil, All Things Are Possible (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975).

Everett Parker, David Barry, and Dallas Smythe, The TelevisionRadio Audience and Religion (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1955).

See Hadden and Swann. "This Business of TV Religion."

See Virginia S. Owens. The Total Image: or Selling Jesus in the Modern Age (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980).

Quoted by Hadden and Swann. p.7.

He calls them "spiritual innocents." T. George Harris, "Introduction" to Hadden and Swann. p. xiv.

The term "electric" is preferred by Ben Armstrong, The Electric Church (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1979).

Exaggeration of the size of audiences is corrected by recourse to Arbitron figures. See William Martin, "The Birth of a Media Myth." Atlantic, 247, no. 6 (June 1981): 7, 10. 11, 16.

George Gallup, Profile of the Christian Marketplace 1980 (Newport Beach: American Research Corporation. 1980).

See Gerald Strober and Ruth Tomczak, Jerry Falwell: Aflame for God (Nashville: Thomas Nelson. 1979).

Such personal contact with counselors predates the electronic church. See David Altheide and John Johnson. "Counting Souls: A Study of Counseling at Evangelical Crusades," Pacific Sociological Review, 20, no. 3 (July 1977): 323-48.

See the "study document" of the Commission on Faith and Order, "Critique of the Theology of the Unification Church," in Irving Louis Horowitz, ea., Science, Sin and Scholarship (Cambridge: MIT Press. 1978), pp. 102-18.

See the "corrective" analysis by James T. Richardson, "People's Temple and Jonestown: A Corrective Comparison and Critique." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 19, no. 3 (September 1980): 239-55.