“Preserving Our American Heritage”: Television and the Construction of Evangelical Identity

  • Michele Rosenthal
Chapter
Part of the Religion/Culture/Critique book series (RCCR)

Abstract

While the mainline protestant leaders at the Broadcast and Film Commission (BFC) fought to maintain its privilege, neoevangelical leaders struggled for self-definition and public recognition, hoping to rehabilitate that part of Protestantism that had been humiliated by the Scopes Trial. The fight for the airwaves, first on radio and then on television, was part of that struggle. The National Religious Broadcasters Association (NRB)—which was founded to provide an interface between evangelicals, the television networks, and the Federal Communications Commission—was formed in direct response and as a counterpart to the BFC, just as the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE, founded 1941) was formed as a direct response to the National Council of Churches.2

Keywords

Public Sphere Federal Communication Commission Religious Freedom American Council Christian Church 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. 2.
    Joel Carpenter, Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 150–151.Google Scholar
  2. 4.
    Tona J. Hangen, Redeeming the Dial. Radio, Religion and Popular Culture in America (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), Carpenter, Revive Us Again. Google Scholar
  3. 5.
    For the standard historical account see George Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991);Google Scholar
  4. George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelicalism: 1870–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).Google Scholar
  5. Joel Carpenter’s Revive Us Again, 1997, complements Marsden’s account.Google Scholar
  6. 6.
    Martin Riesebrodt, Pious Passion: The Emergence of Modern Fundamentalism in the United States and Iran, Translated by Don Reneau (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), p. 33.Google Scholar
  7. 10.
    For a general history of this period of rebuilding see Carpenter, Revive Us Again. On one specific institution see George Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987).Google Scholar
  8. 11.
    Martin E. Marty, Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America (New York: Dial Press, 1970), pp. 177–187.Google Scholar
  9. 12.
    Riesebrodt, Pious Passion, p. 87. 13. The neo-evangelical label was quickly exchanged simply for evangelical. In this book, the terms are interchangeable unless otherwise indicated. 14. Wuthnow notes that the evangelical movement began in major cities, with an educated leadership. He traces the most important leaps of economic and educational growth in the evangelical circles to the 1960s, but it is clear these processes were already at work in the 1950s as well. By the early 1970s, evangelicals were far more likely to identify as being part of the middle class and to have attended college. For Wuthnow’s account of the rise of the evangelical movement in the post—World War II period, see Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith since World War II (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 173–214.Google Scholar
  10. For an opposing view concerning the middle class status of evangelicalism see James Davison Hunter, American Evangelicalism: Conservative Religion and the Quandary of Modernity (New Brunswick. NI: Rutrers University Press. 1983). no. 53–55.Google Scholar
  11. 16.
    Although it is plausible to argue that these particular leaders and the organizations they shaped have left an indelible mark on contemporary evangelicalism, it would be a mistake to suggest that this study would not be different if we focused on the Pentecostal or holiness wing of evangelicalism. On the historio-graphical debates concerning evangelicalism see Donald Dayton, and Robert K. Johnson, eds., The Variety of American Evangelicalism (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1991);Google Scholar
  12. and Douglas Sweeney, “The Essential Evangelicalism Dialectic: The Historiography of the Early Neo-Evangelical Movement and the Observer-Participant Dilemma,” Church History 60 (March 1991): 70–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  13. 17.
    On the use of radio and the creation of an evangelical identity see Quentin J. Schultze, “Evangelical Radio and the Rise of the Electronic Church, 1921–1948,” Journal of Broadcasting and the Electronic Media 32 (Summer 1988): 289–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  14. 19.
    Elihu Katz, “On Conceptualizing Media Effects,” in Studies in Communication: A Research Annual, edited by Thelma McCormack, (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1980), p. 121. According to Katz, this was the predominant assumption of early empirical research in mass communications.Google Scholar
  15. 20.
    Martin E. Marty, “The Revival of Evangelicalism and Southern Religion,” in Varieties of Southern Evangelicalism, edited by David E. Harrell, Jr. (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1981), p. 9.Google Scholar
  16. 21.
    Schultze, “Evangelical Radio,” and Quentin J. Schultze, “The Two Faces of Fundamentalist Higher Education,” in Fundamentalisms and Society: Reclaiming the Science, the Family and Education, edited by Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 490–535. Considering their search for approval, it is perhaps not surprising that Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Oral Roberts all founded universities.Google Scholar
  17. 22.
    On the founding of the NAE, see James DeForest Murch, Cooperation without Compromise: A History of the National Association of Evangelicals (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1956). See also Carpenter Revive Us Again, pp. 141–160.Google Scholar
  18. 23.
    On evangelical radio see Carpenter Revive Us Again, pp. 124–140; Hangen, Redeeming the Dial, Schultze, “Evangelical Radio,” Murch, Cooperation without Compromise, see the titles of chapters 2 and 3; and Dennis N. Voskuil. “The Power of the Air: Evangelicals and the Rise of Religious Broadcasting,” in American Evangelicals and the Mass Media, edited by Quentin J. Schultze (Grand Rapids, MI: Academie Books, 1990), pp. 69–95.Google Scholar
  19. 32.
    Ibid., p. 26. 33. Murch, Cooperation without Compromise, pp. 19–31, use of virus on p. 30; James DeForest Murch, “Adventuring in United Evangelical Action,” United Evangelical Action 5 (1946): 5–8;Google Scholar
  20. James DeForest Murch, “On Winning America,” United Evangelical Action 5 (1946): pp. 8–9;Google Scholar
  21. James DeForest Murch, “Why United Evangelical Action is Imperative,” United Evangelical Action 5 (1946): 3–4;Google Scholar
  22. James DeForest Murch, “A Study in Christian Co-operation in America,” United Evangelical Action 5 (1946): 3–4;Google Scholar
  23. James DeForest Murch, “How Federative Action Began in America,” United Evangelical Action 5 (1946): 7–8;Google Scholar
  24. James DeForest Murch, “Why Evangelicals Cannot Co-operate in the FCCCA,” United Evangelical Action 5 (1946): 5–7;Google Scholar
  25. James DeForest Murch, “The Proposed National Council of Churches,” United Evangelical Action 5 (1946): 6–8.Google Scholar
  26. 34.
    James DeForest Murch, “Why Evangelicals Cannot Co-operate in the FCCCA,” United Evangelical Action 5 (1946): 5–7 (p. 5).Google Scholar
  27. 35.
    James DeForest Murch, “The Proposed National Council of Churches,” United Evangelical Action 5 (1946): 6–8 (p. 7).Google Scholar
  28. 38.
    Martin E. Marty, Modern American Religion: The Noise of Conflict, 1919–1941, Vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1991);Google Scholar
  29. and Leo P. Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1983).Google Scholar
  30. 41.
    Rutherford L. Decker, “The Holy Spirit Works through the NAE,” United Evangelical Action 1952 (1952): 13–14, 16; 5–6, 14–16; 4–6.Google Scholar
  31. 42.
    Frederick Curtis Fowler, “Render Unto Caesar and Unto God,” United Evangelical Action 11 (1952): 11.Google Scholar
  32. See also for comparison, Verne P. Kaub, “The NCC at Denver,” United Evangelical Action 11 (1952): 3–7, 16 which contains a very mild report of the NCC convention in Denver. Of course, DeForest Murch’s attacks on the NCC remained quite vehement, especially his accusation that it was a “super-church.”Google Scholar
  33. 45.
    John G. Merritt, “Christianity Today,” in Religious Periodicals of the United States, edited by Charles H. Lippy (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), p. 136. Originally cited from Carl F. H. Henry, memorandum, n.d., BGCA, coll. 8, box 15, folder 11.Google Scholar
  34. 49.
    See Murch’s account in James DeForest Murch, “How Federative Action Began in America,” United Evangelical Action 5 (1946): 8.Google Scholar
  35. 51.
    James DeForest Murch, “A Study in Christian Co-operation in America,” United Evangelical Action 5 (1946): 3–4, p. 3.Google Scholar
  36. 58.
    Mark Ward Sr., Air of Salvation: The Story of Christian Broadcasting (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1994), p. 67.Google Scholar
  37. 62.
    On the origins of the broad truths policy see chapter 3 above. See also Stewart Hoover, and Douglas Warner, “History and Policy in American Broadcast Treatment of Religion,” Media, Culture and Society 19 (1997): 7–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  38. 63.
    James DeForest Murch, “NAE Comes of Age,” United Evangelical Action 7 (1948): 19.Google Scholar
  39. 75.
    On the issue of church/state conflict and religious broadcasting see Marcus Cohn, “Religion and the FCC,” The Reporter Qanuary 14, 1965); Kenneth Cox, “The FCC, the Constitution and Religious Broadcasting Programming,” The George Washington Law Review 34:2 (December 1965); and Lee Loevinger, “Religious Liberty and Broadcasting,” in George Washington Law Review 33 (1965): 631.Google Scholar
  40. 88.
    Martin E. Marty, “Second Chance Protestantism,” The Christian Century 78 (‚une 21, 1961): 770–772.Google Scholar
  41. 90.
    Robert Wuthnow, “Religious Discourse as Public Discourse,” Communication Research 15 (June 1988): 318–388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  42. 91.
    Ibid., p. 331. 92. Thomas C. Berg, “‘Proclaiming Together?’ Convergence and Divergence in Mainline and Evangelical Evangelism, 1945–1967,” Religion and American Culture 5 (Winter 1995): 49–76. Berg suggests that there were moments of convergence, particularly as regards evangelism. Mark Silk, “The Rise of the ‘New Evangelicalism’: Shock and Adjustment,” in Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in America, 1900–1960, edited by William R. Hutchison (New York: Cambridge, 1989), pp. 278–299. Silk suggests that there was potential for a moment of convergence, based on desire to preserve the Protestant establishment, although it did not acutalize.Google Scholar
  43. Martin E. Marty, Modern American Religion, Vol. 3: Under God, Indivisible. 1941–1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Marty refers to these moments of consensus as the centrifugal forces of the 1950s, which operated at large in post—World War II America, not just in religion.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Michele Rosenthal 2007

Authors and Affiliations

  • Michele Rosenthal

There are no affiliations available

Personalised recommendations