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
“Preserving Our American Heritage” was the theme of the 15th Convention of the National Religious Broadcasters, February 5–6, 1958 (Billy Graham Center Archives [hereafter cited as BGCA] CN 209, Box 7, Fol. 3). Almost exactly the same formulation is used by the BFC to legitimate their stance toward paidtime TV: “the inclusion of the right kind and amount of religion in the broadcast schedule is essential to the preservation of our American heritage” (Reactions to the National Council’s Advisory Policy Statement on Religious Broadcasting, p. 97, Presbyterian Historical Society [hereafter cited as PHS] RG 16, Box 1, Fol. 6)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Joel Carpenter, Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 150–151.
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.
For the standard historical account see George Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991);
George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelicalism: 1870–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).
Joel Carpenter’s Revive Us Again, 1997, complements Marsden’s account.
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.
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).
Martin E. Marty, Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America (New York: Dial Press, 1970), pp. 177–187.
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.
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.
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);
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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;
James DeForest Murch, “On Winning America,” United Evangelical Action 5 (1946): pp. 8–9;
James DeForest Murch, “Why United Evangelical Action is Imperative,” United Evangelical Action 5 (1946): 3–4;
James DeForest Murch, “A Study in Christian Co-operation in America,” United Evangelical Action 5 (1946): 3–4;
James DeForest Murch, “How Federative Action Began in America,” United Evangelical Action 5 (1946): 7–8;
James DeForest Murch, “Why Evangelicals Cannot Co-operate in the FCCCA,” United Evangelical Action 5 (1946): 5–7;
James DeForest Murch, “The Proposed National Council of Churches,” United Evangelical Action 5 (1946): 6–8.
James DeForest Murch, “Why Evangelicals Cannot Co-operate in the FCCCA,” United Evangelical Action 5 (1946): 5–7 (p. 5).
James DeForest Murch, “The Proposed National Council of Churches,” United Evangelical Action 5 (1946): 6–8 (p. 7).
Martin E. Marty, Modern American Religion: The Noise of Conflict, 1919–1941, Vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1991);
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).
Rutherford L. Decker, “The Holy Spirit Works through the NAE,” United Evangelical Action 1952 (1952): 13–14, 16; 5–6, 14–16; 4–6.
Frederick Curtis Fowler, “Render Unto Caesar and Unto God,” United Evangelical Action 11 (1952): 11.
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.”
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.
See Murch’s account in James DeForest Murch, “How Federative Action Began in America,” United Evangelical Action 5 (1946): 8.
James DeForest Murch, “A Study in Christian Co-operation in America,” United Evangelical Action 5 (1946): 3–4, p. 3.
Mark Ward Sr., Air of Salvation: The Story of Christian Broadcasting (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1994), p. 67.
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.
James DeForest Murch, “NAE Comes of Age,” United Evangelical Action 7 (1948): 19.
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.
Martin E. Marty, “Second Chance Protestantism,” The Christian Century 78 (‚une 21, 1961): 770–772.
Robert Wuthnow, “Religious Discourse as Public Discourse,” Communication Research 15 (June 1988): 318–388.
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.
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.
Copyright information
© 2007 Michele Rosenthal
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rosenthal, M. (2007). “Preserving Our American Heritage”: Television and the Construction of Evangelical Identity. In: American Protestants and TV in the 1950s. Religion/Culture/Critique. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230609211_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230609211_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-52909-4
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-60921-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)