It lacked the splash of a National Religious Broadcasters convention. But last month’s two-day consultation, “The Electronic Church,” was not intended as a promotion for today’s high technology, higher budgeted, religious broadcasting.
Most of the 250 participants, who represented mainstream Protestant and Roman Catholic communications and church offices, suspected the electronic church is draining away members to conservative churches, and attracting dollars that might otherwise go into church collection plates. In a day of continuing membership declines in the traditional churches, both are causes for concern.
Conference sponsors, the National Council of Churches and the U.S. Catholic Conference, have been among the most vocal skeptics of the value and the function of radio-TV preachers. They say the electronic church preaches a cheap, simplistic gospel and avoids issues. The critics say the electronic church makes converts, but doesn’t follow them up, and encourages viewers to sit by the TV, rather than in church.
Most of these concerns surfaced at some point during the recent meeting at New York University. William Fore, NCC communications officer, helped plan the conference so that the electronic church debate would be put into its “larger context.” Speakers discussed the psychological, sociological, spiritual, and legal aspects of the electronic church. And, to their credit, conference sponsors invited several speakers from outside their own camp: Christian Broadcasting Network president Pat Robertson, TV preacher Robert Schuller, and NRB executive secretary Ben Armstrong. (Armstrong said he felt “outnumbered” as one of only several conservative evangelicals at the meeting; but he acknowledged that liberals were just as rare among the larger crowd of 2,000 at the January NRB annual meeting.)
The conference was not intended as a face-off between mainstream groups and conservative evangelicals, said Fore. However, its structure made inevitable “we-they” comparisons: speakers from opposing viewpoints had the opportunity for rebuttal.
Robertson, in a dinner address, compared the electronic church to the early Wesleyan movement. Regarded as controversial and unconventional, the movement became a success because it fulfilled needs not met in the established church, said Robertson. A United Methodist professor and former dean of Yale Divinity School, Colin Williams, who was scheduled as “reactor” to Robertson, said the comparison to Wesleyanism was inappropriate. John Wesley had emphasized bringing new converts into Christian communities for nurture: “I do not find that same insistence in the electronic church,” Williams said.
(In a telephone interview, CBN marketing specialist John Roos rebutted the argument that the TV preachers weaken the local church. In CBN audience surveys, 34 percent say they have become more involved in the local church as a result of watching CBN, while only 2 percent say they have gotten less involved through watching CBN. ROOS said CBN reaches into 350,000 households daily: 65 percent of the viewers are women, average age is 49, 15 percent are Baptists, and Roman Catholics and Assemblies of God each comprise 11 percent of the audience.)
Schuller criticized the “they-against-us” mentality in a report by psychologist Richard Liebert. Liebert had criticized the high-powered fund-raising techniques of the electronic church, and predicted that one day it will become a denomination unto itself. Schuller said he, himself, is a “main liner,” from the Reformed Church of America. He also disagreed with the term “electronic church”: Religious News Service quoted him as saying that his weekly television program, “Hour of Power,” is “not a church, and I’m the first to say that.”
Liebert touched upon perhaps the most crucial issue to conference attenders: whether religious broadcasters should buy air time from local stations, or ask to receive it free as public interest programming.
Correction
Geoffrey J. Paxton should have been identified as the former president of Queensland Bible Institute in Brisbane, Australia (Feb. 3 issue, p. 66). In the same article, the correct name for the husband of Seventh-day Adventist founder Ellen G. White is James White.
Most of the 900 programmers belonging to NRB buy their air time. These mostly Protestant, evangelical, fundamentalist, and charismatic preachers preach conservative doctrine and politics and buy local station air time with dollars from loyal supporters. The main-line Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish broadcasters, however, have traditionally relied on free time for their nonsectarian programs, which usually are aired on Sunday morning and produced with the commercial networks.
Local stations are increasingly unwilling to provide free religious programming when they can get paid for it. More than 92 percent of all religious programming today is paid for, said Fore of the NCC, whereas 10 years ago only 53 percent was paid religious programming. Psychologist Liebert said the survival of the main-line variety of religious programming requires that mainstream groups buy radio and TV time “to meet the competition head-on.”
Two years ago, the NCC Governing Board bent its hard-line stand against purchase of air time. The board said stations still have a primary obligation to provide free time for religious broadcasting, but that groups that “cannot get on the air otherwise” can buy time. Fore said the NCC itself still has not purchased radio and TV time. (In cooperation with Roman Catholic and Jewish groups, the NCC has television programs on the three major networks: “Directions,” on ABC; “For Our Time,” on CBS; and once-monthly, hour-long specials on NBC.)
The courts have made clear that stations hold the airwaves in the public trust, and have a responsibility to provide free public interest and religious programming, claimed Fore. “The move of electronic evangelists to buy more and more time will mean the churches of America will pay very, very dearly to stations for something they have the right to have free,” said Fore.
The NRB’s Armstrong acknowledges that religious broadcasting has become free enterprise, and says he is glad of it. The NRB was formed in 1944 by those seeking the right to buy air time, he said. The major networks had been providing air time mostly to liberal broadcasters, such as the old Federal Council of Churches, Armstrong said, and, in the process, stifling conservative and fundamentalist voices.
“The liberal groups are apprehensive about the electric church because we seem to be succeeding,” said Armstrong. (Time Magazine recently listed annual broadcasting revenues for the top TV preachers: Jim Bakker of the PTL Club, $51 million; Robertson, $47 million; Jerry Falwell, $46 million; Rex Humbard, $25 million; Jimmy Swaggart, $20 million; and Robert Schuller, $10 million.)
At the New York meeting (which he said he helped plan, by persuading Robertson to come), Armstrong supported deregulation of the broadcasting industry. Last September the Federal Communications Commission proposed deregulation of the nation’s 8,400 radio stations. The proposal would drop limits on radio advertising time, and requirements that stations have public affairs programming, perform surveys to determine community needs, and keep program logs. Armstrong and the NRB board have said the proposal would decrease government paperwork and regulation, rather than public interest programming.
But most spokesmen in New York argued that deregulation would abolish most public service and minority interest programming, neither of which is as popular or as profitable as music or general interest programming. The U.S. Catholic Conference and the United Church of Christ both have organized letter writing campaigns against deregulation. Because of the controversy, the FCC has extended for two months the period for public comment on the proposal.
Armstrong said the conservative broadcasters in general want less government regulation, while mainstream groups want more. The liberals “believe they know what the public needs” and want the government to require such programming, said Armstrong.
Fore and others argue that conservative radio-TV preachers by necessity speak only to please their listeners. The electronic church doesn’t really speak to tough issues, said Fore: “You don’t dare offend your audience, or the funds and audience will drop off.”
JOHN MAUST
Personalia
College appointments: Purdue University professor Donald Felker was named president of 1,100-student Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. A Geneva graduate, Felker succeeds the retiring president of 24 years, Edwin C. Clarke. William C. Nelsen, presently the vice-president of Saint Olaf College, was appointed president of Augustana College (American Lutheran) in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Ralph Phelps, Jr., president emeritus of Ouachita Baptist University (Ark.), is new president of Howard Payne University (Southern Baptist) in Brownwood, Texas.
Catholic charismatic leader Francis S. MacNutt recently informed superiors of plans to leave the priesthood to get married. MacNutt, who travels worldwide in a faith-healing ministry and speaks at charismatic gatherings, reportedly was warned that he faces excommunication from the church if he is married. The Catholic charismatic community for the most part has supported the church’s stand on a celibate priesthood.
