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Those of you who track religious news through outlets like ChristianityToday.com's daily Weblog will have picked up some pops and crackles emanating from the National Religious Broadcasters. The trouble began in January, when the organization's new president, Wayne Pederson, said in an interview that Christian radio had become too political (specifically, too far right) and that spiritual subjects like theology and evangelism should be broadcasters' focus. Immediately, radio personalities for whom conservative social commentary is a staple—James Dobson, Donald Wildmon, and Tim LaHaye among them—suggested that Pederson's views did not represent the NRB.

Under pressure, Pederson resigned in February. The NRB executive committee voted 7-1 to accept Pederson's resignation (compared to a 47-36 margin in the full board vote). But it ain't over.

Alleging that "power boys" and "600-pound gorillas" unduly influenced earlier proceedings, Moody Broadcasting VP Robert Neff has written a letter demanding Pederson's reinstatement and criticizing opponents' behavior. Dobson called the letter "vicious and uncalled for," then declared the conflict a "full-scale split in evangelicalism."

Dobson overstates his point. Lots of people who consider themselves evangelicals don't even listen to Christian radio, let alone care who leads the NRB. Sixty years ago, waves in the broadcast community might have sent tsunamis through evangelicalism, because religious radio was one of just a few things binding conservative Christians together. Today, though, the effect likely will be a ripple.

In his very helpful book Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (Oxford, 1997), Calvin College history professor and provost Joel A. Carpenter argues that parachurch organizations formed the core of evangelicalism in the 1930s and '40s. A rough summary of his story goes like this: Protestant conservatives lost some key battles in the 1920s, both in the public sphere (Prohibition, evolution) and in their denominations. But instead of giving up, as liberals hoped, conservatives quietly regrouped.

Some fundamentalists founded splinter denominations and seminaries, but most conservatives stayed in their drifting denominations while seeking fellowship with like-minded Christians elsewhere. That "elsewhere" came to include summer camps, Bible colleges, alternative publications, faith missions, and Christian radio. This is why evangelicalism is defined not by hierarchy, headquarters, or creed, but by entities like World Vision, Focus on the Family, Fuller Seminary, and Christianity Today—insofar as evangelicalism is defined at all.

No single type of parachurch program outranked all others in the formation of evangelical identity, but radio occupied a unique position at the intersection of several of the movement's key emphases. Evangelicals have always been populists, making use of the catchy and new, and radio was certainly the "wave of the future" in the '30s and '40s. Radio was also a verbal medium, well suited to the message of Christians rooted in the Word. Most importantly, radio gave revival preachers—perennial evangelical superstars—an audience much larger than the crowds they could draw under crusade tents.

The NRB was founded in 1944 by conservative broadcasters who had more listeners than clout. In the 1920s and '30s these broadcasters had achieved such popularity that their mainline critics tried to silence them by asking network powerhouses CBS and NBC not to carry their "sectarian" programs. The block failed; conservatives bought time for their programs on networks that needed the money (ABC and the Mutual Broadcasting System) and built their own networks. Memories of this saga, as well as skirmishes with the generally unsympathetic Federal Radio Commission, gave the NRB a defensive edge.

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March (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46