Last July WBAL-TV, a Baltimore television station, tried out a series of twenty-second and sixty-second announcements offering a New Testament to anybody who wrote in for one.
Television viewers saw a picture of a church, followed by one of the Testaments, first closed and then open. The announcer explained the offer, and an envelope appeared with the station’s address. A few bars of a hymn introduced the spot, and a sentence identified the sponsor of the offer as the Pocket Testament League. That was all.
There was no “saturation” campaign. In July the spots were on four times a day; now the rate is about fifteen a week.
But the announcements have at times outdrawn “everything else on the station,” says Sydney King, WBAL-TV’s manager of community service, who writes the spots (subject to PTL approval) and handles the series.
People of different faiths have written in from Baltimore, from all over the rest of Maryland, from neighboring states, and from “other unexplainable points such as Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York,” Mr. King said. The PTL Business Men’s Council in Baltimore mailed 6,000 King James New Testaments last year; another 3,000 requests came in during January; and the council has ordered 10,000 more New Testaments (each costing PTL seventy-five cents to buy and mail).
The station charges nothing for the television time and often puts the spots next to the Huntley-Brinkley newscast, popular sports events, and other prime-time programs. But they drew mail even when put between sections of the 6 A.M. movie.
William D. Smoot, executive director of the Business Men’s Council, said that one-third of those who received Testaments in 1964 signed the PTL pledge card saying they would read a Scripture portion every day. (The television offer has no strings; those responding are “invited” to sign the card.) Hundreds of people indicated they received Christ as Saviour after getting and reading the Testament.
Behind the campaign is an unlikely combination of circumstances and people: William M. Patterson, Jr., a PTL council member who thought of extending PTL’s outreach via television; his wife, professionally known as Ann Mar, strategically placed as a WBAL-TV executive; Mr. King, an active Episcopal layworker, who wondered what would happen if evangelistic colportage were presented in the form of a TV giveaway; the PTL council leadership and its willingness to experiment; and probably, if ironically, Mrs. Madalyn Murray, the Baltimore atheist who was one of the litigants in the Supreme Court Bible-reading and prayer case.
Protestant Panorama
Three thousand persons turned out for a memorial service in London last month for missionaries and others recently slain in the Congo. The service was sponsored by the Evangelical Alliance.
The United Presbyterian Commission on Religion and Race turned over $60,000 of its $321,952 budget for 1965 to the National Council of Churches for use “in the NCC’s race work.” A grant of $5,000 was approved for legal representation of civil rights workers. Another $10,000 was earmarked for a “program of team visitations” to determine conformity of presbytery racial practices to national church policy.
A special study committee will ask the Southern Baptist Convention to approve membership in a North American arm of the Baptist World Alliance. The group will recommend that the new agency be labeled a “committee” rather than a “fellowship.”
Baptists in Brazil launched a nationwide evangelistic campaign with a rally in Rio de Janeiro attended by some 150,000. The service was preceded by a parade that stretched for two miles.
Participants in an exploratory consultation held under auspices of the Methodist Board of Christian Social Concerns recommended that a policy statement on spiritual healing be drafted for presentation to the denomination’s 1968 General Conference.
Personalia
Dr. James Daane, assistant editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, won a George Washington Honor Medal Award from the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, for an editorial, “The Ground of Freedom,” which appeared in the July 3, 1964, issue. (Reprints of the editorial may be secured by writing to CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 1014 Washington Building, Washington, D. C.)
Dr. and Mrs. Ulises Hernandez of Mexico became the first Latin American Methodist missionaries last month. They were commissioned for service in Ecuador under the United Andean Mission, a cooperative venture of four major U. S. denominations. Hernandez is both a medical doctor and an ordained minister.
Dr. Masao Takenaka, prominent Japanese theologian and chairman of the lay witness committee of the East Asia Christian Conference, was appointed dean of Doshisha University School of Theology in Kyoto, Japan.
Dr. Orville H. McKay, 51, minister of the First Methodist Church in Midland, Michigan, was elected tenth president of Garrett Theological Seminary, a Methodist graduate school of theology affiliated with Northwestern University. McKay, a graduate of Asbury College and Drew University Graduate School, will succeed Dr. Dwight E. Loder at Garrett.
