Political Hang-Ups for Religious Broadcasting

The National Religious Broadcasters’ twenty-fifth convention last month killed a resolution against political “extremism” on the air that NRB’s board had proposed to protect the reputation of gospel broadcasting.

Despite such hang-ups, NRB membership has doubled to 250 organizations in its first year with a full-time executive, the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Armstrong. Most members are producers of syndicated programs, but nearly 100 are local stations, which became eligible to join three years ago. Many get considerable income from time purchased by preachers who promote conservative politics in their programs.

None of the major right-wing radio preachers belongs to NRB, which specifies that members must have gospel proclamation as their purpose.

Much chat at the Washington, D. C., meetings centered on the campaign of one of these, the Rev. Carl McIntire, against the Federal Communications Commission and its “fairness doctrine” curbing personal attacks. NRB has no official policy on the matter. Armstrong, 43, a United Presbyterian who used to be director of Trans World Radio, says “the principle of fairness is inherent in biblical truth, and is woven into the principles upon which this country was founded.” But he stops short of endorsing the FCC’s rules for applying its “fairness doctrine.” The rules are currently under review in the U. S. Supreme Court.

Last year the FCC said that if a station carries an attack on a person or organization, it must notify the victim of what was said and offer equal time to reply. If it doesn’t, it faces fines up to $10,000 or FCC refusal to renew its license.

General Director Clyde W. Taylor of the National Association of Evangelicals—who begins syndicating his own daily five-minute commentaries on current issues this month—said the NAE has found no evidence that the FCC has been “guilty of abuse” in enforcing fairness.

FCC Chairman Rosel Hyde told the convention that until 1949, the government had banned all opinion on the airwaves, and that “the right to freely express views depends on” fairness rules. He predicted the Supreme Court will support the FCC.

NRB is affiliated with the NAE and uses its doctrinal statement to screen members. NAE’s Taylor said the broadcast group began partly to upgrade ethics from the laissez-faire days when “much of the product brought little respect to the Gospel.” In a speech at the latest NRB convention, CHRISTIANITY TODAY Editor Carl F. H. Henry criticized “personal abuse and irresponsible indictments by radical extremists who abandon logic midway for exaggeration and misconstruction.”

The NRB board’s first policy resolution in years opposed the “extremism” of “entrenched leftist and rightist positions. Seeing their position as the only one, some broadcasters have brought the entire cause into ill-repute by their extreme views.” Convention approval was considered a formality, but David Lutzweiler of the American Mission to Greeks charged that the resolution was a “dishonest” and “cheap” political maneuver. Press and public would assume, he said, that “we mean the John Birchers and the Carl McIntires, and I don’t think it would be fair to them.” Another speaker feared divisiveness, and the resolution was tabled before anyone could speak in its favor.

Lutzweiler, a John Birch Society member who called himself a “right-wing extremist,” had circulated a paper earlier that day charging that convention speaker William Bundy, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, was guilty of “left-wing extremism (to put it mildly).”

NRB’s efforts to win FCC respect and maintain freedom for broadcasting of the Gospel apparently have a foreign counterpart. John Norris, the McIntire ally whose domestic station is fighting “fairness” before the U. S. Supreme Court, also owns one of the three private short-wave licenses in the country. Insiders think his station’s line-up of right-wing political material beamed overseas made the FCC decide not to grant any more overseas licenses to independents.

The radio station owned by McIntire’s seminary near Philadelphia is currently involved in a lengthy set of FCC hearings. Nineteen ecumenical and civic groups are trying to get the FCC to refuse license renewal on the “fairness” issue. In reply to the charge that its religious and political material is one-sided, WXUR supporters say the other side is heard on the other area radio stations. A ruling by FCC Examiner H. Gifford Irion is expected soon.

With all the excitement on extremism, nobody said much about the strange fact that NRB remains aloof from its worldwide counterpart, International Christian Broadcasters. At the convention five years ago, ICB was hailed as a new body for “greater cohesion and closer cooperation among evangelical broadcasters.” It was supposed to incorporate NRB and the missionary radio federation. Today the Canadian and British groups of evangelical broadcasters belong to ICB, plus nearly fifty other organizations. In June the Rev. Abe Thiessen leaves station ELWA in Liberia to become ICB’s first full-time director. The headquarters will be moved to Minneapolis.

ICB elder statesman Clarence Jones of station HCJB in Ecuador said the “indirect approach to the field of gospel broadcasting” should be used, but broadcasters are afraid because their “supporters simply wouldn’t understand.” But the Southern Baptists’ radio-TV director, Paul Stevens, doesn’t have to depend on money from faithful listeners. He says, “Our aim is not to win men to Christ.… Radio and TV are not instruments for primary evangelistic use.” Rather, his programs “try to lead people to write to us.” Last year the office spent $500,000 processing sixty tons of mail and sending out biblical materials in response. Some 5,000 of the writers reported Christian decisions.

The Southern Baptist agency, second only to the National Council of Churches in Protestant programming on major networks, gets material on four-fifths of the nation’s radio stations. Its TV productions, strong on cultural content, have been carried on all three networks.

Even though their audiences are composed mostly of Christians, religious radio stations are also a growing force on the American scene, with great potential for evangelism. In Canada, such stations are not permitted.

Another possible gain for religious programming is use of cable TV systems. Former FCC Chairman Frederick Ford and Bell Telephone’s John Pierce, the “father of Telstar,” said many of the burgeoning cable systems need programs to fill up their channels. With distribution through wires rather than over the air, the limit on the number of broadcast frequencies is broken, and the only cost for religious groups would be program production.

It remains to be seen what use religion will make of the non-commercial educational stations, now buoyed by significant foundation support and a $47 million authorization from Congress last year. Henry cautioned NRB not to rely just on the educational stations to promote “facets of culture that preserve human meaning and worth, [or] to yield the major networks to what is indifferent to these values, and even jeopardizes them.”

MISCELLANY

The U. S. Supreme Court let stand a ruling that a school prayer in which God’s name was deleted in favor of “You” was still unconstitutional. It also outlawed Louisiana’s payments to parents sending their children to private, non-sectarian schools to circumvent public-school integration.

Toronto’s city council opposed advice from all three city dailies in using a technicality to kill the proposal of Avenue Road Church (Christian and Missionary Alliance) to build an $18 million apartment house complex for senior citizens with $2.2 million city support.

Pope Paul advised Catholics in Italy to vote for candidates who uphold church unity, an apparent reference to church stands against divorce and pornography.

Under an East German law passed last month churches are moved from public to private status, eliminating criminal punishment for blasphemy and disruption of worship; but the code says no one may be persecuted for his faith or prevented from attending services.

Americans United is challenging an Ohio appropriation of $15 million for supplemental education in the next eighteen months in which parochial schools will get the same benefits as public schools.

A dozen Protestant mission workers bound for Colombia have been awaiting visas to enter for more than a month, raising fears of a new intolerance like that prior to 1958.

The United Nations narcotics commission expressed deep concern at health dangers from “continuing abuse of LSD and similar substances” and urged nations to ban their use except for monitored medical and scientific purposes.

Released captive U. S. Marines Steven Nelson and Michael Roha reported that after capture by the Viet Cong they were offered a Gideon Bible, plus other gifts.

A U. S. circuit court ruled that the makers of Lucky Strike cigarettes are liable for the lung-cancer death of Edwin Green, Sr., of Miami. Damages are yet to be set.

Sermons from Science will reopen its pavilion at the Montreal Expo site for five months this summer, aided by free municipal electricity and maintenance.

In the first eight months under a new law, 120 legally approved abortions were performed in Colorado.

PERSONALIA

Yale University Chaplain William Sloane Coffin, Jr., and four others pleaded innocent January 29 to federal charges of conspiring to counsel draft-dodging. The defendants then marched to Boston’s Arlington Street Church for a service where twenty-one more draft cards were turned in.

Newly resigned Bishop Chandler Sterling plans to found “PARDON,” which will run halfway houses for what he estimates as 2,200 Episcopal priests who have suffered breakdowns under the strain of their work.

Latest person ordered to testify in the New Orleans probe of the Kennedy assassination was Thomas Edward Bekham, 27, described as an “entertainer-evangelist.”

Krister Stendahl, New Testament scholar who was a runner-up for Lutheran primate of Sweden last year, was nominated as dean of Harvard University’s Divinity School to succeed Samuel H. Miller, an American Baptist.

Major J. Jones, Methodist district superintendent in Chattanooga, was named president-director of predominantly Negro Gammon Theological Seminary, Atlanta.

Former Dean J. Bernhard Anderson and H. Gordon Harland became the fifth and sixth teachers to quit the Drew University seminary faculty to protest the ouster of Dean Charles Ranson.

Paul A. Hopkins, head of the American Bible Society’s Africa office, was named African secretary for the United Presbyterian mission board. He served thirteen years as executive of the Evangelical Foundation in Philadelphia.

Editor Melville Bell Grosvenor of National Geographic and William Wiseman of Tulsa, pastor of the second-largest United Presbyterian congregation, were named co-chairmen of a $3 million development drive for the National Presbyterian Church and Center.

Norman Nagel of the divinity faculty at Cambridge University, England, was appointed dean of the chapel at Valparaiso University (Missouri Synod Lutheran). He is vice-chairman of England’s Evangelical Lutheran Church.

William H. R. Willikens plans to retire as Christian education teacher at Crozer Theological Seminary (American Baptist) to direct student teaching at Slippery Rock (Pennsylvania) State College.

Donald R. Woodward, dean of the cathedral in Kansas City, Missouri, was named vicar of Trinity Episcopal Church, New York City, the Wall Street parish with perhaps the nation’s top clergy salary.

John Chapin, head publicist for Washington Cathedral (Episcopal), has spent much of his free time in recent months as organizer of District of Columbia Citizens for Romney.

Theodore F. Adams, 69, pastor of First Baptist Church, Richmond, for thirty-two years and former president of the Baptist World Alliance, plans to retire June 30. In a cover story, Time said most Southern Baptists considered him “the finest Baptist preacher in the world.”

Sociologist-priest Donald R. Campion, 46, was confirmed in Rome as editor-in-chief of the Jesuit weekly America (circulation 93,000).

Jesuit priest George H. Dunne, former assistant to the president of Georgetown University, was named by the Vatican and the World Council of Churches to set up their joint conference on world economics set for Lebanon, April 21–27.

In continuing Curia changes, Pope Paul named Francis Cardinal Brennan to the sacraments office as the first American to head a major Vatican agency. The appointment of a Dutch cardinal to head the office on Eastern churches means five of the twelve major offices are now led by non-Italians.

An Anglican tribunal in Melbourne, Australia, dismissed Neil Glover, 46, as a vicar for marrying a young Sunday-school teacher in his church while his divorced wife was still alive. He was not unfrocked and will seek a parish elsewhere.

Bob Finley, founder of International Students Inc. in 1953, will move into full-time speaking and evangelism and be replaced as president by Hal Guffey.

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