Religious Broadcasters: Pressing the Issues

Over the years, the growing National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) organization has grown accustomed to having the president of the United States appear at its annual Washington convention. The 1977 meeting was held the week after Jimmy Carter’s inauguration, and even though the White House staff never confirmed that the President would attend, there were high expectations that he would show up. He didn’t.

Carter’s name was on the program as the special “invited guest” at the Sunday-night opening session. After he did not appear for that, rumors made the rounds that he would be at the final banquet on Wednesday. He ate elsewhere.

NRB members who stayed in Washington long enough to read the following day’s newspapers learned that while they were hearing a written message from the new President, he was at a Washington Press Club party honoring the new Congress.

The President’s greetings, read by fellow Georgian Jimmy Waters, chairman of the Southern Baptist Radio and Television Commission, assured the broadcasters of his “warm support and understanding.” In remarks at the Press Club social across town, Carter joked about his celebrated Playboy magazine interview and about the possibility of sending a copy of it to guide Vice President Walter Mondale during his visit to Paris. Mondale’s wife was also a guest at the party.

The President’s absence from the NRB convention was all the more conspicuous since several prominent broadcasters had taken issue with him over the Playboy interview during the month before he was elected. The NRB had also arranged two September conferences at which President Gerald Ford, Carter’s opponent, gave his views to Christian leaders. Carter was interviewed by three NRB representatives later in the campaign.

Carter’s now famous sister, Ruth Stapleton, did attend the convention. She was there to promote her “inner healing” books and ministry. At the banquet she was seated next to the principal speaker, evangelist Billy Graham. She was also featured at a news conference with Graham earlier the same day.

Reporters grilled the President’s sister on her theological views, focusing on comments about hell she had made earlier on a network television show. She suggested that the context of her disputed denial of eternal punishment was an attempt to show God’s love, but she did not retract the denial. Her ministry does not emphasize the “afterlife,” she said in answer to a question about whether she believed in universal salvation. She revealed that she had conducted “inner healing” sessions for Hindus and members of other non-Christian groups, but she indicated that her “ulterior motive” was to “bring people to Christ.” Asked for her understanding of the term “born again,” Mrs. Stapleton declared that she is constantly born again in new experiences.

Graham, questioned by reporters after Mrs. Stapleton’s session, praised her for “going around the country to exalt the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,” but he stressed that his ministry is concerned with both “this life and the life to come.” This brought applause from scores of NRB participants at the conference.

In both his news conference and his banquet address, Graham made a point of applauding the often maligned Sunday-morning “religious ghetto” broadcasts. He reported that he had recently been listening to the programs and that he disagreed with those who criticized them for delivering poor service or poor quality to their audiences. “I thank God for them,” he told his audience, again evoking applause.

The evangelist also expressed gratitude for the signs of evangelical resurgence in the United States and elsewhere, but he cautioned that “harvest time never lasts long.” He urged the broadcasters to “give yourselves to prayer” while taking advantage of current freedoms to broadcast the Gospel.

Two of the most prominent symbols of the nation’s evangelical awareness, Charles Colson and Eldridge Cleaver, were seen and heard at the convention. They embraced each other at a news conference, and the former Black Panther leader said he had found Colson—the reputed “hatchet man” of the Nixon administration—“to be a very understanding person” because of his prison experience. About Cleaver, Colson commented: “I’m glad the Lord Jesus Christ got him.” Colson announced that he had agreed to let his story, Born Again, be made into a movie by Hollywood promoter Robert L. Munger, described as the originator of The Omen and “a brother” recommended to Colson by singer Pat Boone. The screenplay will be written by veteran television writer Walter Bloch, who identified himself to journalists and broadcasters at the convention as “born again like my dear brothers [Colson and Munger] at this table.” While Colson insisted that the movie will be a true portrayal of his spiritual experience, the producer said it would be a “secular” picture for general theater showing and not a “church film.”

Two lame-duck members of the Federal Communications Commission challenged the broadcasters to continue their fight for good alternative programming. Chairman Richard E. Wiley, whose term expires this year, and commissioner Benjamin L. Hooks, who is leaving to take over the top executive post at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, were both applauded when they spoke of the necessity of presenting broadcast fare that will enhance and not degrade the nation’s moral and spiritual values. Both FCC members emphasized, however, that government censorship was not the way to get more decent programs.

From within their own ranks the broadcasters heard a challenge to speak up as prophets on current issues. In accepting the NRB’s award of excellence in program production, speaker Joel Nederhood of the “Back to God Hour” cited abortion as one pressing issue. He told an overflow crowd at the convention’s congressional breakfast, “Just two days after we installed our President with prayers and hymns, it became our sad duty to recall the date that will live in infamy for the United States, January 22, 1973, the day abortion on demand was legalized. Because of this, we as broadcasters and you as legislators and judges express our callings in an environment of grave moral confusion, expressed in the devaluation of human life itself.”

While last year’s joint NRB—National Association of Evangelicals convention was larger, this year’s NRB meeting had a record attendance of broadcasters and guests. A total of 1,300 registered, compared with 150 ten years ago. The organization added nineteen new members this year to bring the roster up to 769 from 104 on the rolls ten years ago. The NRB membership is made up of station operators and program producers. Ben Armstrong, the executive secretary, was cited for his ten years of work in the organization.

Curses

The whole thing began with a routine sort of curse in the Scottish Hebridean island of Lewis. The local cinema had scandalized Calvinist opinion by showing Jesus Christ Superstar, and the Free Presbyterian minister in Stornoway weighed in with a curse that gave a welcome boost to the sparse attendance. Nevertheless, coincidence or not, the cinema ceased operations thereafter. Rejoicing was premature, however, and the efficacy of the curse is now being questioned, for announcement has been made that the erstwhile cinema is reopening—as a bingo hall.

Thomas F. Zimmerman, Assemblies of God general superintendent and retiring first vice-president of the NRB, was cited for serving twenty-five years as an officer. In a surprise request read at a business session, he asked not to be reelected. He has attended all thirty-four of the organization’s conventions and served several terms as president. In response to a reporter’s question, Zimmerman said his stepping down from NRB office was in no way related to a controversy in the Assemblies of God involving him and aired in a recent Jack Anderson column.

The current president, Abe C. Van Der Puy of the World Missionary Radio Fellowship (HCJB), was named to another one-year term. In accordance with NRB practice, two nominees were presented for each major office, but members chose Van Der Puy over Georgian Jimmy Waters. Waters continues on the board. Zimmerman will also continue to serve on the board and on its executive committee.

For the first time this year, the NRB will be operating on a budget of more than a quarter of a million dollars. Projected expenditures for 1977 total $322,500, compared with a 1976 budget of $244,700 and actual 1976 expenditures of $276,425.

At a board meeting during the convention, the NRB’s backing was given to an ad hoc group of station operators who have put up a war chest of over $10,000 to challenge the current fee system imposed on them by music copyright holders. The group of over 100 stations organized a year ago, but they are operating independently of the NRB. They anticipate a savings of over $1 million for religious stations if they can negotiate a new contract.

Casting For News

Burgeoning interest in evangelical Christianity in 1976 is being followed in 1977 by expanding news coverage of evangelicals—especially on radio.

Broadcasters visiting exhibits at last month’s Washington, D.C., convention of National Religious Broadcasters found more offerings on the news front than ever before. The newest is a daily service being planned by Forrest Boyd, a veteran White House radio-network correspondent who is now communications director of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Details remain to be worked out, but Boyd expects to produce the newscast from BGEA headquarters in Minneapolis even though a separate company might be established as the parent body. He anticipates a staff of five or six journalists, with about half of them working in Washington.

A brochure available to broadcasters at the convention described the new service as offering “not exclusively Christian or religious news, but news that is of special interest to Christians.” Boyd is completing arrangements with United Press International to transmit the programs over its lines. In addition to news feeds five days a week, Boyd also plans a weekend interview feature. Stations will pay about $11 per week for the material and line charges.

Boyd said he began working on the idea long before he went to the BGEA last fall. Station operators at the NRB convention a year ago approached him about the possibility of developing the service.

The NRB itself launched a news service in 1974 in connection with the International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne. The fifteen-minute weekly program, “World Religious News,” continued under NRB sponsorship until the end of 1976. It was not paying its own way, however, and the NRB Board decided to drop it as a nonessential function of the organization.

“World Religious News” is being continued under the auspices of the Walter F. Bennett advertising agency at its Philadelphia office. Bennett handles the production of radio and television programs for a number of Christian organizations, including the BGEA. Robert Straton, account executive with Bennett, is in charge of the new enterprise, but he said that it has been set up as a separate company. The principals in the Bennett agency are the major stockholders of the new company, however.

Kathy Osbeck, who joined “World Religious News” last year, has moved to Philadelphia to be the producer of the program. Broadcaster Denny Milgate, once the producer of the show when it was under NRB auspices, is working with her one day a week. The program is mailed to stations. Bennett is doubling the rates (to $35 per month, air mail) in the hopes of making it pay off. Straton also anticipates expanding the service, possibly offering it to pastors and other Christian leaders for non-broadcast use.

Milgate, meanwhile, as started a new program featuring interviews with prominent Christians. He is working initially with publishers, and the program, “First Hand,” is given to stations without charge. Authors of new books are the principal guests on the two weekly programs.

The newer offerings share a market with a variety of other news-oriented programs. Most of the older ones are produced by missionary organizations to inform supporters of their own work and not to report on a broad spectrum of evangelical activity, however. Boyd and Osbeck assured questioners that their shows will not be pushing the work of any particular organization.

Among the other religious news programs available to Christian and secular stations are “Ecumedia,” produced under the auspices of the National Council of Churches, and “Church World News,” produced jointly by the Lutheran Church in America and the American Lutheran Church.

ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS

Only Males Need Apply

The Vatican last month said it again, only this time there were more people listening: the Roman Catholic Church cannot admit women to the priesthood. The tradition of conferring priestly ordination only upon men began with Christ, said a 6,000-word paper approved by the Pope, and the church must remain faithful to Christ’s example.

As expected, the pronouncement has provoked widespread expressions of protest, even demonstrations outside churches by activists who want equal rights for women in the church. U.S. bishops endorsed the paper but said women should have more rights.

Religion in Transit

Despite stiff opposition from church leaders, a new ruling by the Internal Revenue Service went into effect last month. It requires most church-supported colleges, universities, hospitals, and nursing homes, as well as certain other organizations with church ties, to file an informational return known as Form 990. Most secular tax-exempt educational and charitable groups have been subject to the requirement for years. Total income and its sources, expenses, major salaries, and names of officers are among the items on the form. Church leaders claim it amounts to intrusion by the government in religious affairs.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators turned out for the fourth annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., last month. Legislators were among those at a rally outside the Capitol calling for a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion. Participants then marched down Pennsylvania Avenue and held another rally near the White House, where President Carter was entertaining diplomats.

Southern Baptists in Texas this month launched a four-week $1.5 million media blitz to give “living proof” (the program’s theme slogan) through testimonies of well-known personalities that Christ can change lives. The project is sponsored by the 4,400 Southern Baptist churches in Texas. Coach Grant Teaff of Baylor University and actress Jeanette Clift George (The Hiding Place) are co-chairpersons. A 1975 survey showed that of the 12 million people in Texas, 4.7 million were not members of any Christian group.

Describing himself as “just an everyday Baptist,” Arkansas state legislator Arlo Tyer of Pocahontas has proposed a $1,500 tax on unmarried couples, according to news reports. “God created the home,” said Tyer, 65, “and it’s being broken up by permissiveness.”

Fifteen religious groups last month filed stockholder resolutions with five major U.S. banks in an effort to halt hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to South Africa. The groups (including the United Presbyterian Church, Presbyterian Church in the U.S., United Methodist Church, Episcopal Church, United Church of Christ, Union Seminary, and several Catholic bodies) own nearly $10 million in bank stock. The action is in protest against South Africa’s apartheid policies.

Thanks to a generous bequest, a Jesuit high school in Phoenix has found itself the new landlord of a topless dance bar, an X-rated movie theater, a pornography shop, and a Salvation Army thrift shop. School officials say they will sell the property “when the price is right.” The deceased willed the properties to Brophy prep shortly before her husband of two years began developing leases for adult entertainment on them.

Personalia

David J. du Plessis, 71, a kind of traveling ambassador for the charismatic movement, is the object of controversy in some circles, but he claims it is the result of misunderstanding and distortion of a remark he made last year about the Pope. During a Canadian newspaper interview, du Plessis was asked what he thought of the doctrine of papal infallibility. He replied that God had used it to bring about rapid renewal in the Catholic Church. “God only had to deal with one man to renew an entire church,” he said. “Papal infallibility is not a problem for me.” Somehow his remarks (repeated in some charismatic meetings) have been twisted by some to indicate he personally believes in papal infallibility (he doesn’t).

World Scene

For a while it appeared that Wycliffe Bible Translators would have to leave Peru because of opposition in some circles, but last month the government authorized Wycliffe’s academic arm, the Summer Institute of Linguistics, to continue its work there for the next five years. The Expreso, a leading daily, editorialized in Wycliffe’s behalf.

Anglican Burgess Carr, general secretary of the All Africa Conference of Churches, last month called for the countries of Africa to declare war against Rhodesia. Within three days, he said, power could be transferred to the nation’s black majority.

At least ten million Hindu pilgrims sought salvation last month through immersion in the Ganges River at the climax of Kumbh Mela, Hinduism’s holiest ritual bathing festival, according to news dispatches. The ancient festival, which takes place every twelve years, is also a sort of parliament of Hinduism, the faith of most of India’s 600 million people. Held near Allahabad, it is believed to be the largest mass gathering in the world.

Divorce with remarriage is forbidden by the Spanish constitution, but the topic is a growing storm center of public debate. Legislation permitting divorce is being considered by a government commission. Opponents of the ban claim it hurts society and has made adultery—a prison-punishable criminal offense—“rampant.” Government figures show there are some 200,000 persons legally separated but barred from remarrying. Currently, under a 1953 concordat with the Vatican, only ecclesiastical courts can dissolve (annul) marriages, which it does by declaring them non-existent in the first place. Few annulment petitions are successful.

An episode of the American television series “Executive Suite” that dealt with abortion and lesbianism was banned from Irish television because of “sensitive moral and legal issues which are inappropriate for treatment in a program of this type,” according to an Irish TV official. (In the United States, CBS said none of its affiliates had refused to show the controversial episode.)

The World Council of Churches appealed last month to President Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina to take “urgent steps to find educator Mauricio Lopez, a well-known ecumenical leader and WCC commission member kidnaped from his home in Mendoza on New Year’s Day. Lopez’s family reportedly received a letter from him stating he had not been subjected to any pressure but giving no indication of where he was being held or why.

Baptist work in Angola continues despite renewed fighting and the absence of Baptist missionaries, say Southern Baptist sources. Some churches are packed on Sundays. Several congregations plan to ordain their lay leaders. Bibles, say leaders, are much in demand but in short supply.

Authorities in the Philippines are investigating faith healers who allegedly pay off travel agents abroad to send them patients. The Board of Medicine recently declared faith healing to be “an illegal practice of medicine.” The type of faith healing under scrutiny is practiced by many people, a number of them uneducated entrepreneurs who employ magic, questionable potions, and the like. For the most part, patients have been reluctant to testify.

Executive Paul Hansen of the Lutheran World Federation has announced tentative plans whereby German-speaking Lutheran congregations in the Soviet Union will be provided with Bibles. Officials of the government’s Council of Religious Affairs suggested the possibility, he said.

Eleven pastors for the 350,000-member Evangelical Luthern Church of Latvia in the Soviet Union have been ordained in recent months, according to news sources. All graduated from the Theological Institute in Riga, which has about forty students, most of them over age 30.

During the first year of legalized abortion in France, more than 45,000 abortions were reported.

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