Do TV Evangelists Build the Local Church?

Television evangelists have gained considerable prominence in our society. Their faces and names are familiar to TV viewers everywhere, the unchurched as well as the churched. Who doesn’t know who Robert Schuller or Pat Robertson is? People who rarely or even never attend church services can name at least a few famous television evangelists. In fact, they have probably watched at least part of a religious program at one time or another.

When television evangelism first came on the market, its promoters claimed that the new age of communicating the gospel to those outside the reach of the institutional church had arrived. Now, after at least a few years of observing viewing patterns and behavior, questions are being asked. Does television evangelism actually contribute to a deepening of our society’s religious character? Is society today more religious because of religious telecasting? Or has television evangelism robbed something from local church bodies? Is the electronic church thus more a secular or religious influence in today’s media-saturated world?

Sociologists study the origins and development of human society. One of the tasks of sociologists of religion is monitoring and interpreting religious changes in a society. Secularization is a term they use to describe long-term changes in religion and its position in contemporary society, a term the mass media have made synonymous with religious decline. Thus, for the lay person, a totally secular society is a society without religion. But for sociologists, the issue is much more complex.

First, sociologists are not sure that a totally secular, or religionless, society is possible. Second, adequate measures of how secular a society is becoming are difficult to establish. What behavior patterns adequately reflect the religiosity of a society? Likewise, what behavior patterns indicate the secularization of a society? Studies have shown that overt religious behavior may not get at the heart of the religious nature of man. Church attendance and membership patterns, and participation in religious activities, are visible measures for the sociologist, but they may tell more about the shifting popularity of particular social forms of religion than about how religious the society actually is. Television and the recent widespread popularity of religious personalities is a case in point. What is the electronic church telling sociologists about religion and its place in the twentieth century?

The late 1970s and early 1980s brought a surge of religious activity through the use of modern communications media, such as television. Through the tube, preachers like Jerry Falwell could potentially reach people who had no outside contact with the church. Television evangelists multiplied; the electronic media were heralded as the new way to communicate the gospel to a generation that was growing up without the influence of the church.

Using the electronic media for religious purposes is actually nothing new. What is new about much of contemporary religious telecasting is that it is not sponsored by particular denominational bodies, nor is it operated by sustaining time provided by the networks. Church comes to the viewer, who may purposely tune in Charles Stanley of First Baptist, Atlanta, or who may just happen to find himself watching, even if he has never entered a Baptist church in his life.

However the viewer finds himself watching the religious program, he does so in the privacy of his own home, free from the social constraints of church attendance or membership and the responsibilities that go with it. Through television a personality image of the evangelist is created. Computerized correspondence adds an aura of intimacy between the viewer and the preacher. The pseudo-intimacy of communication and interaction that results fits the anonymity and privatized nature of our age.

The largest audiences for religious telecasting are obtained by aggressive entrepreneurs who buy air time and pay for it from money solicited from the viewers themselves, regardless of the viewers’ denominational loyalties (or lack of them). Electronic evangelists and their organizations have experienced dynamic growth. Their high public visibility implies enormous public support.

Is the electronic church a substitute for the local church? Is the electronic church viewed largely by an unattached audience of occasional or regular viewers? Is it actually a further measure of secularization?

Research suggests that telecasting programs usually attracts viewers who already identify with the message, who are already connected with a church or denomination. The unreached masses are not the ones who support or listen to religious television. Females watch more than males; older people watch more than the young; the audience is largest in the South. These viewers all supplement their regular church activities with the electronic church. Denominational bodies have reacted frequently to the electronic church as though they were in competition.

The support base of television evangelists is thus largely those who are already converted. What sociologists don’t know is how much of the audience actually substitutes media religion for the local church. Evangelists themselves often exaggerate this segment of the audience; sociologists have no idea how big it is.

The electronic church has the potential of serving as a convenient television altar for a society of isolated individuals wary of commitment and involvement. If shopping and banking are soon to be done from a home video terminal, why can’t religion be adapted in a similar fashion? Whether the electronic church can actually serve the religious needs of people as effectively or more effectively than the local church remains an intriguing question for sociologists. And the answer may help modify our understanding of secularization.

Dr. Hiller is chairman of the Department of Sociology at the University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

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