I spent my Christmas holiday listening to Jon Ronson’s Things Fell Apart on BBC Radio 4. This radio series investigates the origins of American culture wars, covering debates from AIDS to abortion to the national curriculum. Despite the vast range of topics explored, in most instances, Ronson argued that many debates were intensified and radicalised by the role of American televangelists in the 1980s. The term is a portmanteau of tele, from the Greek for ‘far off', and Christian ‘evangelism’, which provides some insight into this project:‘televangelists’ spread the word of God beyond their church walls through mass media. Ronson implies that the UK is caught up in many of these same culture wars but, to me, the broadcast preaching of televangelism feels foreign. You’d be hard-pressed to find such programming in the UK beyond the King’s College Christmas Carol Service. In fact, there have been continual pleas for the BBC to increase its religious broadcasting. This prompted my question: why isn’t there televangelism in the UK?
British Televangelism by Abbie Phelps
It is tempting to believe that the UK’s lack of televangelism is due to our ‘religious moderation’. However, the reality lies in the structure of our broadcasting, which prevents televangelism from being as profitable in the UK as it is in the US. As John Oliver highlights in this hilarious sketch, American televangelists essentially commit financial fraud, promising viewers salvation if they donate. One of the few forms of televangelism I could find in the UK is the 'low budget, family-run Christian cable station' Revelation TV. Ironically, this network actively distinguished itself from the profiteering of American televangelists, all whilst seeking the right to raise funds on air in 2007. Where John Oliver mocks the lavish lifestyles of American televangelists, the creator of Revelation TV insisted ‘we won't be buying a private jet, we won't be buying a car. It's all going to go into the pot and we'll be accountable to you. We will be accountable to God.’ Simply, there is no urge for evangelicals to broadcast in the UK because it wouldn’t be profitable. Regardless of these promises, I was somewhat disturbed that Ofcom, the British broadcasting regulator, had granted Revelation TV the right to raise funds on air.
The story of how American televangelists exploited broadcasting regulations in the 1980s serves as a cautionary tale. Initially, televangelism was as impoverished in the US as it finds itself here today. An American pioneer of the form, Rex Humbard, 'whose televangelism ministry once reached more parts of the globe than any other religious program', rose from obscurity. Both his parents were Pentecostal evangelicals, essentially destitute and travelling the US whilst living on campsites to convert others. As a child camping with his parents, Humbard was inspired by the mass congregation inside a nearby circus tent. He realised that his parents' preaching would be far more effective if they delivered it with the gusto of circus performers. This revelation serves as the basic principle of televangelism: adapting popular mediums to spread religious messages. Humbard would later do just that, preaching in his own tent with a capacity of over 6,000 and eventually creating his own television network. He also fulfils the profiteering stereotype of US televangelists, having been accused of fraud for buying homes with his viewers’ donations back in 1980. Ultimately, the content of Rex Humbard’s broadcasts was the same as the obscure sermons given by his parents but what changed was the medium.
Jon Ronson’s programme does cleverly identify the origins of many American cultural debates likening their creation to ‘pebbles thrown in a pond,’ the ripples of which would eventually grow into national debates. What is missing in this argument is the means through which these ripples were amplified, which was not inevitable but aided by their exposure in mass media. The title of Ronson’s series ‘Things Fell Apart’ is derived from William Butler Yeats' poem, The Second Coming:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Though Ronson is implying that arguments are spiralling - like the falcon’s ‘widening gyre’ - as they become increasingly extreme, I certainly read this passage differently. To me at least, the reason ‘Things Fell Apart’ is because ‘the falcon cannot hear the falconer’. This shifts our understanding of culture wars from an emphasis on arguments as uncontrollable - the confused falcon - to an interest in the guidance and limitations of arguments, in this case given by the falconer. My sense is that whilst often the same culture wars occur in Britain and the US, things did not fall apart here as arguments were guided by a falconer, taking the form of media regulators.
The interplay between broadcasting regulation and profitability was as critical for the 20th-century development of televangelism in America as it is for the likes of the UK's Revelation TV now. In the UK, broadcast media has traditionally been restricted to prevent profiteering. Though the 1922 precursor to the BBC was a private company, it was abandoned in 1926 for the establishment of the non-commercial enterprise we know today. Consequently, the early BBC broadcasting was based on what it thought audiences ought to believe, rather than a commercial concern for what audiences actually wanted to hear. John Reith, the first Director-General of the BBC, was certainly keen to impose his own views upon radio listeners. A staunch Calvinist himself, in AJP Taylor’s words, Reith used ‘the brute force of monopoly to stamp Christian morality on the British people.’ Though not dissimilar from an evangelical concern with spreading religious views, the objective was more moralistic than commercial. Ultimately, the BBC’s non-commercial origins arose from a simple structural issue: there were not enough airwaves to allow radio stations to be created by the free market. Hence, airwaves were deemed a national resource and controlled by the government department of the Post Office, which granted a broadcasting licence only to the BBC. By contrast, American media was ‘turning and turning in the widening gyre’ even from the 1920s. President Hoover would describe the uncontrolled broadcasting of the 1920s as if ‘10,000 telephone subscribers were crying through the air for their mates.' He feared that eventually ‘the ether will be filled with frantic chaos.’
There were attempts in the US to follow the British example of broadcast regulation, namely in declaring that radio waves were a national resource in 1934. This necessitated stations to now acquire a broadcasting licence from the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). However, US regulation was limited by its profitability. Whereas the BBC was funded by tariffs on wireless sets and a licence fee, the various American stations were reliant upon advertising for income even once regulated from the mid-1930s. The FCC initially hoped to align the financial interest of stations with the public interest, hoping to achieve the ‘national service’ provided by the BBC whilst continuing a, though regulated, market. This was incentivised by providing ‘public interest credit’ to stations for each instalment of educational or value-based broadcasting. Though religious broadcasting was deemed ‘value-based’, most stations provided only a limited number of moderate religious broadcasts and preferred other means to qualify for the FCC’s credit. Whereas the BBC’s broadcasting monopoly gave Reith the power to impose his religious views upon others, US stations were operating in a regulated market and so provided limited religious broadcasting for fear of alienating their audiences. Further, Christian Evangelists were continually denied broadcasting licences from the FCC. In the mid-20th century, it looked as if the British model of enforced Christian morality was more radical than the consumer-led religious moderation of American stations. All of this would change when Christian Evangelicals realised how to exploit the FCC’s regulations. Since the 1930s they had tried to pay stations to broadcast their evangelical adverts, with limited success. However, they found their solution in pressuring the FCC to allow paid for religious adverts to qualify for ‘public interest credit’ in 1960. Stations, regardless of the FCC’s claims that they were a market equivalent to a national service, naturally opted to take advertising revenue and government credit simultaneously. By 1977 paid for religious broadcasting accounted for 92% of all religious broadcasting. Thus, the falcon did not spiral inevitably but was able to do so by escaping the falconer’s control.
Notably, Jon Ronson’s Things Fell Apart traces the origin of many culture wars to America in the 1980s. Much of this is explained by Ronald Regan’s presidency, which was marked by a belief that free-market economics would generate social justice. This belief trickled down into broadcasting regulation. Reagan appointed Mark S. Fowler as a new Chair of the FCC. Fowler believed broadcasting had no cultural impact, likening television to any other appliance and deeming it nothing more than 'a toaster with pictures.' He began to deregulate and encourage market competition, namely by removing the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine, which had required broadcasters to act in the public interest and ensure balance in a similar fashion to the UK’s current regulator Ofcom. Rupert Murdoch would label this deregulation of the FCC as the ‘prostitution of the broadcaster's function.’ By the time Fowler ended his Chairmanship of the FCC in 1977 ‘broadcasting licences, once rigorously monitored by the FCC, became commodities traded on the open market.’ It was this deregulation that left American broadcasting vulnerable to a ‘widening gyre’ as evangelicals used religious fundraising to exploit the free market. The blame for the falcon no longer hearing the falconer lies with the FCC's deregulation, rather than the messages and strategies of televangelists. Not all American ministers pursued this course, with the Rev. William F Fore, President of the World Association for Christian Communication and producer of the first children’s religious television programming, himself criticising the spasm of televangelism in the 1980s. In fact, he locates the radicalisation of religious views in America with the surge in televangelism. Asking ‘why has there been such different religious development on the two sides of the Atlantic?’ he answers ‘a major difference is that in America there were scores of television evangelists and hundreds of radio preachers on the air, day and night.’ Regardless, American televangelism has impacted religious views across the Atlantic. In fact, the founder of Revelation TV had spent the 1980s in America, which prompted his return ‘to Britain on a mission to create a Christian television channel.’ Despite this, and even given the recent Ofcom permission for Revelation TV's fundraising, its impact has been limited due to British broadcasting regulations.
I thoroughly enjoyed Ronson’s series but am surprised that this British broadcaster in America didn’t draw out the unique broadcasting structure and experience of televangelism in the US. This ignorance is not uncommon, with a contemporary 1980s analysis of Prime Time Preachers noting that many academics doubted the influence of televangelism. It concluded that many ‘suffer from an educated ignorance about religious ferment. So the biggest story of our time gets the poorest coverage.’ Jon Ronson’s Things Fell Apart demonstrates that televangelism has had an impact- he continually references its role in exacerbating culture wars- but it also highlights that the role of religious broadcasting continues to go unnoticed today. The second stanza of Yeats’ poem begs ‘surely some revelation is at hand’ and my take is that televangelism has developed differently on either side of the Atlantic due to a variation in broadcasting regulation. I suppose it is fitting to compare the FCC and Ofcom to Yeats’ falconer and to hope that the falcon continues to hear them.
Alongside her role as our History Editor, Eliza Pepper is a musician and radio producer. This shapes her focus on sense history, particularly recovering the sound of the past. Though this may seem niche, her interests are eclectic, studying papers ranging from Ancient Greece to the modern-day in her three years studying History at Trinity Hall. She also has a soft spot for political thought.
Comments