Televangelism
In the
USA and
Canada, a
televangelist (
portmanteau for "
television evangelist") is a
religious minister (often a
Christian priest or
minister) who devotes a large portion of his (or her) ministry to
TV broadcasts to a regular viewing and listening audience. A number of televangelists are also regular pastors or ministers in their own halls of worship, but the majority of their followers come from their TV and
radio audiences.
Evangelists have been using
telecommunications to convert people to Christianity since the earliest days of radio. One of the more famous American radio evangelists of the early
20th century was Father
Charles Coughlin, whose strongly anti-
Communist and
anti-Semitic radio ministry reached millions of listeners during the
Great Depression of the
1930s.
While largely
Catholic in the North, this phenomenon has been almost entirely of the
evangelical Protestant variety in the USA
Midwest and
South, where it formed as an outgrowth of
revival-tent preaching, which experienced a resurgence during the
Great Depression as itinerant traveling preachers drove from town to town, living off
donations.
In the
1970s and
1980s, the rise of evangelical Protestant Christianity created well-known televangelists, with their own media networks, news exposure, and political influence. Many of these figures and their ministries retain substantial influence today.
Although televangelism began as a peculiarly American phenomenon, some US televangelists now reach a wider audience through international broadcast networks, and domestically produced televangelism is increasingly present in some other nations such as
Brazil. Some countries do not permit this kind of open-access evangelism, and religious broadcasts, where they exist, are produced by the TV companies rather than private interest groups.
Some televangelists have been at the center of considerable controversy, as some of their ministries believe in the
charismatic doctrine of
divine healing. This method, seen as
pseudoscience and charlatanry by
skeptics (and by many Christians) has been exposed as a
fraud in the cases of some televangelists, such as
Marjoe Gortner and
Peter Popoff.
A series of such scandals in the
1980s resulted in the fall from grace of several famous televangelists, including
Jim Bakker, who served a
prison sentence for financial improprieties associated with his ministry, and
Jimmy Swaggart, who made a famous tearful confession to a dalliance with a
prostitute. Most of these televangelists have continued preaching, nonetheless, even though their audiences may be a small fraction of what they were at the height of their popularity.
Pat Robertson and
Jerry Falwell achieved further notoriety in
2001 with their conviction that the
September 11 terrorist attacks constituted divine
retribution provoked by rampant sexual
immorality.
In 2005, Robertson announced on
The 700 Club that
Venezuelan president
Hugo Chávez ought to be "taken out" by the
US government. Many viewed this as a call for
assassination. Later that year, in November, Robertson warned the town of
Dover, Pennsylvania of a severe
natural disaster following the defeat of the local school board for advocating
intelligent design. In 2006, Robertson said God smote
Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon after he withdrew troops from the
Gaza Strip.
* In 2001, German
video artist
Christian Jankowski collaborated with televangelist Pastor Peter Spencer to create a piece called "The Holy Artwork." In the video, Jankowski collapses on the stage and the pastor delivers a long sermon about art, using Jankowski's work in
video as a metaphor to explain Christian beliefs. While this video was a type of collaboration between the artist and pastor, they each have separate objectives, and it is ultimately not clear whether the piece is mocking the cultural phenomenon of televangelism or helping to promote it (or both).
* The term televangelist was created by
Time magazine.
[Time: 75th Anniversary issue, March 9, 1998]* Televangelism is a popular subject for
parody and
satire in popular culture. The
Bloom County comic strip was one of the most notable and frequent spoofers, featuring a local
Moral Majority leader and, later,
Bill the Cat preaching as "Oral Bill". Films spoofing televangelism include
Pray TV,
Salvation!, and
Pass the Ammo, while the subject got a more serious if still farcical treatment in
The People vs. Larry Flynt. Adult magazines including Flynt's
Hustler have often spoofed televangelism.
*
List of U.S. televangelists*
Christian televangelist scandals*
:Category:Television evangelists*
Jesus He Knows Me
