Televangelism

Abstract

Initially an American phenomenon, televangelism refers to the use of television for Christian missionary outreach, of an evangelical‐fundamentalist type, usually incarnated in a single leadership figure, which became particularly prominent in the 1970s as a result of shifts in broadcasting policies regulated by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1960. Prior to that time, the FCC required the commercial broadcast networks to donate a portion of their airtime to “public interest” use. A convenient way to do this was for the stations to cooperate with large, mainstream religious bodies to produce a variety of non‐confrontational, non‐sectarian programs that could fit within this category. This ended when the FCC in 1960 ruled that the stations could count commercial programming toward their public interest quotas. The effect was to open a new market, wherein profit interests could redefine the public interest within category limits. Hence, “religious interest” could be met by allowing the religious interests with the most money to have the available slots. This was greatly enhanced as more broadcast frequencies became more easily available. So was born the parallel religious institution of the “electronic church,” with its most successful exponents eventually termed “televangelists.”