Field Guide to the Wild World of Religion: 2011 Edition. Pamela J.D. Dewey
to pick from. For the Roman Catholic perspective, you could watch the weekly program of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. To hear a basic Mainline Protestant version of the Gospel, you could tune in to the occasional televised Billy Graham crusade. And, if you were more adventurous, you could catch the weekly show of “healing evangelist” Oral Roberts, televised from one of his crusades in his huge travelling tent. If you were enthusiastic about Roberts’ show, there’s a good chance you were one of those who attended one of the little churches on the edge of your hometown.
Back to the Future
How does the picture of the simplicity of choices in the 1950s line up with the reality of the 21st century? The adventurous grandson of that young man with the Elvis haircut of the Fifties has a lot more possibilities with which to startle his parents. Even if you live in a small rural town, chances are these days that you’ll barely blink an eye at the outlandish hairstyle of the bag-boy at the local Wal-Mart—whether it is a purple Mohawk, a pony-tail down to his waist, a spiky neon orange mop that looks like he just got out of bed and didn’t comb his hair, or perhaps even a totally bald skin-head look.
The average American turns the TV on these days and chooses not from three options, but 53 or 103 or more. Cable and satellite TV now make those paltry choices of the 1950s seem pathetic. The sci-fi fan can find a channel that will feed his obsession 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The news hound can likewise feed his addiction around the clock, either with continuous hourly updates of the latest news, or continuous commentary on current events by professional pundits. Whether you want sitcoms, nature shows, sports, comedy, or the latest adventures of Sponge Bob Square Pants, the sky is the limit.
And this also applies to the world of TV religion. In 2000 AD, you could still choose a Roman Catholic evangelist—but now he … was a she. Mother Angelica, a roly-poly, unendingly cheerful little nun created her own 24-hour-a-day cable network in 1984 that featured teaching, preaching, worship, and entertainment with a Roman Catholic twist. Although (as of 201) she has been retired as a result of a series of strokes in 2001, you can still see re-runs of her Mother Angelica Live talk show on her EWTN (Eternal World Television Network.)
The mainline Protestants still have a presence, represented by Baptist Charles Stanley, Presbyterian D. James Kennedy, and, until the past few years, even an aging Billy Graham. Oral Roberts was still doing a little preaching on occasion up until a short time before his death in 2009, although his son Richard had been the primary voice for the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association for quite some time.
But, just as with the exploding presence of specialized networks and their almost unlimited programming choices, the world of televangelism has exploded since the advent of cable and satellite programming. And most of the explosion has not included that Old-Time Mainline Religion of the 1950s.
The quiet before the storm
If you reached adulthood in the 1950s, and got married and had a family of your own, chances are very good that you and your family would be found attending the church denomination of your childhood when Sunday morning came around. Whether that church was St. Catherine’s Roman Catholic Church, Central United Methodist, or the First Baptist Church of Anytown, it was probably a pretty tame, predictable place. The differences of doctrine among the Protestant Churches in your town would have been distinct enough to the dedicated members of each of the denominations. But they would probably not be as clear to outsiders as the differences in superficial matters such as the style of music or sermon presentation in each of the denominational churches.
It wasn’t unheard of for people to “change churches” in the 1950s. But seldom would some family leave one congregation and go to another in the same town over a matter of doctrinal considerations. The typical reason for a move would be “in-house politics” at their old congregation—a dispute over who was in charge, or who would make decisions about expenditures. In fact, it wouldn’t be all that uncommon for there to be a “First Baptist Church” and a “Second Baptist Church” in the same small town. But it would not be because the First Baptist congregation outgrew its building and started a sister congregation. It would be because a disgruntled faction of members and deacons and elders from First Baptist stomped out and started their own new church so that they could do things their own way.
This is not to say that, in the 1950s and on into the 1960s, there were not a few “unusual” religious groups working around the fringes of American society to make converts. The “Moonies” (followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon) were one such group that occasionally made the news, standing on street corners and handing out flowers. The “Children of God” (followers of “Mo” Berg, who used sexual favors by women members to lure new converts) were even more notorious for a time. There was even a flurry of activity to combat the recruiting tactics of such groups. Some frightened parents whose teens had run off to join a commune of such people hired “deprogrammers” to kidnap their own children and try to talk some sense into them.
But these groups were all squarely on the outside of the mainstream of society, and easily recognized as strange and unconventional. There were also a few slightly more respectable alternatives to the mainline Protestant Churches that were fairly small in the 1950s, but beginning to grow in numbers and influence. These would include the Mormons, the Seventh Day Adventists, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs). In most towns their presence was barely noticed, even if they had a small permanent building in which they met. They did engage in evangelistic efforts, but most people were more bemused than troubled when approached, for instance, by JWs going door to door to pass out their Watchtower Magazine.
The Advent of the Wild World of Religion
And then something happened to change this placid scene. Perhaps it was the unrest and uncertainty in society, with the Cold War giving way to a hot war in Vietnam. Perhaps it was a rising resistance to the traditions of the past in general. Perhaps it was an appetite for novelty in religion that matched the cravings for novelty in the secular parts of society. Perhaps it was even, in part, due to the advent of Cable TV. Perhaps it was all of these things, and more, coming together to convince both youths and many adults that the old answers of the Old Time Religions of America just weren’t adequate to the challenges of the second half of the 20th century.
As the public began craving new answers to old questions, a whole new breed of religious leaders began to arise, offering assorted spiritual flavors to appeal to every type of spiritual palate. Many of the ideas and answers they offered weren’t really totally new. They were often just re-packaged, warmed-over strange ideas that had been tried in the past and found wanting. Clothing styles today often go through cycles of reincarnation of the styles of decades past. And it is becoming more and more common for producers to film remakes of hits of long ago (such as King Kong). In the same way, religious novelties of an earlier time can look brand new if they can be repackaged and promoted by just the right persuasive spokesperson.
Besides, the average American in the 1970s and later had grown up in that tame religious world described earlier. Most would never have been exposed to the more obscure and controversial ideas that had been part of the fringes of religion for a century before. Once these ideas began entering the mainstream of American society via television, shortwave radio stations, and popular religious books written by entertaining authors, few individuals looking for spiritual enlightenment recognized that many of these teachings were not fresh spiritual meat, but rather warmed-over leftovers.
The Wild World on the Airwaves
There is no quicker way to get an overview of the extent of the change in American religion than to turn on a 24-hour religious cable network and just watch the passing parade for a few hours. Since few people without an intense interest in religious matters already would have any interest in spending that much time on the topic, the average American is blissfully unaware of the astonishing variety of religious activity that is promoted over the airwaves these days.
This is one reason for this Field Guide book—to give the uninitiated a brief overview of this increasingly wild world, without the necessity for them