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Time and again, the power and glory of video have dramatically shaped the careers of evangelical preachers. Jerry Falwell founded his little Lynchburg church in a rented soda-pop plant in 1956 with only 35 souls. But he bought radio time after the first week and TV time within the first year, and the people came. And came. Even then his fame might not have gone much beyond the county line had he not syndicated his program nationally after moving into a sleek octagonal sanctuary in 1970. When he made his big move into political activism in 1979, he was armed with a solid computer bank of backers, financial and ideological.
Every style seems to find a responsive audience. At one extreme are nondenominational Richard and Martin De Haan and Paul Van Gorder of Grand Rapids, who look and sound like local bankers but relieve their board-plain Bible lectures with tapes of singers lip-synching cheerily away at Florida's Cypress Gardens. Their Day of Discovery runs in 153 cities, and the operation, including radio and publishing, spent $16 million in 1985. D. James Kennedy, 55, of Fort Lauderdale has a 7,000-member church within a conservative Presbyterian group and spends half his $20 million budget on media. A television comer, he tries to "fill the gap" left by flashier preachers, offering formal worship and cerebral sermons.
At the other end of the spectrum, the weekly show of Akron's Ernest Angley, who bought out Humbard's church and studios in 1984 for $2 million, is a throwback to the faith-healing spectacle of the original Oral Roberts show. Another eccentric is bearded Gene Scott, 56, of Los Angeles, who puffs a cigar and peers from under such headgear as a cowboy hat or policeman's cap as he heaps scorn on other TV preachers. Of Pat Robertson he says, "The first name almost exhausts the subject."
Mainline religion nowadays is a minor force in TV. The three commercial networks still prepare free-time series for the National Council of Churches and other groups. Lloyd Ogilvie, a handsome Hollywood pastor-telecaster, is within the mainline orbit but gets no backing from his Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The Southern Baptist Convention, strongly evangelical, is the only denomination that runs a standard network, ACTS. Begun in 1984, it reaches 4 million homes, but is struggling because local church support has not offset the $25 million to $30 million cost to date.
The U.S. Catholic hierarchy has spent $5.2 million on a network used mainly for in-house telecommunications, though some shows get on local broadcast and cable. Without official imprimatur, Birmingham's amateurish but affable Mother Angelica, 61, a Franciscan nun, has become Catholicism's top producer. She got her start when Robertson decided to add a Catholic to CBN's lineup. In 1981 she branched out with her Eternal Word satellite hookup, which has 4 million homes on line and beams four hours nightly.