7/16/16
Televangelism
Televangelism
On a hot summer night in the early 1960s, my brother and I
and a couple of friends visited a tent revival in a small Tennessee town. As
secular Jews, we were intensely curious.
As teenagers, we were under strict orders from my mom to behave
ourselves. She needn’t have bothered. It
was fascinating and moving and utterly alien. We never said a peep.
People spoke in tongues. People confessed to the most
personal of sins. People were cured of ills. Or at least they said they were. I had never seen anything like it. So different from the austere
Reform Judaism I practiced.
A couple of friends have asked me to blog on televangelists
and why they’re so successful, even in light of repeated exposure of how some
spend their money. Other than that Tennessee night, I have little experience with evangelism of any kind, but I'm happy to give it a shot.
Psychologically, conservatives and liberals each rely on five basic moral foundations in deciding what to believe. However, they give vastly different weights to some of these, one of which is sanctity: It’s important to conservatives and
a non-starter for most liberals. In practice, for example, liberals give about the same percentage to
charity as conservatives, but the conservatives are giving to religious
organizations and liberals to secular ones. That means it's likely that the viewers who are watching and donating to televangelists are conservatives. That also means they're more likely to respond to authority (another non-starter for liberals), as represented by the pastor on TV asking for money. And that brings us back to televangelism.
Theologically, as an agnostic Jew, I’m out of my depth. I don’t get it. However, there are people who do. Zack Hunt is one. And I’m totally stealing John Oliver’s clip from his blog on the topic. Don’t miss what Hunt has to say, though. He really knows what he’s talking about. His blog can be found here: Zack Hunt blog. But watch Oliver first.
Not about Televangelism, but more about the mindset.
ReplyDeleteArtquest, when I was 14 my BF lived with his grandparents in a nearby town. I went with him to church one Sunday. I don't remember which church but after the preachin', which was Fire and Brimstone like I'd never seen, This happened. (Why is it always the Girls who need evil thrown out??) A couple of teenaged girls converged on the alter, Wailing. People in the congregation started wailing too. "Oh, Praise, Jesus!", and some utterances about sending out the Devil, or evil and so forth. One of the girls in particular was taken, entranced, wailing, raising her hands to the sky and then she started the speaking in tongues thing.
Listen, I grew up Christian, but we were calm, orderly, Methodists. The most outrageous thing Methodist are know for is a propensity for all its members having a full on understanding of Four Part Harmony. This Freaked me OUT! It was all I could do to stay seated and not run screaming from the building. Sympathy for my boyfriend was the only thing that kept me planted in my seat.
But it did give me a little understanding of how different religions can be from one's own experience. Maybe even a little understanding of how cults can happen.
Thank you for this blog. And Oliver's video. I watched it all and it was both Hilarious and Extremely Upsetting. My sweet Nannie sent money in to some TV preacher. I don't think it was the kind of "preacher" that Oliver was covering. I think Nannie would have seen through that kind of scheme.
I do wish the US would stop giving Churches a free pass on Taxes. Any church with a net holding over a reasonable amount to cover a brick building big enough to seat the congregation should be taxed, IMHO. I don't want a tiny church that barely collects $100 in the plate each Sunday to have to fold to pay taxes. But these wealthy churches should not get a pass.
Again, thank you for covering this.
I love hearing what you have to say. It's both personal and insightful. Don't knock the Methodists as calm, though. As I have recently learned, John Wesley ordained at least one woman to preach. And as early as the mid 1950s, the church as a whole approved the ordination of women. That's not calm or orderly at all!
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