-

ISBN

0-06-066724-9

>$11.95

Richard Quebedeaux, well known as a keen

observer of the trends in American religion,
has now written a probing, insightful volume
on the relationship between celebrity-dom and
religious authority. Quebedeaux relates the
American love of charisma and our need for
heroes to the success of the "electronic church."
He also analyzes the impact of the religious
personality cults on American culture. He offers
insight into such critical issues as: What forms
will authority take in a culture where formal/
traditional st.ructures have failed?

Where are

the roots of America's love of charisma and

"instantism"?

By what authority do sports

heroes, movie stars, political figures, TV

evangelists, and musicians instruct the masses
of religious people? Why do celebrities appear
to be the new spiritual leaders in America?
Popular religion in America is strongly in
fluenced by the mass media, which confirm
and strengthen the values the viewing, listen
ing, and reading public already hold dear.
Quebedeaux examines the role of celebrities
in communicating packaged, how-to religion
to bored and anxiety-ridden people; he shows
how their personal appeal convinces the public
that what is being offered will change their
lives and make them happy and successful.
Considering historical,

sociological,

and

biblical perspectives, this <;utting-edge work

examines the nature of true religious authority,
the decline of respect for rationally ordered
authority, and the present "reign of super
ficiality" in modern American religion. By What
Authority is a thorough study of the thought
and actions of popular religious leaders in
America and the historical traditions out of
which they have arisen, in order to get at the
real significance of "popular religion."
(continued on back flap)

11114981

(continued from front flap)

Quebedeaux concludes with a vigorous

counterproposal to recover biblically accurate,
honest, reliable religious authority in the world
today.
By What Authority is a breakthrough book
of sweeping implication; it is must reading for
everyone concerned with one of the most sig
nificant-yet least understood-cultural phe
nomena in America today.
Richard Quebedeaux holds degrees from
the University of California at Los Angeles,
Harvard Divinity School, and Oxford Univer
sity. He is a well-known lecturer, ecumenical
consultant, and the author of The Young
Evangelicals, The New Charismatics, and The
Worldly Evangelicals.

Jacket design by Pat Yoehl

By What Authority

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Young Evangelicals (1974)

The New Charisma tics (1976)
The Worldly Evangelicals (1978)
I Found It! (1979)

By What Authority
The Rise of Personality Cults in
American Christianity
*
RICHARD QUEBEDEAUX

1817

Harper & Row, Publishers, San Francisco

Cambridge, Hagerstown, New York, Philadelphia
London , Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Sydney

BY WHAT AUTHORITY:

The Rise of Personality Cults in American Christianity. Copyright

1 982 by Richard Quebedeaux. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of

America . No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical
articles and reviews. For information address Harper & Row, Publishers, I nc. , 10 East
5 3 rd Street, New York, NY 1 0022. Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry &
Whiteside, Limited , Toronto.
FIRST EDITION

Designer: Jim Mennick

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Quebedeaux, Richard .
B Y WHAT AUTHORITY.

Bibliography: p. 1 92
Includes index.
1 . United States-Church history-2oth century.
2. Authority ( Religion). 3 Mass media in religion-United States.
4 Fame-Moral and religious aspects. 5 Christian sects-United States. I. Title.
8 1 -4743 1
262' . 8
B R 526 . Q4 1 98 1
AACR2
ISBN o-o6-o66724-9
82

83

84

85

86

10

For Mike Mickler and Andy Wilson.

Contents

Xl

PREFACE

Popular Religion in America

Part One: The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

2
3
4

Celebrity Leaders in the History of American

Christianity: 1 86 5- 1 960
Celebrity Leaders in the History of American
Christianity: 1 96o--Present
New Christian Values

19
45
76

Part Two: Authority in Modern American Religion

5
6
7

The Nature of Religious Authority and How It

Works
The Decline of Authority in the West
The Problem of "Homelessness" and Its
Solution

NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

103
1 38
1 56
1 87
1 92
1 97

Now we begin to understand the old motto, Noblesse Oblige.

Noblesse means having the gift of power, the natural or sacred
power. And having such power obliges a man to act with fear
lessness and generosity, responsible for his acts to God . A noble
is one who may be known before all men .
Some men must be noble, or life is an ash-heap. There is
natural nobility, given by God or the Unknown, and far beyond
common sense. And towards natural nobility we must live. The
simple man, whose best self, his noble self, is nearly all the time
puzzled, dumb, and helpless, has still the power to recognize
the man in whom the noble self is powerful and articulate. To
this man he must pledge himself.
-D. H. Lawrence, Movements in European History

Preface

So much of what happens in modern American religion happens in

California first. Pentecostalism, for instance, with its enthusiastic spiri
tuality, its speaking in tongues and divine healing, first attracted inter
national attention and became a worldwide movement as a
consequence of the "Azusa Street revival" in 1 906 in Los Angeles. Its
popularity was then enhanced further-in the 1 9 20s, 30s, and 40s-by
the ministry of Aimee Semple McPherson, the first evangelist to ac
commodate revivalistic Christianity to the ethos of Hollywood. When
the pentecostal experience hit the middle class and the "established"
churches in 1 96o--as the charismatic renewal movement-it, too,
happened first in Los Angeles, at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Van
Nuys .
Billy Graham himself became an evangelist of international renown
as a consequence of his highly successful crusade in Los Angeles in
1 949, which William Randolph Hearst built up in all his newspapers.
Bill Bright's Campus Crusade for Christ,* America's largest campus
ministry organization, was founded at UCLA in 1 9 5 1 , and out of its
ranks came the impetus for what became known as the Jesus People
movement in the late 6os. The movement's chief "theoretician, " Hal
Lindsey, had himself been on Crusade's staff at UCLA before he
published The Late Great Planet Earth in 1 970. Then, out of the
Jesus People movement, emerged a number of the "cults" that
attracted large numbers of alienated youth in the late 6os and early
7os. Finally, the whole contemporary focus on "born again"
celebrities-"evangelical" stars and superstars-began decades ago in
the ministry of the Hollywood Christian Group, founded in 1 949.
I was born and grew up born again in Los Angeles, in an environ*

Sec Richard Quebedeaux, I Found It! The Story of Bill Bright and Campus Crusade
( San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1 979).

Xll

By What Authority

ment where the "new" in American religion was already "old" in Cali
fornia before it had even surfaced elsewhere. Celebrities may be the
new leaders of popular religion in America, but they were already
religious leaders in California in the 1 9 50s, if not before.
When stars become "leaders" of popular religion by virtue of their
celebrity status in the mass media, when they become the center of a
religious "personality cult, " they do influence the "masses" of what
Jerry Falwell calls "ordinary Christians. " That influence, and the au
thority by which it is wielded, is a fitting topic of investigation in the
1 98os, and is the theme of this book. Oral Roberts, Jerry Falwell,
Robert H . Schuller, and their kin in the leadership of the "electronic
church" are part of an industry that brings in over $ 1 billion annually.
They are now just as popular as "secular" TV personalities and are a
force to reckon with . I wrote By Wha t Authority to examine the nature
and impact of "popular religion" in America and its celebrity leader
ship. But what I really stress in this discussion is the social impact of
the mass media and technological advance on modern American reli
gion-from Falwell's Moral Majority, the religious center of the so
called New Right, to Schuller's "technology of salvation, " achieved
through a positive mental attitude ("possibility thinking") that is devel
oped and applied methodically, just like the "science" it really is. In
popular religion , the medium is the message-but so is the method. In
this book, I discuss both the media and the methods of popular religion
and their consequences for us all.
In the task of writing By Wha t Authority, I was stimulated enor
mously by the ideas of numerous friends and scholars, though they
cannot be credited-or blamed-for the discontent that my interpreta
tion will, no doubt, cause in some quarters of the religious world I
describe. When it comes to such criticism, the author himself is the
only appropriate target. He must be willing to defend his analysis, and
I am (but please be gentle!). Thanks, then, to Na'im Akbar, Gordon L.
Anderson , Charles H . Barfoot, Jim Baughman, Tom Bowers, Eric B .
Evans, Bain Fisher, Jeffrey Hadden, Kate Jones, Charles H . Kraft,
Martin E . Marty, J . Gordon Melton, Mike Nason, J . Edwin Orr,
Robert M. Price, Robert A. Schuller, Gerald T. Sheppard, Rodney

Preface

Xlll

Stark, Therese Stewart, Bruce Taylor, Henry 0. Thompson, Bryan R.

Wilson , Patricia Zulkosky, and my editor at Harper & Row, Roy M.
Carlisle, whose idea the book was in the first place.
RICHARD QUEBEDEAUX
Berkeley, California
June 1 9 8 1

C H A P T E R

Popular Religion in America

It should come as a surprise to no one that the United States is a very

religious country. Religion is popular in America, and that popularity
becomes all the more striking when compared with religious belief and
practice in the other developed nations of the world. In 1 976, the
Gallup organization published the results of its global survey of reli
gious attitudes. More than ten thousand interviews were conducted,
covering two-thirds of the world's population and more than 90 per
cent of the surveyable people-which encompassed virtually all of the
noncommunist world.
The Gallup survey brought out some surprising contrasts in its com
parison of the religious beliefs of people living in the various regions of
the earth. Among the highly industrial Western nations, greater differ
ences were found with respect to religious beliefs than in any other
aspect of life.
According to the survey, the United States stands at the top of indus
trial societies in the importance religion plays in the lives of its citizens
-56 percent of those surveyed indicated that their religious beliefs
were "very important, " and 3 1 percent said they were the "most impor
tant" thing in their lives. (Only India, among all nations surveyed,
scored higher, with 8 1 percent of the respondents describing their reli
gious beliefs as very important. ) At the opposite extreme stands Japan,
which also has a high level of education and technological develop
ment. A mere 1 2 percent of the Japanese respondents indicated that
their religious beliefs were very important.
Throughout all the countries surveyed, nearly all people identify
themselves with some faith or church. There is a widespread belief in
God worldwide, with a majority of the noncommunist world believing

By What Au thority

in life after death as well . But the importance religion holds in the
United States is equalled only in those nations of the Far East and
Africa where the level of education is lowest. Furthermore, the Gal
lup survey shows that the level of religious belief and practice has
remained more or less constant among Americans over the last quarter
of a century. Over the same period of time, however, in certain Euro
pean and other nations, there has been a noticeable secularizing trend,
a "collapse of faith . "
For instance, in 1 97 5 , 94 percent of all Americans surveyed indi
cated a belief in God, the same percentage as in 1 948. During that
period, however, belief in God in the Scandinavian countries declined
from 8 1 to 6 5 percent. In West Germany, the percentage dropped
from 8 1 in 1 968 to 72 in 1 97 5 , while it declined from 95 to So percent
in Australia between 1 948 and 1 97 5 . Only 38 percent of the Japanese
respondents expressed a belief in God in the 1 97 5 Gallup survey.
With respect to belief in life after death, 69 percent of Americans
surveyed in 1 97 5 affirmed immortality, one percentage point more
than in 1 948. But, among Canadians, there was a significant drop
from 78 percent in 1 948 to 54 percent in 1 97 5. And such belief in
Scandinavia dropped from 6 1 percent in 1 948 to 3 5 percent in 1 97 5 ,
while a mere 1 8 percent o f the Japanese surveyed the same year ex
pressed a belief in life after death.
A major feature of American religiosity is regular church or syna
gogue attendance. Of all Americans surveyed by Gallup in 1 97 5 , 6 1
percent indicated that they are Protestant, 2 7 percent Roman Catholic,
and 2 percent Jewish. In a typical week, 40 percent went to church or
synagogue ( 54 percent of the Catholics, 3 8 percent of the Protestants,
and 20 percent of the Jews). While attendance among both Jews and
Protestants has remained stable since 1 964, it has dropped noticeably
among Catholics during the same period. In 1 964, 7 1 percent of
American Catholics attended church in a typical week. But the figure
declined to 54 percent in 1 97 5 .
Like religion i n general , churchgoing i s popular i n America-espe
cially among certain kinds of people in certain areas of the country.
Women, for instance, are more likely to attend church or synagogue
than men (4 5 percent vs. 3 5 percent). Married individuals are better

Popular Religion in America

attenders than single folk. Regionally, church attendance is highest in

the Midwest and South, somewhat lower in the East. And the Far
West registers the lowest percentage of people attending church or
synagogue in a typical week-only 3 out of 10 individuals.
With respect to specific denominational preference, 20 percent of
those surveyed identified themselves as Baptists, with a high concentra
tion in the South . Baptists have the highest proportion of blacks within
their ranks of any denomination, and a slightly higher percentage of
young people as well. Methodists accounted for 1 1 percent of Gallup's
respondents, Lutherans 7 percent (largely in the Midwest), and Episco
palians 3 percent (concentrated in the East). Of all major denomina
tions, the Episcopal Church has the highest proportion of
college-educated individuals, business and professional people, and
high-income earners .
Gallup also found that most Americans have a great deal of faith in
the institutional church, despite the criticisms mounted against it in
recent years, especially by the young. The survey noted that 68 percent
of those surveyed expressed "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence
in the church and in organized religion more generally. '
The high incidence of Americans who profess a belief in God and in
life after death, who attend church or synagogue regularly, and who
affirm confidence in organized religion can surely be taken as one kind
of evidence that religion is important-and popular-in American life.
But "popular religion" as a concept is no longer to be identified merely
with the faith, teaching, and work of the institutional church and with
the high percentage of believers in God and in immortality. Popular
religion is always an integral part of "mass culture" or popular culture
as a whole, carried by and encountered through the mass media. In
deed, the institutional church itself and the beliefs of its members are
themselves deeply affected by popular religion as transmitted to them
by the mass media.
The rise of modern technology has given the "masses" of working
people increasingly more money, more leisure time, and a longer life
in which to use both. Life falls into two distinct compartments: work
(the means) and play (the end). Among other things, mass culture
relieves the boredom inherent in affluence and surplus leisure time . Its

By What Authority

producers supply this new mass market with products-and entertain

ment-suited to its desires. Popular culture doesn't grow within a
group. Rather, it is manufactured by a group (Hollywood or Madison
Avenue, for instance) for sale to an anonymous mass market. Obvious
ly, the goods offered must satisfy the "average taste" and must be both
accessible and cheap--cheap enough for the mass market, anyway. In
the process of "packaging" for such a market, moreover, something in
the way of spontaneity and individuality is lost. The creators of popular
culture, of popular religion , are not a conspiratorial group of unac
knowledged legislators. Their business is retailing products and enter
tainment with sales in mind. They give the people what they want.
Ernest van den Haag is correct when he declares that in mass cul
ture everything is understandable, and everything is remediable . 2 The
more esoteric, the more mysterious a subject, the less effort it should
require for easy absorption. If the rise of traditional culture-of civiliza
tion itself-was a gradual , progressive, orderly process, then popular
culture is its opposite. In fact, it is the effortlessness and "immediate
results" promised by mass culture that makes it so tantalizing to modern
Americans. Here, even success, the highest god of the American panthe
on, can-just like the rest of the "good things in life"-be achieved
merely by passive absorption. 3
Popular culture is purveyed by newspapers, magazines, records and
tapes, radio, and, preeminently, by television. Its manifestations range
widely over love and crime, the activities of cowboys, detectives, and
housewives , and over science and religion. It can be distinguished
from the "high culture" of special groups with a heritage of taste and
learning, and from "folk culture" that emerges more or less spontane
ously out of the life and activity of native peoples. In America, popular
culture has become particularly strong, and not simply because of its
advanced technology. Rapid industrialization is the key, but other fac
tors greatly enhanced the rise of popular culture as well-for instance,
the absence of strong, native-grown high and folk traditions in prein
dustrial America, and the mass influx and absorption of immigrants
with heterogeneous traditions into American life. That cultural inte
gration democratized the circles of high culture, while folk cultures in

Popular Religion in America

America simply could not adapt well to an urbanized and industrial

civilization .
If high culture elites-with more than average prestige, power, and
income-once dominated the preindustrial world in politics, religion,
and society in general , and determined what was to be produced, cul
turally and otherwise, they do so no longer. With the development of
industry, it is the great mass of consumers who now determine what is
to be produced. Elite status, leadership in any form, is achieved and
maintained today by catering to the masses, by giving them what they
want. Thus industrialists become multimillionaires by selling to farm
ers, for instance, and their business is helped by giving their customers,
via television, the entertainment they desire. As society becomes fully
industrialized, popular culture becomes the norm and colors almost all
aspects of private and social life . 4
Until the last few decades, popular religion in the United States
could be best understood by reading "inspirational bestsellers" that
were bought primarily by the upwardly mobile middle class suburban
housewife who had a high school education and considerable anxiety
about the success of her husband and family. The inspirational best
seller remains a very important vehicle for the transmission of popular
religion, but it has now been surpassed by television .
All the media that carry popular religion are a mere part of the vast
flow of mass culture, but popular religion itself must be located within
that flow. Religion produced for consumption by the mass media is
"popular" because it is fashioned for everyday people with the aim of
helping them meet everyday problems. It uses plain language that is
understandable and meaningful to the masses. And although it may at
times show gleanings from high culture and elements of folk culture as
well , it is not adapted to the uses of a spiritual or literary or any other
kind of elite. 5
One no longer has to read Marshall McLuhan to know that the mass
media have certain social functions that profoundly influence popular
culture as a whole. They have the power, for example, to transmit and
shape a popular movement in its entirety. In such a case, the "mem
bers" of that movement do not have to come together for organization-

By What Authority

al or other "business" purposes at all . Rather, the message is carried to

them by television, radio, records and tapes, magazines and newspa
pers, books, direct mail, or a combination of these. It is responded to
and financed, then, by the contributions of the viewers, listeners, or
readers, sent to a post office box or pledged by calling a toll-free "Soo"
telephone number. When the members of such a movement do actu
ally come together-in a convention, rally, or in smaller groups-it is
for expressive rather than organizational purposes, to celebrate and
have fellowship. In popular religion, the best example of this phe
nomenon is the "electronic church, " the conglomerate of TV and
radio evangelists, networks, satellites, viewers, and listeners, which to
gether form a new religious movement transmitted and shaped entirely
by the mass media .
Another social function of the mass media is the enforcement of
social norms . By "exposing" conditions at variance with public moral
ity, for instance, the mass media may encourage social action by the
viewing, listening, or reading public. Publicity is the enforced ac
knowledgment by members of the group that these deviations have
indeed occurred. Following publicity, members must take a stand-for
or against. Either they must side with the nonconformists and so
repudiate the group's norms, or they must fall in line by supporting
those norms. Publicity closes the gap between private attitudes and
public morality. In mass culture, the function of public exposure in
the communications media is to force some degree of public action
against what has been privately tolerated . In popular religion, the
"Moral Majority , " founded by TV evangelist Jerry Falwell, has func
tioned this way. Falwell , and others like him, expose to their television
"congregations" the deviant morality at variance with their own norms,
and they do so in simple, black and white terms that popular religion
ists can understand. And the viewers may act on that information.
Here private attitudes, influenced by mass media popular religion, go
public. And public religion becomes civil religion .
At the same time, however, the mass media also have a "narcotic"
social function that tends to more than offset their activist potential .
When all is said and done, in mass culture, the mass media are the
primary means of entertainment and therapy by which the public can

Popular Religion in America

escape the real, workaday world. The more time that an individual
spends reading, listening, and viewing, the less time there is for orga
nized action, because these pastimes function as vicarious perfor
mance. The individual mistakes knowing about problems-being in
formed and concerned-for doing something about them . The bored
but anxiety-ridden housewife who watches the electronic church is
entertained by the performers who may also challenge, even inspire,
her to do something about a given concern. In the process she may get
all sorts of ideas as to what should be done about the issue. But after
dinner, when the day's work is done and the children are in bed and
she's seen enough on TV, it's time to retire for the night. High dosages
of mass communication transform the energies of even religious people
from active participation to passive knowledge .
As important as these social functions of the mass media are, there
is yet another function whose significance surely surpasses the rest.
The mass media confer status on public issues, people, organizations,
and movements . The social standing of people and groups is raised or
lowered considerably when they command favorable or unfavorable
attention in the mass media. Even bad publicity, because it promotes
visibility, increases the "importance" of a subject. For, in mass cul
ture, visibil ity is a higher value than ability, and bad publicity is better
than no publicity at all .
The mass media give prestige and enhance the authority of individ
uals and groups by legitimizing their status. Such recognition by the
media testifies to the public that one has arrived, is important enough
to warrant public notice, and has an opinion that counts. In this way,
the mass media have transformed our notions about the very nature of
leadership. The new leaders of popular religion, just as in mass culture
as a whole, arc stars , celebrities. Here leadership has more to do with
appeal than with authority per se and the power that goes with it. But
appeal does enhance "authority" in popular culture, because the ap
pealing celebrity wields influence, and influence itself is a kind of
power, albeit indirect and unstructured . 6
Popular religion in America is most visible in the entertainment
industry. Here it is centered on the life and thought of "leading" per
sonalities, of celebrities and stars-on them and on their individual

By 'hat Au thority

pilgrimages of faith. Popular religion functions both among the enter

tainers themselves and in the encounter between religious celebrities
and the public via the mass media. They are the preachers, teachers,
evangelists, and "public" spiritual counselors of popular religion,
modeling by their "image" its ideal beliefs and practices.
In the entertainment industry itself, one major center of visible pop
ular religion is the world of professional and amateur sports. Athletes
are becoming true believers, "jocks for Jesus. " "Sports have all the
trappings of religion , " the Dallas-based sportswriter Skip Hollands
worth insists, "the sacred Sunday ritual of squatting by the television
and rooting for the team of light over the team of darkness, the specta
cle of uniforms and banners, the adoration of saint-like heroes, the
desperate pleas for salvation and victory. "
The last two decades have witnessed a significant increase in the
observable popularity of religion among American athletes. Billy
Zeoli, the Christian filmmaker from Grand Rapids, is also without a
doubt the foremost evangelist to the pros. "The first time I ever spoke
to a professional team, " he says, "was to the Cleveland Browns in
1 960 . Three people showed up. Defensive l ineman Bill Glass made
me talk in front of the bathroom so that as the players came out, they
walked right in on me praying and couldn't leave. They had to sit
through everything. " Now, however, on each Sunday during the sea
son, all the major league baseball and football teams hold chapel ser
vices. There are Sunday services on the PGA golf tour and on the
stock-car racing circuit. And there are numerous organizations that not
only minister to the athletes themselves, but also use star sportsmen as
celebrity evangelists to attract unbelievers. Notable among these groups
are Bill Bright's Athletes in Action (with its own first-rate basketball
team), Baseball Chapel , Inc . , the Fellowship of Christian Athlete;;.
Pro Athletes Outreach, and Sports Ambassadors.
Hollandsworth goes on to assess why religion is so popular among
modern American athletes. "The symbolic pre-game rites and then the
rituals followed on the field, " he declares, "reflect, at least, some rele
vant need on the ballplayer's part. By participating in the final team
meal (communion?) or shutting his eyes and breathing rhythmically to
enhance his concentration (prayer?) or shouting out inspirational slo-

Popular Religion in America

gans to pump himself up (affirmation of faith?), the athlete practically

goes through the same things as the churchgoer does. "
Religion gives athletes confidence in their ability to win . In the
words of Coach Tom Landry, "Once you accept Christ, and put all the
fears in his hands, they go away, and therefore, an athlete will perform
with more confidence than ever before. " But religion also helps ath
letes cope with losing and starting anew afterwards. "One week you're
a hero, and next week you're not, " Cleveland running back Calvin
Hill relates. "One week you're on the pedestal, and next week you're
off the team . You die a lot of symbolic deaths when you fail as an
athlete. And the best way to cope with that is to find something that
lets you know that you are accepted whether you fail or not. "
Religion is popular among pro and amateur athletes in America,
because it helps solve their everyday personal problems on (and off) the
playing field. It gives meaning to their game. And today it makes them
even more popular among their already religious and "seeking" fans
who want, often desperately, to know how they also can make it in a
mundane and anxiety-ridden modern society. Like their nonreligious
fellow players, religious sports celebrities entertain the public. And as
long as they keep winning-and so remain visible-these athletes also
inspire their fans, interpreting their success through "testimonies" in
the mass media. After U. S. Reed of Arkansas scored the winning field
goal that beat rival University of Texas by one point during the 1 980
season, he said he'd never have made the shot "if Jesus wasn't on my
side. " The message was that if God won the victory for him, he could
do it for his fans, too. 7
If the high visibility of religious sports celebrities is one indication of
the popularity of religion in America, the "Hollywood religious reviv
al" constitutes even more important evidence of that fact. Entertainers
in the sports industry reach many Americans, primarily men, but Hol
lywood stars-on television and in the movies and pop music-get to
just about everyone.
Religion in Hollywood is nothing new, yet it has become signifi
cantly more observable in the last several years. The "elder statesmen"
of Christianity among the stars, such as Roy Rogers and Dale Evans,
Gene Autry, and the Pat Boone family-and of Judaism, Sammy Da-

10

B y What Authority

vis, Jr. -have now been surpassed in notoriety by younger celebrities.

Without a doubt, the greatest recent surprise was the announcement
that Bob Dylan--d ubbed "the poet's poet" by Princeton University
when it awarded him an honorary doctorate of music-had been born
again. Dylan took the plunge at the Vineyard, one of the new, avant
garde nondenominational "Christian centers" in Southern California,
and has recorded his experience in three recent albums, Slow Train
A-Comin, ' Saved, and Shot of Love.
Lynda Carter, TV's former "Wonder Woman, " was also spiritually
reborn . "I had fame, possessions, a wonderful marriage, " she recalls.
"Still I felt empty . " Her sister, already a believer, encouraged her to
"talk to Him any way you know how. " She did, and it worked. The
"empty spot" in her life that worldly success couldn't fill was gone.
Within the Hollywood religious revival as a whole, Dylan and Carter
are joined by black vocalists Donna Summer, Dionne Warwick, Nata
lie Cole, and Billy Preston; by country singers Johnny Cash and
Johnny Rivers; and by popular vocal stars Arlo Guthrie and B. J .
Thomas-not to mention movie and TV stars such a s Barbra Strei
sand, Karen Black, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. , and John Travolta. After
Donna Summer announced her conversion to Christ, she and her
lover, Bruce Sudano, were married in the church Pat Boone attends.
Since then, she declares, not a night goes by without "saying my
prayers and thanking God for being so good to me . " Dionne Warwick,
having survived the breakup of a ten-year marriage and a career that hit
the skids, testifies that she did it by trusting in God . "God does test you
in his own way, " she says, "to find out the validity of the stuff he stuck
you together with . "
Despite its current evangelical flavor, popular religion is not just
Christian in character. Barbra Streisand, for instance, returned to her
roots in Orthodox Judaism prior to becoming a born-again Christian.
John Travolta and Karen Black are involved in Scientology, as is Diane
Canova (formerly of television's controversial "Soap") . The Church of
Scientology, one of America's "new religions, " is based on an "audit
ing" process whereby a trained technician attempts to gauge one's elec
trical energy when certain personal questions are asked. Sources of
pain are thus pinpointed, the movement claims, and the self-awareness
gained wins the battle of life. Black became a Scientologist "because I

Popular Religion in America

11

had a tendency to become things that other people wanted me to be

and I knew that wasn't me. I wanted to find out what me was. I wanted
to know why if I could be happy one day a week, I couldn't be happy
every day. "
Why is religion popular in Hollywood? In the words of Eugene
Landy, a Beverly Hills psychologist, "The pressure is unbelievable.
There's pressure to get to the top and stay on top. There's fear of losing
stardom. People who go into this business often just look at the re
wards. They don't realize what they're getting into . " But when they do,
finally, the stars-be it in Hollywood or in the Super Bowl-find reli
gion a more workable solution to that problem that it used to be.
Recalling his race to prominence as a Southern California disc jockey,
one born-again Christian put it this way, "I had to audition constantly.
What that does to your psyche after awhile! What that rejection docs to
you ! Now, knowing that Christ loves me no matter what-I feel free.
Life is absolutely fun again . "
Once, not long ago, Hollywood entertainers might have been em
barrassed about being born-again Christians, Scientologists, or even
Orthodox Jews. Visible religious profession might have hurt their ca
reers-but no longer. Very simply, popular religion actually helps be
lieving stars and would-be stars achieve the success they desire today,
and then keep it. Popular religion gives meaning to the roles entertain
ers play, on the screen or on the field. And its leading proponents
inspire their fans to think that they to can be successful in the roles and
games of life they play every day of the week. 8
The religion of mass culture, then, is quite visible in the entertain
ment industry, especially in the world of professional and amateur
sports and in Hollywood. It is transmitted by the mass media and by
those celebrity purveyors the media decide are worthy of public notice,
on secular and religious TV and radio, in the music industry (which
itself has a burgeoning "Christian" component), in religious bestsell
ers, and in popular magazines and newspapers published for the reli
gious and nonreligious public alike. It is also clearly emergent in the
institutional church itself, in local congregations whose membership
and professional ministry staff model their beliefs and conduct after the
example of the media.
The major social functions of the mass media in popular culture

12

By Wha t Authority

have already been noted. They can carry and shape a movement virtu
ally in its entirety, and they enforce social norms. I ndeed, people tend
to expose themselves only to those offerings of the mass media that
coincide with and reinforce their own predilections. As "effortless"
means of entertainment, and escape, however, they also have a narcot
ic effect. Since the participation of viewers, listeners, and readers is
inherently vicarious, the mass media foster the acquisition of passive
knowledge rather than active involvement. Even the transmission of
"information" by the mass media encourages passivity, because the
reader, listener, or viewer tends to mistake knowing about a problem
for actually doing something about it. And most importantly, the mass
media confer status on individuals, their thought and work, and on the
groups they make up. They give social standing and lend prestige, and
they enhance the "authority" of appealing personalities they put for
ward as role models. Furthermore, the content of the "message" they
proclaim, the products and entertainnment they supply to the new
mass market, must always be suited to the market's perceived needs
and desires. They must be accessible, affordable, and described in lan
guage simple and appealing enough for the public to understand that it
really does want and need what is offered.
In examining the particular functions and character of popular reli
gion as one aspect of mass culture in America more generally, it will
be helpful to keep in mind the aforementioned points, remembering
that popular religion, no less than mass culture as a whole, is fash
ioned to help everyday people meet their everyday problems. If we
were to assess the content of religious bestsellers published over a long
period of time, as scholars have done in the past, 9 together with the
content of the other mass media purveyor's religion-especially the
popular religious TV shows that have recently become prominent-we
would come up with an interesting assortment of general characteristics
and functions of popular religion. As generalizations, of course, these
findings will always be countered by the notable exception. Neverthe
less, their dominance and consistency over decades and generations are
sufficient in scope to merit serious consideration .
In the first place, popular religion has certain important functions
among its practitioners. It gives meaning to their lives by providing

Popular Religion in America

them a feeling of significance and self-worth in an anonymous society

characterized by aimlessness. Decision-making is eased. There are
many decisions to be made in a technological culture where affl uence
and surplus leisure time offer many more opportunities than ever ex
isted in the past. Believers are assured that if they submit to God, the
right decisions will be forthcoming. Should I quit my job? Change my
career? Put my kids in private school? Get divorced? Get remarried?
Join a new church? And the religion of mass culture not only helps its
practitioners make decisions, it also offers believers power to live by
the method, as it were, for successful living.
In popular religion, the ease of decision-making, the power to live
successfully, and the feeling of self-worth are all ultimately derived
from a certain understanding of the nature of God and of humanity.
The belief in an inscrutable deity beyond human reach who is wholly
other in character is seldom found, because emphasis on God's unk
nowability, his mystery, does not square with the modern effort to
bring God close to humanity. Here God is not only easily within
reach, he is also a good God, and the biblical image of God as judge
is not stressed. There are no sinners in the hands of an angry God .
Insofar as he does judge, God is much more likely to reward than to
punish, and to do so in this life rather than in the hereafter. Interest in
hell is not at all prominent. And even among evangelicals, who con
tinue to profess a belief in heaven and hell, the more popular concern
is really "abundant living" in the here and now.
God exists objectively, in his own right, in popular religion. But,
more importantly, he exists also because belief in him works. This
pragmatic conception of God has made any overarching stress on dog
ma per se relatively unimportant; and it has motivated the strong ten
dency toward more cooperation between faith and reason, as evidenced
by the increasing appreciation of the social and behavioral sciences
among popular religionists. God is good, and religion provides a meth
od for people to be good as well .
The religion o f mass culture in the United States has always been
predominantly Christian in nature, though it has not left Judaism and
other traditions unaffected . Popular religion in America has also been
generally orthodox from the beginning, affirming, to one degree or

By What Authority

another, the divinity of Christ. But since the early seventies, it has
become explicitly evangelical in character, stressing the revivalistic
experience of being "born again. " Since the Six-Day War of 1 967, it
has also emphasized the fundamentalist doctrine of a literal, imminent
second coming of Christ, preceded by a period of apocalyptic woes as
well . These woes notwithstanding, however, there is no impediment to
living the good life in the here and now. In popular religion, even
among evangelicals, salvation is preeminently a thing of this world.
People may expect happiness in this world, and they are able to make
changes beneficial to themselves by religious means here and now-by
being born again, for instance-achieving health , if not wealth, in the
process . Here, the traditional Christian association of poverty with vir
tue is nearly absent.
In its push toward effortlessness, popular religion has "mentalized"
the Protestant work ethic, making the results more easily and quickly
realized. In times past, the Protestant ethic meant hard, diligent, sys
tematic work, not for human pleasure and happiness, but for the glory
of God. Goodness was an activist concept, centered on serving God
and one's neighbor. And though prosperity was seen as indisputable
evidence of God's election, that prosperity itself was for the greater
glory of God. The mentalization of the Protestant ethic occurs by rede
fining the core values of rel igion in such a way that "good" and "bad"
and "sinful" or "wicked" refer merely to psychic processes or states.
Conditions of anxiety, fear, hostility, and the like are simply instances
of wrong or bad thinking. Negative thinkers are bad, positive thinkers
are good, and-as such--can expect to be prosperous . In principle,
good or bad thinking is the only kind of good or evil there is. All moral
references in any traditional sense, therefore, are lost.
Not only has the religion of mass culture mentalized the Protestant
work ethic, it has also "instrumentalized" faith itself and God himself.
Popular religion has its own "how to do it" technology of salvation, its
own techniques to change individuals and the world. Feel better
through thought control in "ten easy steps. " Controlling thoughts, af
firming positive thoughts, denying negative thoughts, denying the
negative by affirming the positive-all of this constitutes an entire
"technology" to effect personal and social change. And this technology

Popular Religion in America

of faith is fully understandable; the problems it addresses are fully

remediable. Just follow directions, and "expect a miracle. "
Since change for the good is initiated by a positive thought process
that cancels evil (which is present only in negative thinking), there is in
popular religion none of the traditional Christian belief in the divine
significance of suffering. Here suffering, like poverty, is the product of
negative thoughts and the negative action they assure. Tragedy has no
mean mg.
With respect to social change in particular, popular religion does
focus on the interpersonal needs within the family, on the job, in
church or synagogue, and so on . At the same time, however, the men
and women of the religion of mass culture live remarkably free from
and unaffected by institutional realities related to social, political, and
economic structures. U ntil recently, anyway, they have assumed that
the social institutions of corporate life will change when enough indi
viduals change. And now, with the popular surge of born-again Chris
tianity and of the charismatic movement-with its enthusiasm and
ecstasy expressed in speaking in tongues, healing, and prophecy-sub
jective religious experience (above dogma, in fact) is most often seen as
the key ingredient in effecting such change. It is, at least, a necessary
catalyst.
But despite this highly individualistic understanding of reality, popu
lar religion has (especially since World War II) given increasing atten
tion to linking its values with national aspirations, generally those
espoused by the political right. In the last several decades, this linkage
in the religion of mass culture was visible primarily in a few, scattered
anticommunist crusades that lacked sufficient numbers, money, and
direction to warrant much public notice in the mass media. Now,
hm\ e\ cr. the popular religious majority is no longer silent. With vast
numbers of \iewers, listeners, readers, and an annual cash flow of
hundreds of millions of dollars, the well-organized religious media
mmements like \lora! Majority are a force to reckon with. In this
case, the leaders of popular religion have begun to learn about institu
tional realities to the degree, at least, that they can wage successful
mass media campaigns and so encourage their otherwise "passive"
viewers, listeners , and readers to become activist enough to give money

By What Authority

for the support of avowedly political lobbying activities to help realize

the spread of their values in the wider society. This they do in an
entertaining, if not "inspiring, " way. Their appeal speaks with author
ity.
In summary, popular religion in America is that dominant brand of
religion, carried and shaped by the mass media, which confirms and
strengthens the values the viewing, listening, and reading public al
ready hold dear. It is packaged and sold in a technological how-to-do-it
form and is communicated to bored and anxiety-ridden individuals by
appealing celebrities. As the leaders of popular religion, these stars and
superstars convince an eager public that it really needs and wants what
they offer, because it will change their lives, make them successful,
too. The religion of mass culture is easily absorbed; it is also easy to
live. 1 0
In the popular religion of American life, visibility means signifi
cance. Popular religion, therefore, is significant. But what, exactly, is
the nature of that significance-for its practitioners, the public at large,
and for the institutional church now also caught up in its appeal?
History is most often written by focusing on the leaders who, by their
wide influence, shape a culture as a whole and those who live in it.
We shall now examine the thought and actions of popular religious
leaders in America and the historical traditions out of which they have
arisen, in order to get at the real significance of this thing called popu
lar religion . Its preachers and teachers, in center stage, have much to
tell us about who we are and about the culture we have created .

PART

ONE

The Rise of the

Religious Personality Cult

C H A PT E R 2

Celebrity Leaders in the History

of American Christianity:
1865-1960

The focal point of popular religion today is the "celebrity leader" who
ministers to the American public. Personality-centered religion is
nothing new in Protestantism; its origins can be traced all the way back
to the Lutheran and Calvinist Reformation, which emphasized the
preaching of the word of God in contrast to the administration of the
sacraments that was central in Catholicism . In the U nited States, the
tradition of celebrity leaders in Protestant Christianity began during the
nineteenth century with the pulpit and the revival meeting. There
arose, especially after the Civil War, a generation of appealing pul
piteers and evangelists who spread the word effectively to the public
through the popular media of the time.
The pulpit has always stood front and center on the stage of Ameri
can Protestantism. The post-Civil War period has been described as
the reign of the great "princes of the pulpit. " No one prior to 1 86 5 ever
matched the popularity of such preachers as Henry Ward Beecher,
Phillips Brooks, T. DeWitt Talmadge, and Russell Conwell. In the
words of one church historian, "The nation hung on their words and
doted on their persons. "11 The sermons of these men and others like
them were not infrequently front-page news, and some were regularly
syndicated in the national media-in their entirety.
The traditional Protestant emphasis on preaching the word, com
bined with the absence in America of an "established" church, created

20

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

the right conditions in the churches as a whole for a major focus on

the sermon and on the personality of the preacher. Post-Civil War
conditions, in particular, also favored the rise of the star preacher.
Within the rapidly growing population of the cities, the spoken word
was the primary means of education and entertainment. Anyone who
could speak well at the popular level was assured an audience .
A marked feature of the preaching of that time was its awareness of
the popular m ind. This growing sensitivity to people and their prob
lems had a definite effect on the content and form of preaching, which
came to be centered on real-life human situations and problems that
were agitating the congregations. Expository preaching of biblical texts
gave way to topical sermons on "living" issues, in the popular language
of the day.
Preaching also became more informal in the post-Civil War years.
Dramatic illustration, for instance, came to be used extensively, and
formal oratory was transformed into informal, chatty presentation .
Liturgy in worship was minimized, while church architecture and fur
nishings were employed to focus attention on the preacher. When
Henry Ward Beecher accepted a call to Plymouth Church in Brook
lyn , he immediately cleared away the traditional pulpit and replaced it
with a platform that extended out into the midst of the congregation.
He wanted freedom to move about, to dramatize, to be as close to his
congregation as possible.
The Protestant preacher of this period of American history was a
leading personality not only in his own pulpit; he was also a welcome
guest on the popular lecture circuit. Here he was regarded as an au
thority not only on theology, but also on a wide variety of secular
topics from travel to biology, money to politics. And his personality
was at least as important as his words, sometimes more so. Often, the
preacher literally became the idol of the crowd . "Truth through per
sonality is our description of real preaching, " declared Phillips Brooks.
And William Jewett Tucker insisted, in 1 898, that "the law is, the
greater the personality of the preacher, the larger the use of his person
ality, the wider and deeper the response of men to truth . " What these
pulpit stars did in their time-whatever the critique of content and
method-was exciting and exhilarating to the popular mind in contrast

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity: 1 86 5-1 9 60

21

with some of the dry doctrinal fare of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. 12
Revivalists and the Revival Meeting

The development of popular religion in America has gained much

from the centrality of the pulpit as a means of communicating the
Christian gospel in Protestantism; but it has derived at least as much
from the medium of the revival meeting, the structure of which was
gradually refined to meet the need of industrial society, and it became
more or less standardized during the ministry of Dwight L. Moody in
the late nineteenth century. As an American phenomenon, revivalism
refers to the various movements in the history of Protestantism that
arose to revitalize the spiritual ardor of church members and to help
the churches win new adherents. By the end of the seventeenth cen
tury, Puritan religious fervor in New England had already waned; and
the First Great Awakening, led by Jonathan Edwards and George
Whitefield, did much to revive stagnated religion in the Northern
Colonies during the mid- 1 7oos. But not for long. A Second Great
Awakening thus occurred in the early and mid- 1 8oos, and it was in
this revival that "soul winning" took the fore as the primary function of
ministry.
The new revivalism of the Second Great Awakening was very differ
ent in character from that of its predecessor. Under Jonathan Edwards,
the outpouring of revival was the byproduct of the faithful preaching of
the word of God. People waited for revival . Now, however, more and
more preachers sought to provoke a revival by employing methods cal
culated to "make a decision and make it right. " The revival, which
previously had been an end in itself, became a technique. Now it was
becoming a means to other ends.
The Second Great Awakening began in New England, with an in
tellectually sophisticated revival of religion at Yale University in 1 802,
led by its president, Timothy Dwight. One-third of the student body
professed conversion . But as the awakening moved West, into Ken
tucky and Tennessee especially, the intellectual thrust of New England
preaching had to be dropped to gain popular interest. The Western

22

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

revivalists were ministering to a migrating and floating population

where opportunities for Christian nurture were few and far between, if
they existed at all. They had to press for quicker conversions than their
Eastern revivalist contemporaries who worked in more settled circum
stances. Education meant little on the frontier, so the Western evange
lists turned on all the heat they could and therefore appealed much
more to the emotions than the intellect.
The new revivalists created a specific method of fostering religious
awakening on the frontier: the "camp meeting," a technique of reach
ing the less-educated migrant "masses" in the burgeoning West that
was developed by the Presbyterian minister, James McCready, in Ken
tucky in 1 8oo. McCready's impassioned preaching had elicited a grow
ing response among the Kentucky backwoodsmen . And in June of that
year, assisted by several other Presbyterian and Methodist ministers, he
organized a four-day sacramental meeting at Red River to bring his
fl ock together. It was an enormously successful revival. Emotions ran
high, and the most notorious "profane swearers and Sabbath-breakers"
were "picked to the heart, crying out, 'what shall we do to be saved?' "
News of the excitement at Red River spread rapidly among the scat
tered settlements, and McCready capitalized on his new visibility by
announcing another sacramental service, this one to be held at Gasper
River during the last week of July.
Great numbers of people came to the well-publicized gathering,
from as far away as one hundred miles. Makeshift tents of sheets and
quilts, or of branches, were erected, and the underbrush was cleared so
that the meeting itself could be held outdoors to accommodate the
growing throng. The Gasper River camp meeting was even more emo
tion-stirring than Red River had been, and its success led to the staging
of others, the most famous of which took place at Cane Ridge in
Bourbon County, Kentucky. Here a crowd of at least ten thousand
gathered at a time when the population of Lexington was a mere 1 , 79 5
inhabitants.
This enthusiastic religion of the heart, not the head, was centered
on soul-winning, and it had great appeal on the emerging Western
frontier of the early nineteenth century. The camp meeting became an
institution. Preachers of every denomination attended and were en-

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity: 1 86s-1 9 6o

23

couraged to exhort the throng simultaneously from preaching stands

(the "pulpits" of revivalism) put up at suitable distances from each
other. People would drift from one stand to another. They would gath
er in small groups to hear the "testimonies" of recent converts who
related their experience. Then they would burst into hymns of praise.
Conversions here released tidal waves of feelings, not only outbursts of
weeping and shouts for j oy, but also physical manifestations-falling,
running, j umping, and jerking-all attributed to the smiting power of
the Holy Spirit. Frontiersmen and their families came to the camp
meetings for the fellowship of kindred hearts, for inspiration and enter
tainment, at a time and place where there was little opportunity for
human interaction outside the family itself.
But the frontier period in any given locale was relatively brief. As
soon as the scattered population and isolated life that characterized the
earliest penetration of the Ohio Valley yielded to settled communities
with churches and schools and a social life of their own, the camp
meeting became less functional, less effective in reaching the masses
with revitalized rel igion. New measures had to be developed to achieve
the same results. 1 3
The Second Great Awakening came t o maturity under the leader
ship of Charles G. Finney ( 1 792- 1 87 5), a New York lawyer and
theologian who adapted the frontier revival meeting to an urban envi
ronment. At the age of twenty-nine, while a practicing attorney in
Adams, New York, Finney was converted to Christ. He pursued infor
mal theological studies under the tutelage of a Presbyterian minister in
Adams; in 1 824, the soon-to-be professional evangelist was sent on his
first mission, into Jefferson County, where he converted "masses of
people. " In 1 82 5 , Finney moved into the Mohawk valley with such
impressive results that he attracted national visibility. Soon he was
wanted everywhere at once.
Charles G. Finney was a very appealing man. Six feet two inches in
height, his piercing eyes had an uncanny, almost hypnotic, effect in
the pulpit. Lacking flamboyant mannerisms, he preached the word in
the simple language of everyday life-but the everyday life of town and
city folk. Finney was no backwoods rustic revivalist. He had been
trained as a lawyer; he wrote a systematic theology and concluded his

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

career as a professor at Oberlin College. The most famous evangelist of

the Second Great Awakening, Finney had great skill in popularizing
the complex doctrines of academic theologians. His success was great
est among business and professional people, because his revivals were
dignified. There were no displays of the penitent falling in the aisles,
no rapturous shouts of hallelujah . He fit the role of the lawyer he had
been, arguing his case before court and jury, often in a very "uncleri
cal" gray suit. Finney spoke "precisely, logically, with wit, verve, and
informality" and thus converted other lawyers, real estate magnates,
manufacturers, and commercial tycoons.
Charles G. Finney employed controversial "new measures" to win
his case with the unregenerate and nominally religious public. In the
manner of a trial lawyer, he said "you" instead of "they" when speak
ing about the wicked. Those "convicted" of sin were led forward to the
"anxious bench, " a front pew reminiscent of the trial room witness
stand, where attention was focused on them. This method functioned
as a dramatization of the struggle for heaven in the soul of every per
son. To the scandal of many church people of the day, women, as well
as men , were encouraged to testify and pray in public in Finney's
meetings. And despite the "order" demanded in his services, he was
tastefully blunt and openly advocated the creation of excitement in
order to attract the attention of the otherwise uninterested.
The greatest innovation of Finney's revival meetings was his tech
nique for adapting revivalism to an urban ethos. Bands of volunteer
workers were organized to visit the homes in a community, and prayer
meetings were held in "unseasonable hours"-unseasonable for farm
ers, that is. The then-conventional revival meeting form of Sunday
sermons and weekday lectures was replaced by special services held
nightly, which were often prolonged for hours in "inquiry sessions"
after the formal meeting. This famous "protracted meeting" was the
primary medium of the evangelist's communitywide revival campaigns
that lasted several weeks. Finney thus marshaled the group pressure in
settled communities that the frontier camp meetings had so successful
ly fostered among rural folk by intensifying the conviction of sin and
the need for forgiveness and change in direction. Very simply, the
protracted meeting was the camp meeting brought to town .

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity: 1 86 5-1 9 60

By 1 83 2 , the minister of Philadelphia's First Presbyterian Church

was able to report that scarcely any city or town in the nation had not
been "hallowed" by a revival . And a decade later it could reasonably be
said that the revival meeting had become a "constituent part of the
religious system" of America-thanks, in great measure, to the evange
lism of Charles G. Finney. The medium of the revival meeting helped
make religion popular on the frontier and, increasingly, in the cities of
the United States in the early and mid- 1 8oos. Urban evangelism itself
would be further systematized and popularized later in the century in
the revivalism of Dwight L. Moody. t4
After the Civil War, accelerating urbanization and industrialization
required further adaptation of Finney's city revival meeting techniques
to attract and win the sprawling urban masses. Whereas h is major
successes were in communities not exceeding ten thousand in popula
tion (with 1 4, 404 inhabitants in 1 83 5, Rochester, New York, was the
single exception), Dwight L. Moody ( 1 8 3 7-99) became a religious
force to contend with in cities with more than a million permanent
residents. Born in Northfield, Massachusetts, Moody moved to Chi
cago in 1 8 56 to make money, and within five years he had an upper
bracket income in the shoe business. During this period, however, he
became involved in the Chicago YMCA's evangelistic activities and, in
1 86 1 , he gave up the life of a successful businessman to work full-time
with the Y.
Visibility as an evangelist came to Dwight L. Moody as the result of
his campaign in the British Isles from 1 87 3 to 1 87 5 , where more than
two and a half million people heard him preach. Well-known in the
American press upon his return, he duplicated his British successes
during the next five years in cities around the nation. In Chicago and
Boston, buildings of sufficient size to accommodate the crowds could
not be found, so giant "tabernacles" had to be constructed for the six
to eight-week campaigns.
Moody was a businessman par excellence, and he looked like one,
too. With masterful "retailing" techniques, this Congregational lay
man proved that citywide revivals could be produced at will, and re
sults could be gained easily by efficient business methods (Moody was
the first great American revivalist to really emphasize results in terms

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

of conversions recorded and pews filled). Conversion, always a per

sonal experience in the tradition of revivalism, was now quantified in
the "decision card" and processed in the "follow-up" procedure. In
team-like fashion, everything was planned in advance, with commit
tees organized for prayer, Bible study, home visitation, publicity, tick
ets, ushering, and finance. All of this was supervised efficiently and
methodically by an overarching executive committee. No advertising
device was neglected, and huge sums of money were spent on posters
and newspaper notices. Cities were systematically divided into districts,
in which homes were visited by "squads" of recruiters. Celebrities were
found to sit with the evangelist on the platform while Ira D. Sankey,
the popular composer of sentimental gospel songs, led the "massed
choirs. " Religion here may have been old-fashioned in content, but it
was communicated by the use of very new techniques.
Moody had a simple, clear, no-nonsense style of preaching. This,
together with his warm personality, enabled him to establish complete
rapport with those who attended his revivals. Many were persuaded to
"come forward" down the aisle to the "prayer room, " where counselors
would assist each inquirer in completing a decision card for the use of
local pastors in following up those who responded. By this process,
obviously, the ministers who supported the revival expected their con
gregations to grow in membership in proportion to the number of new
and renewed converts registered.
The revival meeting techniques that grew out of Dwight L. Moody's
urban evangelism became well-established in the campaigns of his
twentieth-century successors, Billy Sunday and Billy Graham. The ad
vance team, "slick" advertising procedures, stylized and folksy services
with snappy gospel songs and massed choirs, notables on the platform,
and conversions recorded on decision cards in the prayer room for the
use of the churches-all would characterize the revival meetings of
popular American religion from that time on, until the advent of
television. Like his prominent successors, Moody was firm in rebutting
those who criticized his techniques. "It doesn't matter how you get a
man to God, " he said, "provided that you get him there. " The end
justified the means.
Thus Dwight L. Moody-by his methodological advance over Fin-

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity: 1 86 5-1 9 60

ney's new measures of communicating the gospel-had a lasting influ

ence on modern American revivalism. But something else became
apparent in his campaigns that would also be true of the efforts of his
successors. The urban revival meeting attracted, in Moody's own
words, "the better class of people"-the upwardly mobile, middle
class, rural-born Americans, like himself, who came to the city to
"make good. " It clearly did not appeal to the foreign-born, the Catho
lic, and other poor who made up a large proportion of the laboring
class of the time. Significantly, it also did not appeal to the un
churched of whatever social class. Rather, the function of Moody's
revival meetings was to l ift the morale and religious enthusiasm of the
already churchgoing segment of Protestant America. It popularized
Christianity among them substantially. l 5
And what o f the theology o f modern revivalism? Rooted i n biblical
literalism and premillennialism, fundamentalism was born in the
late nineteenth century among the new, rural-born city dwellers,
whence it spread to the villages and small towns in the countryside. As
a movement, fundamentalism was the vehicle of a kind of class warfare
between the increasingly "sophisticated"___:a nd better educated-long
time city residents and the country folk. Its very nature was opposition
ist, known much more for what it was against than what it was for. The
spokesmen for fundamentalism stood against Darwinian evolution,
higher biblical criticism, and the liberal to radical politics that were
gradually becoming dominant in Protestant academic and ecclesiasti
cal institutions and in the literature they produced. Their more "so
phisticated" combatants, however, affirmed social transformation
through education, science, and political action, belittling the
"crude, " old-fashioned revival meeting, with its soul-saving and sim
plified message, its businesslike techniques.
But the market for result-oriented, entertaining mass evangelism did
not die among the less elite of American Protestantism; and Billy Sun
day ( 1 862- 1 9 3 5) made religion popular and vital in this sector of soci
ety in the years prior to and during World War I. If the style of the
modern revival campaign had become standardized in the ministry of
Dwight L. Moody, its characteristic theology-fundamentalism-was
fixed and firmly established in the mass city evangelism of Sunday, a

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

professional Chicago baseball player turned evangelist. Moody may

have had celebrities on the platform with him, Sunday needed none .
He brought the antics of the ball field to the preaching platform, where
star preacher was also celebrity sportsman. Impersonating a sinner try
ing to reach heaven, he ran the length of the platform, sliding toward
home plate. In a rage against the devil, Sunday would pick up a chair
and smash it into kindling. He had an incredible talent for dramatiza
tion, and every story he told was a pantomine performance. Billy Sun
day regularly "skipped, ran, walked, bounced, slid and gyrated" on the
stage, pounding the pulpit with his fist. He reproduced the jerks of the
camp meeting while those who watched were transfixed. At the end of
his sermon, he was drenched with perspiration.
S unday was a Presbyterian minister, but you'd never have known it.
Staged in advance , his "familiar" style of discourse, the shirt-sleeved
talk full of illustrations from daily life, became a subtle weapon to
control the crowds. Like Jonathan Edwards, Billy Sunday firmly be
lieved that sinners were in the hands of an angry God, and he didn't
hesitate to tell them so, denouncing sin and sinner alike. The "bastard
theory of evolution , " "the deodorized and disinfected sermons" of
"hireling" (i . e . , "liberal") ministers, the "booze traffic"-he con
demned them all. Moody's politics may have been conservative, but
Sunday's were right-wing in the extreme, and highly nationalistic.
"Christianity and patriotism are synonymous terms, " he believed, "just
as hell and traitors are synonymous. " For this evangelist, who deeply
influenced all his major successors in the realm of politics, commu
nism and theological l iberalism were essentially the same thing. The
nation needed "muscular Christians" to fight both of these evils with
God-inspired " 1 00 percent Americanism. "
Billy Sunday developed Moody's revival meeting techniques even
further, and never before had there been a machine better designed for
publicizing revival campaigns than that created by him. Cooperating
ministers were literally ordered to take direction from his campaign
staff and cancel all meetings and services for the entire period of the
revival. Sunday insisted on the absolute control of the religious life of
a city while he was on stage.
Even singing took on dramatic form under the direction of Billy

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity: 1 86 5-1 9 60

Sunday's song leader, Homer Rodeheaver, the publisher of numerous

popular hymns, who was, in fact, better at public relations than the
evangelist himself. Rodeheaver would start each meeting with the usu
al familiar gospel songs, but would then initiate musical games with
the audience that created a background for the singing reminiscent of
the "rhythmic beat of horses' hoofs. " His performances brought Sun
day's revival meetings into the realm of pep rally and political conven
tion . After the sermon, those who responded to the altar call "hit the
sawdust trail. " Conversion was "guaranteed, " without waiting, the in
stant a sinner rose to his feet to begin to walk forward; and the decision
cards indicated good results.
But by the post-war 1 920s, Billy Sunday could no longer find
enough people to fill his dirt-floored tabernacles, people who had
learned their loyalties to God and country from their fathers who broke
the plains, built the factories and railroads, and fought the Civil War.
Such an ethos, it was now apparent, belonged to a bygone day of
independent simple living, hard work, and sacrifice. Despite his wealth
and high style of life, his vaudeville routine and streamlined organiza
tion, Sunday still conveyed in his preaching the essence of the frontier
that was gone forever, and his popularization of the Christian faith
became vulgar in the growing, settled urban culture of post-World
War I America. '6
Although no revivalist until Billy Graham could match the crowds
attracted to Billy Sunday's campaigns in his heyday, the phenomenon
of the revival meeting remained popular among less sophisticated
Americans throughout the twentieth century. In 1 90 1 , in Topeka,
Kansas, a new type of revivalistic Christianity was born that would
become highly visible among the working class in the United States
and around the world, beginning with the Azusa Street revival in Los
Angeles in 1 906. Pentecostalism emerged in the laboring classes of
urban and rural America, primarily in the Midwest and South. It be
gan as a racially integrated, enthusiastic form of Protestantism in the
ethos of fundamentalism, but it was even more centered on religious
experience than the born-again revivalistic Christianity of Moody and
Sunday.
In fundamentalism, the felt experience of conversion-of giving

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

one's heart to Jesus-was the primary focus, the fundamental need to

be met. But in pentecostalism, conversion was only the beginning, the
"first work of grace" to be followed by an even more powerful-and
visible-experiential work of grace, "baptism in the Holy Spirit. " In
this experience, a saved individual would receive one or more of the
"spiritual gifts" (charismata ) described by Saint Paul in I Corinthians
1 2- 1 4 and elsewhere in the New Testament. Included here are the
gifts of "speaking in tongues" (the "initial evidence" of Spirit baptism),
of prophecy, and of healing. These three were the most visibly mani
fest spiritual gifts; they were also the most popular among pentecostals.
Thus the pentecostal revivals not only offered "spiritual" salvation to
convicted sinners, they also offered the possibility of physical healing
of the body, and a measure of religious ecstasy-speaking in tongues
not available in Christianity elsewhere, conservative or liberal, en
thusiastic or traditional .
The first great pentecostal revivalist with celebrity status was a
woman-a beautiful female counterpart to Billy Sunday-who had
blue eyes, a Paris wardrobe, and friends among the Hollywood stars.
Born and raised in Ontario, Canada, Aimee Semple McPherson
( 1 89cr-1 944) was as famous as Sunday, though she never received the
establishment acclaim he was able to win-from four occupants of the
White House and from John D. Rockefeller himself. Even at the
height of her popular visibility, she never lost the common touch, still
referring to herself as "everybody's sister. "
Sister Aimee was baptized in the Spirit while in high school (she
never graduated), and later married the evangelist, Robert Semple,
who had brought her to that experience. Both Aimee and Robert left
Canada to go to China as missionaries, but Robert died shortly after
their arrival , and Aimee returned to North America , where she remar
ried-this time to Harold S . McPherson, a wholesale grocer in Provi
dence, Rhode Island. Although Harold helped her sporadically with
her revival campaigns, begun in Kitchener, Ontario, in 1 9 1 5 , the mar
riage ended-on Harold's initiative-in 1 92 1 .
Sister Aimee's forte was in captivating her audiences with appealing,
colorful, straight-from-the-shoulder sermons, often dramatized like
Sunday's. In fact, she was a real actress. And she loved publicity.

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity: 1 86 5-1 9 60

Newspaper reporters called it "sensational" when Aimee toured the red

light district in Winnipeg in order to pray with the prostitutes and
distribute tracts to the madams. In 1 92 2 , she caused another sensation
by going door-to-door in San Francisco's Chinatown, trying to convert
these "heathen" to Christ. That year, in Oakland, California, she
became the first woman to preach over the radio, a medium con
sidered too undignified for preaching by most ministers of her day.
Once, in San Diego, California, dressed in an aviator's jacket with
leather cap and goggles, she scattered tracts from an open biplane. It
was also in San Diego that she rented a boxing arena for a special
revival meeting and appeared at the ring the night before-announced
and applauded prior to the main event-where she used the spotlight
to invite the assembled boxing fans to her upcoming revival . Sister
Aimee would later preach from that very same ring.
Aimee Semple McPherson's ministry as a revivalist was to the dis
couraged and defeated members of the urban lower class, telling them
that they were the salt of the earth and would soon reign with the
saints in the millennium. But after 1 920, Sister Aimee tried hard to
make her evangelism more respectable-more churchly-to the mid
dle class. She became obsessed with "order" in her services, shrugging
off the enthusiastic extremes of pentecostal worship, with its frequent
spontaneous outbursts of tongues (even during the sermon) and occa
sional "rolling in the aisles. " After the early 1 920s, Aimee deempha
sized her gift of healing in favor of something new in her ministry, the
establishment of a permanent church in Los Angeles, which she
named Angelus Temple. Sister Aimee designed the impressive build
ing herself-an auditorium in the shape of a piece of pie, seating
5, 300, the curved edge a row of double doors facing the street, and her
pulpit the focal point of the structure. She also personally designed the
eight thirty-foot-high stained glass windows that grace the walls. An
gelus Temple opened in 1 9 2 3 , and although Aimee never intended to
start a new denomination, that's exactly what happened. Soon after the
establishment of Angelus Temple, the International Church of the
Foui'square Gospel (preaching Jesus Christ as Savior, Baptizer in the
Spirit, Healer, and Coming King) had branches in other parts of the
United States, in Canada, and in Europe. Eventually, it became a

32

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

major pentecostal denomination throughout the world, and is now

headed by Aimee's son, Rolf McPherson.
Sister Aimee popularized religion among the American public and
created churches for the settled urban and rural laboring classes. She
was the first person in Los Angeles, if not the world, to provide free
telephone time service. By calling Angelus Temple, anyone could get
the time of day. Aimee wrote hymns and full-length religious operas
which were performed at the temple. She founded a publishing house,
a Bible college, and a radio station, in addition to the more usual
ministries of the typical Protestant church of her day. Angelus Temple
also took part in Pasadena's annual Tournament of Roses parade on
New Year's Day; and its award-winning floats, featured in the media,
gave the church additional visibility.
Aimee Semple McPherson created a church-based revivalism suited
to the ethos of the jazz age, of Hollywood and the movie stars, whom
she knew personally. Sister Aimee was even rumored to have had af
fairs with both Al Jolson and Milton Berle, and a sex scandal almost
ruined her career. In 1 926, she disappeared. The press claimed she
had gone to Carmel, California, with an alleged lover, Kenneth G.
Ormiston, who had been her radio operator. Aimee, however, insisted
that she had actually been kidnapped, and she never backed down
from that assertion . In 1 9 3 1 , the notorious revivalist married for the
third time, but this union with David L. Hutton ended in divorce in
1 934
Despite the scandals she generated, Sister Aimee continued to administer her growing denomination and to preach until she died, in
1 944, of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills while opening a new
church in Oakland. Aimee Semple McPherson had been called the
Mary Pickford of revivalism and the P. T. Barnum of religion, but she
was much more than that. Her flamboyant style was a strange mixture
of sentimentalism, temper, and courage that was right at home with
the Hollywood show business industry she probably could have joined
had she wished to do so. But Sister Aimee always used her visibility,
her "status" in the media, to reach the common man and woman with
the gospel, her moral shortcomings-fabricated or true-notwithstand
ing. Women have always been more visibly present in popular Ameri-

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity: 1 86s-1 9 6o

33

can religion than men, but Sister Aimee demonstrated tangibly and
convincingly that a woman, however uneducated and unpopular with
a critical press, could lead the church just as well as a man . Her
revivals, on the road and at Angelus Temple, assured Aimee's follow
ing that she loved them and cared about them. She was, in her own
words, "your sister in the King's glad service. "'7
With dramatic flair and sex appeal, Aimee Semple McPherson
adapted revivalism to a new culture whose values were shaped by new
kinds of mass media-radio and the movies. But what really drew
people to the evangelist-as followers-was her gift of healing. And
though she personally deemphasized this ministry (then highly contro
versial in the wider society) after the early 1 920s, healing for the body
remained a major attraction for the disadvantaged urban and rural
masses in pentecostal revivalism as a whole. It was given its greatest
popular visibility in the healing evangelism of Oral Roberts ( 1 9 1 8- )
who, l ike Sister Aimee, also changed the course of the revival medium
in its modern development.
For three decades Oral Roberts has been the most prominant pen
tecostal in the United States. His healing revivals from 1 947 until
1 967, under the great "cathedral tent, " attracted as many as twenty-five
thousand people in America and up to sixty thousand in other coun
tries. Conducted in the typical pentecostal revival style, these meetings
centered on prayer for the sick who stood in "healing lines, " waiting
for the evangelist to "touch" them and pray for their recovery.
Roberts was raised in a poor family. His father was a pentecostal
preacher in Oklahoma, and Oral himself experienced a dramatic
physical healing from tuberculosis while in high school, an event that
motivated him to begin his own ministry of healing. After a brief pe
riod as a college student, Roberts began his campaigns and established
his headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for what would become a highly
visible ministry throughout the world. Oral Roberts, pentecostalism,
and divine healing became synonymous terms.
But by 1 967, Roberts saw that the revival tent meeting, even with its
healing component, had lost its appeal . Now even the "disadvantaged"
American masses who had been attracted to pentecostalism were rising
in economic status and were no longer compelled to "pack up the

34

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

babies and grab the old ladies" and drive to the local tent revival. Its
style, reminiscent of life in the country, could no longer entice the
rising class of urbanites who had moved from the land to the city to
make it, and the tent revival had even less appeal to their children .
After an unsuccessful healing revival in Anaheim, California, in 1 967,
Roberts conceded that "the tent was ceasing to be an asset. People were
no longer attracted by its novelty. They had become used to cushioned
chairs and air-conditioning and to watching television . " The day of
preaching from a platform with a backdrop of pastors, followed by a
healing line, had come and gone. The day of the gospel tent was over.
Oral Roberts had been a pioneer in the use of TV for popular reli
gious programming from 1 9 54 until 1 967. After a brief interlude off
the air to reassess the style of his ministry, he returned to television in
1 969 with a new image that would transform revivalism by fully adapt
ing it to this greatly expanding communications medium and to the
world shaped by that medium. His TV sermons took on an existential
character, focusing on "the now" rather than the hereafter; he accom
modated his theology to the worldly concerns of his upwardly mobile
viewers. Talented and carefully selected students from his own univer
sity helped Roberts's new image enormously by offering regular musi
cal entertainment and highly sophisticated choreography. These
"World Action Singers" were beautiful people who provided viewers
with inspiring music-from gospel to rock-and who danced as well as
sang. Roberts also began scheduling quarterly prime-time TV specials,
filmed as far away as London and Honolulu, and featuring celebrities
from the entertainment industry such as Pat Boone, Dale Evans, and
Johnny Cash, all prominent Christians, and other stars like Jimmy
Durante, Kay Starr, Sarah Vaughn, and Lou Rawls. This inclusion in
his television programming of celebrities from the "worldly" show
business industry gave added legitimacy to the possibility of being saved
and being a Hollywood star at the same time. With upward mobility,
the world--even among pentecostals--didn't seem so bad after all . At
least it looked pretty good on TV.
But Oral Roberts is still a pentecostal and still a healer, despite his
adaptation of evangelism and divine healing to the modern era. Now,

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity: 1 86 5-1 9 60

35

however, he insists on a working alliance between faith and medicine,

spiritual healers and doctors, symbolized most explicitly by the estab
lishment of a medical school at Oral Roberts University and the con
struction of a huge, patient-centered "City of Faith" medical center in
Tulsa. People still get saved, healed, and baptized in the Spirit watch
ing Roberts, in the comfort of their own living rooms and in full color.
Roberts brought the revival meeting "home, " where it took on new
meaning as he accommodated it to a new medium of communica
tion . 1 8
No discussion of the history of the revival meeting medium and its
leading innovators in America can rightfully conclude without refer
ence to the evangelistic crusades of Billy Graham ( 1 9 1 8- ), whose work
as a professional revivalist reached unparalleled world visibility in the
1 9 50s and 1 96os. Although Graham was raised and educated in the
fundamentalist tradition, it was at a time (in the early 1 940s) when
many fundamentalists had achieved a measure of upward social mobil
ity that allowed the rising young intelligentsia within their ranks to
rethink the whole evangelistic enterprise. These young intellectuals
called themselves "new evangelicals, " harkening back in attitude to the
evangelical awakenings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
before revivalism had become explicitly sectarian and anti-intellectual
in the campaigns of Billy Sunday. They distinguished themelves from
the less culture-acccommodating fundamentalists in attitude and
method, but not in the basics of theology. Early in his career, Graham
aligned himself with this new Protestant cadre.
After his 1 94 3 graduation from Wheaton College in Illinois, which
had been founded in the mid- 1 8oos by Finneyites, Billy Graham be
gan his evangelistic work as an ordained Southern Baptist minister.
Until 1 949, he was just another conversion-oriented evangelist, but
things changed dramatically for him that year. Just prior to his well
remembered and pivotal tent revival crusade in Los Angeles in 1 949,
Graham spoke to the annual "college briefing conference" at a church
retreat center in Southern California's San Bernardino Mountains.
These yearly events were organized for students across the United
States by the "college department" of Hollywood's First Presbyterian

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

Church in order to inspire them before the beginning of each fall

term, to "brief' them in evangelism as soldiers had been briefed before
their missions in World War II. (Military language has always been
popular in modern revivalism, with its "campaigns" and "crusades, " its
"retreats" and "advances," its "penetration" and "blitzing" of commu
nities with the gospel message. ) Out of this conference, Billy Graham
emerged with new enthusiasm for his faith and new confidence in his
abilities.
In Los Angeles, the young evangelist won the favor of newspaper
publisher William Randolph Hearst, who told his editors to "puff Gra
ham . " He also achieved widespread mass media attention through the
conversion, during the 1 949 revival, of three minor celebrities-a local
TV star, a former Olympic athlete, and an alleged one-time associate
of the notorious racketeer, Mickey Cohen. As a new evangelical reviv
alist, Graham laid out fresh principles by which the middle class could
once again be reached by mass evangelism. He rejected the sensation
alism of the "fumbling fundamentalist" revivalists who, in his opinion,
destroyed their effectivenesss (among the more sophisticated) by intol
erance, narrow-mindedness, and sectarianism, not to mention anti
Cathol icism. He also announced his far-reaching decision to refuse
any invitation to conduct a revival that was not tendered by a majority
of the established Protestant clergy of the host city, including the "lib
erals" among them.
Graham's popularity was aided by his dashing youthful appearance,
his charm and genuinely conciliatory spirit, and the increasingly so
phisticated organizational techniques of his crusades, which have been
attended by up to a million people at a time. In 1 949, the evangelist
began his weekly "Hour of Decision" radio broadcasts, and shortly
thereafter the production of feature-length religious movies and televi
sion broadcasts of his major crusades (though he never established a
regular weekly TV show in the tradition of Oral Roberts). All of this,
of course, was enhanced further by Graham's high visibil ity in the
secular mass media, his syndicated newspaper columns, bestselling
books, and TV interview appearances . Most important, B illy Graham
was the first major revivalist to attract and integrate into his campaigns
Roman Catholics, who had been encouraged to attend Protestant ser-

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity: 1 86 5- 1 9 60

37

vices as a consequence o f the Second Vatican Council . Obviously, the

inclusion of Catholics in mass revival meetings was a great asset to the
growth of popular religion in America. 19
With a message proclaimed in "words easy to understand," con
firmed by the experience of conversion, and carried effectively by the
mass media of the time-expertly employed-revivalism did have an
impact on ordinary Americans. The evangelists themselves and the
notables they featured in their campaigns became stars whom their
religious followers would admire and emulate.
What opportunity was to the nineteenth century, security was to the
twentieth . Salvation in this century might no longer be the guarantee
of a spectacular rise from office boy to tycoon, but it could be the basis
of group acceptance, peace of mind, or some form of personal security.
The successful evangelist has always spoken in terms of the forces that
mold popular culture, and it was never hard for those with a message
of salvation for America to find a new language, a new medium, for
revival . If Moody could couch the gospel message in the style of Harp
er's Weekly, if Sunday could express it in the vernacular of the baseball
field and the vaudeville stage, others would be able to deck the faith in
the new fashions set by the communicators of Hollywood and Madison
Avenue. 20
Hollywood Christian Group

The centrality of the celebrity leader in the religion of mass culture

in America clearly owes much to the historical example set by revival
ism . Its particular accommodation to the sports industry can be traced
back to Billy Sunday, who brought the baseball milieu to his revival
campaign pulpit, and its growing association with the stars of the Hol
lywood entertainment industry was pioneered by Aimee Semple
McPherson . In her day, most leading revivalists had decided that the
technology that produced the motion picture industry was itself
diabolical, and that drama as an art form was inherently evil. And
since fundamentalist evangelism was effective mainly among those
who were already fundamentalists, however "backslidden" they might
have been, its leaders tended to stay clear of "the world, " secular soci-

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

ety and its corrupted religion . Movie stars were servants of Satan, and
television, when it emerged, was "hellevision. " But by 1 949, already,
things were changing.
The same week-long gathering of college students that rekindled
Billy Graham's evangelistic zeal also generated a new kind of evange
lism in Hollywood itself. The students who attended these confer
ences, it must be remembered, were not typical fundamentalists, nor
were their preachers and teachers. They were from upper-middle-class
backgrounds. Many attended prestigious secular universities from
which their teachers held doctorates. And they were youthful, unafraid
to engage the secular world of Hollywood stardom with the gospel,
despite the newness and boldness of such a concept. Hollywood's First
Presbyterian Church, the conference organizer, was itself a wealthy
and prestigious institution, whose director of Christian education since
1 92 8 had been Henrietta Mears, a woman well-acquainted with higher
education and affluence. Miss Mears was the recipient of inherited
wealth, and she had been a successful high school principal and chem
istry teacher in Minnesota prior to moving to the exclusive Westwood
and Bel Air sections of Los Angeles. The college briefing conferences
emerged from her work. Now, by organizing the Hollywood Christain
Group, she would encourage the development of a new medium of
evangelism among the movie and TV stars who lived in her own back
yard. Its first meeting was at Henrietta Mears's home in September of
1 949
Connie Haines was a popular NBC TV singer who had converted to
Christ in her childhood . After her successful climb as an entertainer,
she had a deep religious experience at the 1 949 college briefing confer
ence, which was also attended by her close friend, Colleen Townsend.
Colleen had earlier received national publicity by her departure from a
budding career in show business to enter full-time evangelistic work.
Together with Miss Mears, the three of them established the Holly
wood Christian Group as a "house-church" ministry. Initially, the
group met in the homes of the stars and their friends. The meetings
were "closed" because of the constant publicity following its members
and their celebrity guests. As a rule, only people in the entertainment
industry itself were invited-actors and actresses, producers, smgers,
and writers-and their teachers in the professional ministry.

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity: 1 86 5- 1 9 60

39

From the beginning, and despite its celebrity participants, the Holly
wood Christian Group had a strong "teaching" and nurturing compo
nent for new and mature converts-an aspect of ministry in Hollywood
that would later decline in importance. Every other Monday night, an
inner circle of born-again believers would meet in one of their homes
for Bible study and prayer. On alternate Mondays, the group would
bring their unconverted friends to hear the message of salvation pro
claimed by leading evangelical theologians of the day. Henrietta Mears
was herself a highly influential college department teacher at Holly
wood's First Presbyterian Church, and she produced more than one
generation of some of the most prominent Presbyterian ministers in
America. The group's first "chaplain" was no ordinary revivalist,
either. J. Edwin Orr, now a noted scholar of religious awakenings and
then a new Oxford Ph . D. in church history, led the weekly gathering's
teaching activities until 1 9 5 2, when he was succeeded by Richard
Halverson. Halverson was an associate pastor of the Hollywood church
at the time; he is now chaplain of the U . S . Senate.
Other early leaders in the movement of Christian stars, beginning in
1 949, included Townsend, Tim Spencer (country song composer of
"Roomful of Roses"), Stuart Hamblen (another country artist who
wrote popular gospel songs after his conversion by Billy Graham at one
of the group's meetings), Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, and, for a brief
period, Jane Russell . By 1 9 5 2 , the Hollywood Christian Group had
gained popular notoriety, and it moved its weekly meetings from the
stars' homes to a Los Angeles hotel where it lasted until 1 970. Soon
the gatherings had become sufficiently "open" in character that even
unemployed and mere would-be actors and actresses, musicians, pro
ducers, and writers would come to the sessions seeking jobs. Real ce
lebrities, therefore, shyed away more than they had in the past. By the
1 970s, however, the Hollywood Christian Group was no longer neces
sary; Christianity now had a firm base and operation in one of the "sin
capitals" of the world.
In the early 1 9 50s, the Hollywood Christian Group was still a ques
tionable enterprise among sectarian, working-class Christian laity and
their fundamentalist and evangelical ministers. It might be all right to
try to convince movie stars and TV personalities they should be saved,
but they would surely have to leave the industry after their conversion .

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

Bill Bright's sympathetic article on the group in the July 1 9 50 issue of

Christia n Life provoked so many critical letters to the editor that they
dominated that column in the ensuing three issues. Typical of the
attitude dominant among conservative Protestants at the time was a
letter written by a Kansas minister rebutting the article's author: "Mr.
Bright's article on Hollywood was unfortunate and inconsistent to say
the least. . . . The wishy-washy, luke-warm professed believers who
insist movies are not wrong for Christians will now have a new argu
ment: 'Just look, there are Christian actors and actresses. Surely there
can be no harm in shows . . . . ' As a pastor I shall continue to blast
Hollywood and all it stands for" 2 1 But by the end of 1 9 57, even the
leading evangelical magazine for ministers, Christianity Today , assert
ed in an article by Richard Halverson that evangelism-both among
the stars and by the stars in the entertainment industry-was a very
good thing. Now it is hard to believe that revivalistic Christianity and
Hollywood celebrity status were ever "unequally yoked. " 22
The Positive Thinkers

"My books always have been what you might call a combination of
motivation and Christianity," Norman Vincent Peale declared in a
recent interview. 2 3 Positive thinking as the motivational technique of
successful living-it works-is the dominant "behavioral" ideal of popu
lar religion in modern America, the method by which the expected
results of conversion ("the abundant life") are to be realized. The focus
on conversion, of being born again, in the religion of contemporary
mass culture is rooted in the history of revivalism with its evangelical
theology and zeal to spread the word. But "positive thinking" as a key
methodological element in popular religion has far different origins
that go back to the early years of the nineteenth century and the desire
to integrate science, religion, and health .
An interest in "mental healing" was developing in the United States
before the Civil War, the result of news of experiments with hypnosis
by Franz Anton Mesmer ( 1 7 3 3?-1 8 1 5). Mesmer was a German physi
cian who concluded that a mysterious magnetic fluid was the explana
tion of the mental power one person could exercise over another.

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity: 1 86 5- 1 9 60

41

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby ( 1 802-1 866) of Portland, Maine, was one

of those in America who were intrigued by the therapeutic power of
mesmerism, and he ultimately came to believe that disease could be
cured by cultivating "healthy attitudes"-positive rather than negative
thoughts-through suggestion, and without the use of hypnotism .
Sickness, Quimby insisted, was the direct consequence of wrong be
l iefs.
One of Quimby's patients was Mary Baker Eddy ( 1 82 1 - 1 9 1 0), the
founder of Christian Science. Mrs . Eddy suffered from nervous disord
ers as a child, and ill health plagued her through three marriages. She
was successfully treated by Quimby in 1 862 and 1 864, but later radi
calized his teaching and embarked on her own independent healing
career. In Mrs. Eddy's theology, the Eternal Mind is the source of all
being, matter is nonexistent, and disease is caused entirely by errone
ous thought. The power, then, to overcome all the illusions that have
vexed humanity throughout its history was offered by her in the
Church of Christ, Scientist, and in the Christian Science system, with
its "practitioners"-a system that "furnishes the key to the harmony of
man and reveals what destroys sickness, sin, and death. "
But there were less radical and more widely popular heirs of Phineas
Parkhurst Quimby who also formed their own religious association .
Notable among them were his former patients, Julius A . Dresser and
Warren Felt Evans, a one-time Methodist minister. Other Quimby
disciples joined together with Dresser in Boston in the early 1 88os
under the umbrella of the Church of Divine Unity. But the movement
that emerged and grew in the ensuing decades was highly individualis
tic and expressed a wide variety of doctrine within its ranks; thus it
failed to achieve any viable organizational unity. As a general religious
movement-more moderate than Christian Science, however-it has
come to take on the term "New Thought" as the most commonly used
designation.
Within New Thought circles, a more concrete expression of "mind
cure" was the Unity School of Christianity, founded in Kansas City,
Missouri , by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore in the 1 88os. Both had
attended Christian Science and New Thought lectures when "Truth"
came to Mrs. Fillmore-the discovery of the power of positive thinking

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

-which she described as "the establishment of a healing conscious

ness through the constant repetition of an affirmation, 'I am a child of
God and, therefore, I do not inherit sickness. ' " Unity saw itself as
Christian. The power to release the electronic forces sealed in the
nerves comes directly from Jesus. It is Jesus-power. And Charles Fill
more wrote that the U nity method not only brings health , it also leads
to material wealth:
Do not say money is scarce; the very statement will drive money away
from you . Do not say that times are hard with you; the very words will
tighten your purse strings until Omnipotence itself cannot slip a dime into
it. Begin now to talk plenty, think plenty, and give thanks for plenty . . . . It
actually works.
Every home can be prosperous, and there should be no poverty-stricken
homes, for they are caused only by inharmony, fear, negative thinking and
speaking. 2 4

As a broadly defined religious movement, New Thought became

very popular in the twentieth century, with its therapeutic mind cure
through positive thinking. It was spread largely through the printed
media. Unity itself became, in the main, a vast publishing enterprise
that has had astonishingly large circulation among members of con
ventional churches, predominantly women . The bestselling books of
Joshua L. Liebman, a rabbi, popularized the "reassurance" theme
among Jews, while the TV shows and bestsellers of Fulton J. Sheen
did the same among Catholics. Most famous of all the positive think
ers, however, is a Protestant, Norman Vincent Peale ( 1 898- ) , 2 5 whose
twenty-five books have sold nearly eight million copies in thirty-eight
languages. Peale's printed sermons are sent regularly to 70o, ooo people
around the world, and his inspirational monthly magazine, Guideposts,
has a circulation of more than three million. 2 6
New Thought was a popular reaction to the requirement-implicit,
at least-in traditional Calvinism of "resigning" oneself to the will of a
distant, wholly other, but sovereign God, even if God's will seemed
contrary with what "I" think is best. Its therapeutic understanding of
salvation was centered entirely on the individual's personal needs and
desires, innate ability and free will-denied in Calvinism-to achieve

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity: 1 86 5- 1 9 60

43

desired ends merely through the right motivation and mental process.
In New Thought, man and woman can save themselves and become
happy, healthy, and holy individuals (with holiness being j ust a state of
mind). Horatio W. Dresser made the point well in his Handbook of
New Thought, published in 1 9 1 7:
It was once the custom so greatly to emphasize the majesty and power of
God, that l ittle was left for the creature save to minimize h imself in the
presence of the Creator. The result was an essentially negative attitude,
lacking in powers of resistance . . . . In relation to life it meant submiss ive
ness to the divine will, quiescent readiness to take what might come. It
impl ied a weak mode of thought, an inefficient attitude, and a will that
struggled to hold itself up to the mark, to the level of unpleasant duty. The
New Thought came as the corrective of this abject submissiveness. It sub
stituted self-realization for self-sacrifice, and development for self-efface
ment. It is nothing if not an affirmative thought, and thi s positiveness has
come to stay. 27

Self-awareness and self-love, then, replaced self-sacrifice as the

prime method of achieving "holiness" in Christianity. Such self-affir
mation is motivated and achieved through the power of positive think
ing in the following manner outlined by Dresser:
The tendency of radicalism i n the New Thought is to exalt the finite self to
the first rank. Thus nearly all the affirmations take their clue from the first
personal pronoun . . . . The principle is, to affirm and persistently maintain
as true

now

that which you desire, that which i s true i n ideal only. . . . If

necessary, you are warranted i n denying whatever apparently stands between

you and thi s ideal . By thus giving the m ind unqualifiedly to one idea you
exclude every doubt, fear, or negative thought that m ight arise i n protest. 28

It may seem odd, at first, that the New Thought positive thinking
process, so "worldly" in its orientation and goals, should have been
wed, since the 1 970s at least, to the revivalistic conversion experience,
so "supernatural" and "spiritual" in nature. But salvation (from the
Latin salvus, meaning "healthy") as a cure for the soul and spirit was
easily expanded to include mind cure, and body cure, and as such
become popular among evangelical Christians when upward mobility
led them to seek salvation in the here and now more than in the

44

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

hereafter. Interest is a blissful hereafter-with all its traditional materi

alistic enjoyments-wanes inevitably when affluence and the leisure to
enjoy it provide on earth what was once reserved for heaven. Salvation
in popular religion, even among the twice-born, has become largely a
matter of willfully changing one's own consciousness to achieve
health, prosperity, and peace of mind-now.
The first major interface between revivalism and New Thought oc
curred when Norman Vincent Peale became a supporter of Billy Gra
ham's 1 9 57 New York City crusade. It was a transaction that resulted
in Peale's Marble Collegiate Church reaping a rich harvest of crusade
decision cards and in Graham's recognition of Peale as a fellow born
again Christian, despite his obvious self-help Pelagian ism . 29 New
Thought was an accommodating movement, and it never had much
objection to the use in preaching and teaching of traditional Christian
symbolism. But in its psychologizing of theology, it reinterpreted the
mea ning of the traditional theological vocabulary. Salvation itself, as
good therapy, was psychologized-mentalized-both in its belief and
behavioral dimensions.
In the 1 98os, popular religion in America is transmitted by televi
sion and carried to a lesser, but growing, degree by religious radio,
records and tapes, and the printed mass media. The evangelists of the
electronic church and their celebrity guests preach and teach the gos
pel of a good God who is able to save anyone and everyone who so
wills it, from poverty, ill-health, and, most of all, from boredom. The
interaction of New Thought themes (and popular psychology more
generally) into modern evangelical Christianity as the religion of mass
culture has brought about a lot more talk about Jesus in its expressed
theology than in the writings of the classical New Thought thinkers
themselves . But he is a new Jesus for a new day and a new culture. In
the words of Norman Vincent Peale, "Jesus can help you think posi
tively. "30

C H A P T E R 3

Celebrity Leaders in the History

of American Christianity :
1960-Present

In times of rapid social change, when traditional values and institu

tions and the authority of the "established" leaders of those institutions
are increasingly called into question, a society seeks new, "extraordi
nary" leaders from outside the staid establishment. The mass media,
obviously, have had the primary role in modern American culture of
identifying potential leaders of this sort and of giving them public visi
bility.
American society as a whole has undergone enormous and rapid
social change in recent years, epitomized in the civil rights movements
and student activism of the sixties, the Vietnam War, the decline of
the family and the surge of sexual permissiveness, the rise of the coun
terculture, and the scandal of Watergate, in addition to the nation's
increased dependence on ever-more-expensive "foreign oil" to meet its
energy needs. In the course of such profound social and cultural
change, Americans lost faith in the nation's political leadership and in
the institutions of government as a whole. "Question authority"
became the catchphrase of intellectual protest.
Notable change was also apparent in the realm of religion during
this period. The Second Vatican Council opened Roman Catholicism
to the same modernizing infl uences that had affected Protestantism for
a hundred years, with the result that the authority of the established
Catholic hierarchy, and of the pope himself, was challenged-not only

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

by the church's liberal intelligentsia, but by the masses of American

Catholics as well. The involvement of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish
theologians and clergy in nontraditional, unpopular "radical" causes
from the anti-war movement to the "death of God" to gay liberation
caused the then-silent majority in churches and synagogues to throw
these leaders' positions and authority into question, too. And the Jesus
People movement brought the val ues of the secular counterculture
into popular religion, which, like the wider society, focused its atten
tion on youth and accommodated its ministry to their desires and
needs.
The 1 970s may well have been a time of passive inwardness in
reaction to the activism of the sixties, but it was also a time of rapid
social change; the nation looked for leadership, strong enough to pre
serve order, outside the established political ranks through out the
decade. Then, in 1 980, the beleaguered United States of America
turned to H ollywood for its president. Ronald Reagan is a good symbol
of the "new" kind of celebrity leadership modern, media-oriented
Americans are seeking. In the religion of mass culture in America, the
new leaders are celebrities by virtue of their exposure in the mass
media as the authors or subjects of religious bestsellers, as composers
and performers featured on bestselling records and tapes, as the evan
gelists of the electronic church and their guests, and as pastors of
"booming" local congregations, whose image and techniques are bor
rowed from celebrities greater than themselves. Converted criminals,
drug addicts, sports heroes, beauty queens, and the like, and those in
the mass media who give them a stage, are the new leaders of popular
religion in America-by virtue of their appeal and visibility-not the
Catholic bishops and Protestant denominational heads, not the aca
demic theologians, not the general secretaries of the National Council
of Churches and World Council of Churches, and not the ordinary
pastors of ordinary congregations.
The Printed Word

The appearance in the American book trade of the religious bestsell

er is not a new phenomenon . Widely read theological treatises and

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity

47

collections of sermons and tracts were already being published for the
more educated public in the seventeenth century. But the bestsellers of
the post-civil War years and thereafter have by and large been books
with broader popular appeal , written in a simple fashion to help every
day people meet their everyday problems. The theme that religion
brings about happiness in this world-with or without a blissful hereaf
ter-became dominant in the literature and was supported by numer
ous titles on just how to achieve that happiness. Especially prominent
among these books have been the works of Ralph W. Trine and Em
met Fox, both New Thought theoreticians, the positive thinking
volumes of Liebman, S heen , and Peale, and, more recently, the best
sellers by Billy Graham.
Fundamentalist apocalyptic writing first entered the popular reli
gious book market in a big way in 1 970, with the publication of Hal
Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth . Although Graham had dealt
with the issue to some degree in works prior to that year, the selling
point of his books were conversion and its consequences, not the Sec
ond Coming. Lindsey, however, focused on the issue of the "end
times" specifically at a time when the Arab-Israeli War of 1 967 had
rekindled popular interest in Armageddon . The Late Great Planet
Earth sold more than ten million copies during the seventies, making
it The .\'ew York Times nonfiction bestseller of the decade, and the
book that made the idea of "evangelical publishing" a lucrative possi
bility.
Another new topical emphasis entered the world of popular religious
publishing in the late 1 96os and became a central focus by the mid70s: spiritual biographies and autobiographies of popular celebrities.
Beginning \vith the appearance in 1 964 of David Wilkerson's The
Cross and the Switchblade, and Run Baby Run ( 1 968) by Nicky Cruz,
a former Spanish Harlem gang leader, and A New Song ( 1 970), Pat
Boone's story of his pentecostal experience, the genre burst into full
bloom in 1 96 with Charles Colson's Born Again. A host of others
would follow. A.ll were confessional testimonies of the new converts'
lives before conversion and afterward, centering on the "results" of
being born again or Spirit-baptized. For decades evangelical magazines
had featured such life stories as a "witness" to the unbelieving or

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

"backslidden" reader, but not until the late sixties and early se\cnties
did this kind of focus on personalities-celebrities who al ready had
secular mass media visibility-become the dominant theme in popular
religious publishing.
One American family in four buys a religious book each year. and
8o percent of all religious books sold in the United States are sold to
women . Most of these are marketed to those who are believers alread\
in the typical "Bible bookstores" of the Christian Booksellers Associa
tion , an umbrella organization serving more than 2, 700 stores . But
religious titles are doing increasingly well in general trade bookstores.
too, and for every two Bibles sold in a religious bookstore, one is sold
in the secular marketplace. Given the current evangelical interest
among readers, the typical bestseller today is "experience-oriented, life
centered, and Bible-based. " 3 1 Recent bestselling titles include Tim and
Beverly La Haye's The Act of Marriage (a sex manual for the born
again), Marjorie Decker's The Christian Mother Goose Book, Anne
Ortland's Children Are Wet Cement, Frances Hunter's God's Answer
to Fat, Lose It, and Hal Lindsey's The 1 98o's: Coun tdown to Ar
mageddon .
In the past, even popular religious bestsellers aimed a t conveying at
least some kind of knowledge to the reader, however mundane . But
now the thrust, more often than not, is on personalities themselves
who model, in the stories of their lives, the technique of achieving
success and happiness. Today's bestselling books, of course, often lead
to the guest appearances of their authors on the TV stage of the elec
tronic church, where the more "appealing" they look and come across,
the better the sales of their new book will be, and the more authority
they will wield among the viewers. If getting born again worked for
Charles Colson and Jeb Stuart Magruder and Eldridge Cleaver, if it
worked for Graham Kerr, the "galloping gourmet, " and Joni Eareck
son, the attractive young quadriplegic, it can surely work for anyone
and everyone.
Popular Christian magazines, with a combined circulation in the
hundreds of thousands-not to mention Guideposts, which again ,
reaches over three million readers-also enhance the visibility of reli
gious celebrities as a whole, including Christian writers. Important

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity

49

among these are the venerable Christian Herald and Moody Monthly,
Billy Graham's Decision magazine and Oral Roberts's Abundant Life,
and especially Christia n Life, which was founded in 1 948 as a breezy
"Christian" alternative to Life Magazine, 32 keeping its evangelical
readers "informed how God is moving today through entertainers, ath
letes, housewives, musicians, businessmen, authors, scholars, and just
everyday people. "3 3
The world of rel igious publishing in America does give visibility and
credence to the leading personalities of the religion of mass culture.
The printed page does it well, but the electronic media do it even
better.
The Christian Music Industry

The increasingly sophisticated electronic media now constitute the

primary vehicle for the transmission of popular religion in America.
With expert staging, the TV programs of the electronic church serve
that function for older adults, but it is the growing alternative contem
porary Christian music industry that carries popular religion to the
youth culture. Here leading religious composers and performers spread
the word and its implications to their listeners and fans on radio and
through mass sales of their records and tapes.
The industry itself emerged in the mid-7os out of the "Jesus rock"
concerts of the Christian counterculture, where, beginning in the late
1 96os, young believers, in their own performing groups, adapted the
electronic instrumentation of the secular rock idiom to gospel lyrics.
The new music was purveyed by and for young people themselves, a
new generation of culture-affirming Christians in their teens and twen
ties. Its popularity increased rapidly during the 1 970s and gradually
worked its way into the youth ministries of established churches as the
Jesus People movement and the counterculture as a whole waned. The
genre's visibility was enhanced greatly by the conversion to Christ of
secular folk and rock celebrities like Paul Stookey, B . J. Thomas, AI
Green, Donna Summer, and Bob Dylan, who afterward produced and
sang their own Christian music and caused the leading AM and FM
rock stations to take notice of the new popular idiom.

50

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

Donna Summer ends a recent album with a resounding "I Believe

in Jesus. " Contemporary Christian music is one of the fastest growing
formats in American radio today, as strongly defined as New Wave,
Country, or Top-40. Its songs, played on over fourteen hundred of the
nation's seven thousand radio stations, are written and recorded both
by well-known secular acts and by some five hundred other performers
prominent within the Christian music industry itself.
Given the high visibility of American's evangelical community in
the 1 970s and 1 98os, and the rising number of its youthful adherents,
it is not at all surprising that Christian record companies such as Word
(owned by the ABC network), Sparrow, Light, and Songbird, (owned
by MCA-Universal) have begun to adopt sophisticated secular market
ing techniques to sell their "positive pop. " Many established Christian
radio stations of the revivalist tradition, used only to older listeners,
have begun to seek a younger audience by minimizing sermons and
maximizing music. In the recording process itself, the sincere amateu
rism that marked early Jesus rock has given way to pop professionalism,
reflecting bigger budgets from the increasing flow of Christian albums
and tapes promoted, l ike their secular counterparts, by T-shirts, video
clips, buttons, posters, and contests. A glossy monthly hybrid of Roll
ing Stone and B illboard, Contemporary Christian Music Magazine
features interviews with and stories about top religious musicians and
news of the industry, while Record World, one of the most important
music trade papers, now has separate popularity charts for white "con
temporary and inspirational gospel" (acts like Evie Tornquist-Karlsson,
Debbie Boone, Paul Stookey, and Maranatha) and black "soul and
spiritual gospel" (James Cleveland, the Hawkins Family, Andre
Crouch, and the like). In the Christian market alone, each of these
names can sell 2oo, ooo to 40o, ooo albums and tapes, 8o percent of
which are bought in Christian bookstores.
The religion of mass culture now has a growing medium of trans
mission to the Christian youth of America. The stars of the contempo
rary Christian music industry preach and teach their values to fans in
the same way that Elvis and John Lennon did to theirs. Although the
format of this music may have shifted over the past decade from "Make
a joyful noise unto the Lord" to "Play skillfully unto the Lord , " its

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity

composers and performers still insist that their message is more impor
tant than their medium, however sophisticated-and lucrative. 34
Radio

The medium of religious radio is the forerunner of the mainly 1V

transmitted electronic church phenomenon, and it still may be con
sidered an important segment of that wider venture. The first religious
radio broadcast took place almost simultaneously with the emergence
of broadcasting itself. KDKA in Pittsburgh, the nation's first full
fledged radio station, had started operating in November 1 920, and on
January 2, 1 92 1 , it broadcast a Sunday evening vesper service from
Calvary Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, an event that marked the
birth of a movement.
R. R. Brown, a fundamentalist pastor oriented toward evangelism,
broadcast the first nondenominational religious service in Omaha in
1 9 2 3, and continued it weekly, thus establishing America's first "radio
congregation . " Brown later became known as "the Billy Sunday of the
air, " and his "Radio Chapel Service" remained on regional radio after
his death in 1 964 until 1 977.
By 1 92 3 , ten churches were operating their own stations; in 1927,
there were already about fifty stations licensed to various religious
groups whose programming was almost exclusively the broadcasting of
regular services of worship and other in-church events on Sundays.
Leading the way in the development of religious broadcasting as a
technology was WMBI, the station founded and still controlled today
by Chicago's Moody Bible Institute. Its earliest regular program was a
fundamentalist Bible class taught by the institute's president, James M .
Gray. Today, more than five decades after its founding in 1 92 5 ,
WMBI broadcasts its own widely heard programs, including "Moody
Presents" and "Radio School of the Bible , " in addition to offering over
thirty WMBI productions to other Christian stations.
Beginning in the early 1 9 30s, the religious radio medium spread
extensively across the United States, but only a small part of its growth
occurred through exclusively religious stations. The big surge in its
programming came, instead, through the powerful and influential

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

commercial radio stations. With the creation of national networks it

suddenly became possible to reach millions of listeners at a time . The
first religious broadcaster to purchase network time was Donald Grey
Barnhouse, minister of Philadelphia's Tenth Presbyterian Church,
who preached and taught over radio from 1 927 to 1 969. Another
broadcast to go national in the 1 9 30s was "The Lutheran Hour, " based
in St. Louis. It first carried the popular ministry of Walter A. Maier,
then (since 1 967), the weekly sermons of Oswald Hoffman . In the
1 9 30s, Maier was reaching five million listeners, and in ensuing
decades "The Lutheran Hour" would become the most popular regular
broadcast-secular or religious-in the history of radio, reaching an
estimated twenty million listeners worldwide.
Maier, Hoffman, and Barnhouse were all part of the institutional
church, and their ministries consisted more of Bible teaching than
evangelism per se. But most successful religious radio programs have
been broadcast in the characteristic style of revivalism, centered on
folksy gospel music and preaching for conversion . Programs of this
genre heard nationally in the 1 9 30s and still continuing today include
M. R. De Haan's "Radio Bible Class, " Paul Myers's "Haven of Rest, "
and Theodore Epp's "Back to the Bible. " Most famous, however, of all
radio revival programs was Charles E. Fuller's "Old Fashioned Revival
Hour, " which emerged in 1 9 3 7-out of a weekly regional broadcast
from Fuller's church in Southern California--as a program heard
coast-to-coast over thirty Mutual network stations. Two years later it
was carried by all 1 5 2 Mutual stations, and was reaching an audience
of more than ten million listeners. Based in Long Beach, California,
for most of its l ife, the "Old Fashioned Revival Hour's" format and
network policy changed from time to time throughout the program's
history; but by the time of his retirement in 1 967, Fuller was drawing
twenty million listeners a week.
As a medium, religious radio reaped the benefits of improved broad
cast technology in the decades following World War II. Increasingly,
prominent evangelists and pastors of big churches went on the air
with regular programs, with Billy Graham's weekly "Hour of Decision"
making its first appearance in 1 9 50 . During the 1 9 50s and 1 96os,
nonprofit, noncommercial, exclusively religious stations such as

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity

53

Family Radio, founded in Oakland, California, in 1 9 58, brought more

people into the electronic church. And between 1 945 and 1 960, ap
proximately ten radio stations a year started broadcasting at least two
hours of religious programs each dax. Now there are more than a
thousand stations in this category. Of these, six hundred broadcast
religious content virtually full-time and are owned by Christians. Half
of these stations do not sell advertising time, but rely entirely on the
donations of listeners for support. 3 5
Religous radio brought popular religion home from the church and
revival tent in a real istic and passionate way that the printed media
could not match. Basically a fundamentalist, and later an evangelical
phenomenon, its message was Bible-centered, easy to understand, and
usually sentimental, appealing to older believers who longed for the
return of the old-time religion. The "teaching" element is still present
in religious radio, but youth-inspired Christian music increasingly in
trudes on the now shorter messages preached over the air. With its
revivalistic style and culture-rejecting fundamentalism, the medium of
religious radio tended to be looked down upon by established Protes
tant and Catholic clergy until it became apparent that their congrega
tions were listening, too. Now, even the "mainline" denominational
hierarchies and the National Council of Churches pay attention to this
growing and increasingly sophisticated electronic medium.
TV and the "Electronic Church"

Television began to captivate the whole nation in 1 9 50, even

though less than 1 o percent of all households had a TV set. Most of
the major television stations were concentrated in the big cities of the
Northeast, where one out of four homes owned a set. But by 1 9 5 5 ,
almost all areas o f the United States had TV stations, and 6 5 percent
of the country's households owned a set. In the Northeast, ownership
had doubled, reaching eight out of ten homes. By the end of the
decade, television was nationwide; nine out of ten homes across Amer
ica had sets. Today, it is the rare household that does not have at least
one TV receiver, if not two or three.
According to Marshall McLuhan, the impact of television as a mass

54

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

medium is unprecedented, ranking in importance with Gutenberg's

invention of moveable type in the fifteenth century. The printed word
made knowledge available to an ever wider circle of people-those
who could read-and it accelerated the transfer of information consid
erably, while it bridged the chasms of time and place. 1V does all that
and more. It restores face-to-face communication, erases chasms of
place and time, and reduces the world to what McLuhan calls a "glo
bal village. " Television also eradicates the differences between learned
and unlearned, making knowledge available even to the illiterate. The
very nature of the medium conveys a sense of immediacy and urgency,
leading to McLuhan's famous declaration that "the medium is the
message. " Furthermore, while print is an intellectual exercise, 1V is a
total and immediate experience. 36
Television is a more "popular" medium for the transmission of reli
gion than radio, despite the fact that in America there are more than
fourteen hundred religious radio stations and only about thirty-five
full-time religious 1V stations. Television makes up the difference,
however, through paid time on secular VHF and UHF stations in the
Top- 50 market. These programs include daily releases, usually in the
late night or early morning slots, along with Sunday morning paid
time and 1V specials-often at prime time-featuring well-known
Christian celebrities. Four religious "networks, " then, feed programs
via satellite to stations and to thousands of cable 1V hookups. 37
Television broadcasting is the most important carrier of the religion
of mass culture, and may itself be said to be a kind of "universal"
religion . Indeed, only religion has matched 1V as a cultural force that
transmits identical messages to every group and class. Television is best
seen as a ritual, as a virtually universal new religion that tends to
absorb viewers of otherwise diverse outlooks into its own coherent, but
manufactered, world of fact and fiction, its own "mainstream. " The
more time people spend watching 1V, the more it provides them with
their primary view of reality.
The popular religion carried by the television medium, with its for
mal trappings of tradition! religion, appeals primarily to the anxious
and alienated who are perplexed by and resistant to change, but are
powerless to prevent it. Its easy-to-understand, forthright measures,

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity

55

and oftentimes hardline moral postures, communicated within a reli

able and well-known ritual, confirm the fears, feed the hopes, and
cultivate the assumptions TV shaped in the first place. Today, televi
sion as a whole dom inates the cultural climate in which all institu
tions, including traditional religion, must find their way. 38
Although the celebrity leaders and staged "props" of popular religion
on television and radio give it a high degree of public visibility, the
electronic church phenomenon is really one version of what German
sociologist Thomas Luckmann terms "invisible religion. " He refers to
the fact that in a consumer society that assures great freedom of as
sociation or nonassociation-including the freedom to be nonreligious
or utterly selective-many people find meaning without belonging,
religion without community. People may "belong" to the electronic
church by tuning to the right TV station at the right time, by carrying
a radio with them on a fishing trip, or on their way to work, by listen
ing to a program in their homes-without visiting a church. They may
belong to it by using the mails as their offering basket, by adopting the
slogans of their favorite broadcaster, or by adopting a philosophy of
healing or success. But there is no formal membership, no religious
community in any traditional sense of the word.
Invisible religion as a whole is invisible because it is private, not
regularly institutionalized, not monitored by priests or contained in
organizations. It is strongest where there are no props or supports from
family, neighborhood, and "primary" associations. When nothing in a
religious outlook is confirmed by significant nearby people, one has to
go it alone, and do one's own selecting and reconsidering of religious
vision and thought. Invisible religion is the religion of the highrise
apartment, the long weekend, and the convalescent "home"; and the
mass media transmit it well to a growing clientele. 39
Besides Oral Roberts, a number of other important TV evangelists
have emerged as leaders of the electronic church during the last few
years. Jerry Falwell, of course, is a good candidate for first among
them. Of all the prominent television preachers, his format and style is
the most reminiscent of traditional revivalism and of the old-time reli
gion more generally.
Falwell started his daily "Old-Time Gospel Hour" on radio in 1 9 56,

s6

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

j ust one week after the newly ordained young preacher and thirty-five
other adults organized the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynch
burg, Virginia. Six months later, the new congregation expanded its
media ministry with a half-hour program on Sunday evenings. By
1 9 57, the church had a membership of 8 50, and Falwell gives much
of the credit for that increase-and the spectacular ones that would
follow-to his radio and TV visibility.
With a membership of ten thousand in 1 970, and still growing,
Thomas Road Baptist Church moved into its third and present home,
an elegant octagonal structure modeled after a design by Thomas Jef
ferson. Falwell had begun broadcasting the regular Sunday service
from his church in the mid-sixties, and the current building has com
plete facilities for both radio and television program production, in
cluding four cameras in the main sanctuary.
By 1 98 1 , Thomas Road Baptist Church had eighteen thousand
members, and its TV ministry had grown substantially as well. Today
Jerry Falwell is seen and heard by almost six million viewers across
America. About three hundred television stations in the United States,
Canada, West Africa, and Japan carry the weekly "Old-Time Gospel
Hour" with its revivalistic music and lucid, persuasive sermons by Fal
well . And his radio show continues, too . 40
The "Old-Time Gospel Hour" is probably the fastest growing of any
of the bigtime religious TV programs, because, in the words of The
Wall Street Journal, Jerry Falwell is "a man of charm, talent, drive
and ambition. " But his ministry's rapid growth is also a tribute to
modern marketing and management techniques, which he uses with
great skill. He is a forceful administrator, with a flair for organization
and delegation of authority, and with a keen understanding of income
statements and balance sheets. 41 In terms of style and method, if not
content, Jerry Falwell and Dwight L. Moody have a lot in common.
If Falwell is number one among television evangelists in terms of
med ia visibility, Pat Robertson surely ranks as the foremost innovator
within the electronic church. As host of the "700 Club" and founder
of the highly successful Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN),
Robertson has been in the business of religious radio and TV since
1 96 1 , when he acquired his first television station in Portsmouth, Vir-

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity

57

ginia, and named that initial operation the Christian Broadcasting Net
work-at a time long before such a concept seemed tangible. By the
late 1 96os, station WYAH was well on its way, and by 1 974, CBN was
a full-fledged network, operating television stations in Atlanta, Dallas,
and Portsmouth, and FM radio stations in Norfolk and in five cities in
New York.
The year 1 977 saw the industry magazine Broadcasting describe
CBN as the leader among all stations, religious and secular, for its
expertise in satellite communications. It was the first religious organi
zation to own and operate a satellite earth station in the United States,
and CBN now has linkups with both the RCA Satcom and Westar
satellites, plus a chain of sixty earth stations across the country. Today
the network includes four TV stations and six radio stations, in addi
tion to a missionary radio station, a recording company, a program
service for more than three thousand cable systems, a news network
(providing a "Christian" perspective on world events), and a university
that specializes in electonic media studies. With this operation and
more, the Christian Broadcasting Network fully intends to become the
nation's fourth major network.
Pat Robertson has been the prime innovator in religious network
organization, but he has also been the foremost innovator in adapting
the format and style of religious TV to the popular tastes of middle
class culture and its need for entertainment, even in the realm of
religion. At first glance, the "700 Club" might appear to be a Christian
version of the "Tonight Show, " with a sophisticated camera setup and
stage props decorated with potted plants, a walnut desk, and comfort
able chairs against a fake-skyline background, all in living color. There
is an enthusiastic, cheering audience and an in-house band. Celebrity
guests appearing on the show might include a bestselling author, a
gold-record singer, and the wife of a troubled politician, all Christians.
Robertson wears a pin-striped, three-piece suit, reminiscent, per
haps, of his days at Yale Law School (he is also a Phi Beta Kappa
graduate of the U niversity of Virginia). This prominent television
evangelist and business entrepreneur is handsome, articulate, charm
ing, and very middle class. He is able, on a moment's notice, to
change the subject from "Bible prophecy" and Armageddon to the

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

current economic crisis and the "perils of big government" without

losing his audience's attention for a minute. And the "700 Club" pro
vides at least as much sheer entertainment for its viewers as content
oriented teaching by the host or his guests.
Pat Robertson's daily talk show evolved from CBN' s early fund rais
ing efforts, which sought seven hundred people who would pledge ten
dollars a month to support WYAH and its sister radio station. The first
successful "700 Club" telethon was in 1 96 5 , and after the second CBN
telethon a year later, the "700 Club" turned into a popular daily TV
program. Its format, of course, parallels that of the typical secular
television talk show, but the "700 Club" also has an added dimension:
its "stage" in Portsmouth is the primary "communications point" for
two-way interaction among "members" of the electronic church. In
the studio, and visible on national TV, sits a large group of "telephone
volunteers" (as in the typical telethon) who not only take pledges of
financial support, but also "counsel" those who call in their contribu
tions to the main studio in Portsmouth or to over one hundred local
telephone centers across the nation. This approach has been successful
enough that, whenever possible, CBN tries to buy ninety minutes of
time, six days a week, leaving viewers free to go to church on Sunday
or to watch the more traditional services of worship broadcast by other
TV evangelists, such as Jerry Falwell. 42
The increased feasibility of specifically religious broadcasting net
works and the popularity of the talk show with entertainment in the
electronic church, both pioneered by Pat Robertson, is further attested
to by the rise on his own of Robertson's former collegue Jim Bakker,
his "PTL Club" show, and its associated Christian communications
network. Originally, "PTL" was the acronym for "Praise the Lord, "
since the "PTL Club" was started in 1 974, on the heels of the Jesus
People movement, which had its own characteristic vocabulary adapt
ed from fundamentalist and pentecostal revivalism. By 1 978, however,
the program was no longer j ust a daily show in Charlotte, North Caro
lina; it appeared on over two hundred stations nationwide, a figure
representing more affiliates than the entire ABC network. With a
growing national audience and more middle class respectability, PTL
has now come to mean "People That Love . "

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity

59

Very similar in style and approach to the "700 Club, " the "PTL
Club" is hosted by Jim Bakker, a warm-hearted and boyish-appearing
young TV evangelist, whose attractive wife, Tammy, has herself
become a celebrity on the show. Both Robertson's "700 Club" and
Bakker's "PTL Club" feature essentially the same parade of Christian
authors, movie stars, politicians, recording artists, ex-criminals, and
the like, as guests. The two leaders of popular religion are competitors
with their daily television programs, but they are also competitors in
network organization .
PTL owns and operates an additional TV station in Canton, Ohio,
and provides around the clock programming by satellite to cable sys
tems across the country. Its superbly equipped studio in Charlotte is
located in a Williamsburg-style building, an enlarged reproduction of
the colonial settlement's church. Adjacent to the gardens and Wil
liamsburg buildings of the PTL headquarters is a fourteen hundred
acre complex that provides "total living" facilities for the thousands of
visitors who make the pilgrimage to Heritage Village each year. The
vast acreage is also the site ot PTL's Heritage Schools, ranging from
kindergarten through Heritage University, which, like Robertson's
counterpart, also emphasizes electronic media studies.
In 1 977, PTL stepped squarely into international broadcasting with
its "Club PTL" for Latin American audiences. Not j ust a synchronized
translation of the North American program, "Club PTL" has its own
host, guests, tempo, and Latin vitality, while the message and basic
format remain the same. Indigenous PTL shows are now also broad
cast in Lagos, Nigeria, and in Seoul, Korea. 43
The tradition of revivalism has been brought home and successfully
accommodated to the mass culture of the 1 98os by leading TV evange
lists like Oral Roberts, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Jim Bakker.
These are j oined by Rex Humbard, who has broadcast folksy services
from his "Cathedral of Tomorrow" in Akron, Ohio, since the 1 9 50s;
by James Robison, the Texas evangelist who went national in 1 979 by
adding to his regular show a prime-time series of fifteen sixty-minute
programs in the nation's top two hundred cities; by Paul and Jan
Crouch, who co-host a Southern California-based program similar in
format to the "PTL Club , " and who operate the Trinity Broadcasting

6o

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

Network; and by a growing host of less visible, yet still important,

television revivalists who feature similar brands of homespun and senti
mental evangelical Christianity for the viewing public. But there is
another popular TV preacher whose style, format, and message are not
rooted in revivalism at all, but in the positive thinking tradition of
Norman Vincent Peale and in the television mannerisms and message
of the late Fulton J. Sheen . This highly significant leader of the reli
gion of mass culture in America is Robert H. Schuller.
In assessing the electronic church as a new phenomenon, many
commentators seem to have forgotten the long-and very middle class
-TV ministry of Sheen, the refined, highly educated, dedicated
churchman who endeavored to teach the basic principles of historic
Catholicism to modern men and women in America. Sheen was sure
ly the most prominent star of religious television in the 1 9 50s, though
he purposely ignored the Hollywood flourishes of music, scenic back
grounds, changing camera angles, and a large cast. Airing for thirty
minutes each week, his show consisted almost entirely of his discus
sions on such topics as personal responsibility or the value of church
attendance, broad themes that could appeal to non-Catholics as well .
Sheen dressed in formal clerical garb, and his only props were a chair,
a blackboard, a table, and a Bible.
Fulton J. Sheen preached and taught popular Catholicism, and his
viewers liked his message. But it was Sheen's characteristic television
mannerisms that made his ministry especially appealing. Often, while
pacing the floor or spreading his arms wide, with the sleeves of his
clerical gown falling dramatically into wing-like forms, he spoke
directly to the person watching. His monologue was flavored with hu
morous anecdotes. Then, at climactic moments, Sheen would gaze
silently at the viewer, with his deep-set, pale eyes enhanced by striking
dark eyebrows, almost piercing the TV screen to get the viewer's undi
vided attention . And he would always end his program with the gentle
benediction, "God love you . " In 1 966, after sixteen years on televi
sion, Fulton J. Sheen became Bishop of Rochester, New York, and
formally ended his TV ministry the same year.
Anyone who has watched both Sheen and Robert H. Schuller on
television will notice that Schuller's clerical garb, his gestures and

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity

preaching style, even his characteristic benediction, "God loves you,

and so do 1," are all highly reminiscent of the late Catholic bishop's
1V ministry in the 1 9 50s and 1 96os. Schuller himself is probably the
foremost purveyor of popular religion to the American middle class
today.
Born on a farm in Iowa in 1 926, Robert H. Schuller is of Dutch
descent. He was educated at Hope College and Western Theological
Seminary, both institutions of the Reformed Church in America, in
Holland, Michigan, Schuller's own denomination (like Peale's). The
prominent television preacher and pastor of a ten thousand member
congregation was successful as a parish minister from the start. Schull
er took his first church in 1 9 50, right out of seminary. During his
five-year pastorate at the Ivanhoe Reformed Church outside of Chi
cago, he brought its membership from thirty-eight to four hundred. In
1 9 5 5 , the Reformed Church pastor moved from Chicago to Garden
Grove, in Southern California's growing Orange County, where he
rented a local drive-in theatre and established the world's first "come as
you are-in the family car" drive-in church. Schuller began his minis
try here by standing atop the theater's tar-roofed refreshment stand with
no choir and no props, j ust a microphone-and occasional bird drop
pings. It was a situation in which he had to dip into his own imagina
tion and become an entertainer, an inspirer. Call it theatrical
presence, and you won't be far wrong.
From that humble beginning, Schuller's Garden Grove Community
Church (even the name had been chosen for the sake of broad popular
appeal) has become one of the largest congregations in America. In
1 980, its membership moved into their new "Crystal Cathedral" with
ten thousand windows, an $ 1 8 million building designed primarily by
the premier futuristic architect, Philip Johnson, where Schuller
preaches simultaneously to an indoor congregation of three thousand
and an outdoor "congregation" of three hundred cars (he never aban
doned the idea of a drive-in church). But it is his television ministry
that has been the key, both in terms of finances and membership, to
the success of his church and its programs.
Robert H. Schuller had been one of the first residents of the Chi
cago suburb of Ivanhoe to own a 1V set, and, in the beginning, he

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

installed the antenna in his parsonage's attic so as not to offend the

parishioners. Convinced that television was the medium of the future,
Schuller established his own TV ministry in 1 970, broadcasting the
weekly Sunday services from the Garden Grove Community Church
as the "Hour of Power. " The show is now syndicated to over two
hundred stations in North America, New Zealand, and Australia, in
addition to the Armed Forces Network. A typical "Hour of Power"
begins with the choir singing traditional hymns while a beaming,
majestically robed Schuller steps to the pulpit, raises his arms, and
says, "This is the day God has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. "
Like other television preachers, he has his share of celebrity guests who
appear on his program at the church, but always with the most proper
decorum. There are none of the trappings of revivalism and its spon
taneity in this service . Schuller's psychologically informed sermons,
like those of Peale, are centered on the mental technique of positive
thinking-which Schuller terms "possibility thinking"-as the key to
abundant living. Common themes in his preaching include hope in
the face of adversity, the fearlessness implicit in the Lord's Prayer, the
family as a "therapeutic fellowship, " turning "stress into strength, " and
self-love as a "dynamic force for success. " In such a way, Robert H .
Schuller offers a more intellectually sophisticated and aesthetically ap
pealing form of TV religious programming than his revivalistic coun
terparts provide, going beyond the second birth and Armageddon . 44
The burgeoning conglomerate of television shows and networks that
make up the electronic church spans practically the full range of popu
lar religion in America with respect to basic theological orientation,
themes dealt with, and method of presentation. According to a 1 979
Gallup survey, the vast majority of those who watch religious TV de
scribe their most important felt needs, in order of priority, as ( 1 ) salva
tion (i. e . , being born again), (2) physical well-being, ( 3) love and
affection, and (4) meaning in life; financial security and personal free
dom are significant needs, but trail far behind the others. The pro
grams, then, can meet those needs-potentially, at least-according to
the variety of tastes of the viewers. In theology, one can choose from
the nondogmatic possibility thinking of Robert H. Schuller, the pen
tecostalism and faith healing of Oral Roberts, the folksy evangelism of

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity

Rex Humbard, the apocalyptic teaching of Pat Robertson-with guests

and entertainment-and the New Right revivalism of Jerry Falwell .
Different kinds of music are available on the shows, from old-fash
ioned tent meeting gospel songs to traditional middle-of-the-road hym
nody to Christian New Wave. And viewers can also select from
programs featuring preaching, counseling, straight Bible teaching, and
guest interviews, each one staged with creative entertainment appropri
ate to the setting and style of the respective TV evangelist.
This is all very costly, to say the least; but the viewers of the elec
tronic church are actually enthusiastic about supporting the movement
and its leaders financially, including the particular ministry interests
of those leaders (e. g. , Robertson and Bakker's universities, Roberts's
medical center, and Schuller's Crystal Cathedral). Recent estimates on
the annual revenues of the major television broadcasters are highly
suggestive of this fact: Oral Roberts, $6o million; Pat Robertson, $ 5 8
million; J i m Bakker, $ 5 1 million; Jerry Falwell, $ 5o million; Billy Gra
ham, $ 30 million; and Robert H. Schuller, $ 1 6 million . And there is
more. Millions of dollars are given each year to numerous smaller
radio and TV ministries, with some of the larger radio operations ap
proaching and possibly surpassing the television programs in income
and expenditures. An educated guess of the total amount donated each
year to the electronic church would be somewhere in excess of $ 1
billion . But if one takes into account the advertising revenues and
sponsoring income produced by the religious stations themselves, the
total amount comes close to $2 billion . According to Gallup, 26 per
cent of electronic church viewers give 10 percent or more of their
income to religious causes, while an additional 1 2 percent report giv
ing between 5 and 9 percent. The figures are even higher for radio,
where 28 percent of the listeners contribute 10 percent or more, and
another 1 5 percent give between 5 and 9 percent. Thus, it is clear that
the "membership" of the electronic church as a whole is a generous
one, and its leaders are reaping from that generosity. 45
Of course, all of this money has to be received and responded to
processed-by each TV or radio evangelist's organization. In this con
nection, it is certain that the arrival of practical, business computers in
the last ten years has contributed as much to the rise of the electronic

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

church phenomenon as television itself, making extremely effective

processing of donations-and correspondence-possible. The comput
er allows a business or church to construct and utilize highly selective
mailing lists for its solicitations in the following manner. Most pro
grams include a "free" offer for its audience, or a special plan for
buying a color-coded Bible or piece of jewelry, say, that identifies its
wearer as a "member" of the organization. Once name and address
have been entered on the organization's mailing list, the new member
receives seemingly personal letters from the celebrity evangelist him
self, appealing for additional donations or offering other special gifts,
including books and study aids by the evangelist. Each ensuing offer
ing, letter, or phone call to a counselor is entered into the computer's
memory bank, and the return letters become more personal , more
specialized, with reference to names of family members, personal
problems, and previous correspondence. The computer, of course,
does all the writing and signing.
The average donation to the electronic church 1V and radio evan
gelists is small, perhaps $2 5 . But the computer information banks can
easily identify and isolate potentially big contributors. Oral Roberts, for
example, mails over twenty thousand "personal" letters each day from
his organization's offices in Tulsa. Some of these letters will go out
inviting those potentially large donors to a fundraising seminar at his
modern university, one of many held each year, where the group spirit
of the gathering-together with preaching by Roberts himself and ap
propriate musical entertainment-gives a sense of "belonging" to the
people attending that encourages them to open their checkbooks . 46
At this point, it is fitting to look at exactly who the viewers, listeners,
and supporters of the electronic church are. The widespread popularity
of religious television as a medium is confirmed by a 1 980 Gallup
survey that found that during a recent twelve-month period half of all
Americans polled had watched religious 1V programs, 5 5 percent of
all women surveyed, and 46 percent of all men. Persons most likely to
view these shows include nonwhites (6o percent), older adults ( 5 8 per
cent of those aged fifty and older), widowed individuals ( 59 percent),
Protestants ( 59 percent-but 34 percent of all Catholics polled also
watched religious television), regular churchgoers (62 percent), those

Celebrity Leaders in American Christian ity

6s

saying religion is "very important" in their lives (64 percent), and per
sons with no more than a grade school education (6 1 percent of all
those surveyed in this category had watched this medium). 47 With re
spect to Americans who can be considered regular viewers of religious
TV, one recent estimate suggests that about fourteen million of them
watch religious television each week, while forty-seven million listen to
religious radio. 48 In the category of more frequent viewers, Schuller
discovered that 58 percent of his audience are women, 63 percent of
whom are fifty and older-with only 1 o percent of the regular viewers
being "young people"49 (though Gallup's survey did indicate that 4 1
percent o f a l l Americans aged eighteen to twenty-four had watched at
least some religious TV during the twelve-month period in question). 50
When it comes to the basic theological orientation of the member
ship of the electronic church, Gallup's aforementioned 1 979 survey
found that a full 8 5 percent profess to be born-again Christians. Thus
it is readily apparent that religious television and radio function
primarily as a means of edification for believers. The totally unconvert
ed and unchurched represent only a tiny minority of those reached by
the electronic church today, j ust as they were only a small function of
those who attended the big city revival campaigns of a bygone era.
Most viewers of religious TV and listeners to religious radio are evangi
cals and fundamentalists who are more likely to have had a definite
conversion experience than the wider public as a whole, to believe that
the Bible is free of mistakes, to oppose abortion, to believe in a per
sonal devil, and to abstain from alcohol . 51
What is also interesting about the 1 979 Gallup survey, however, is
its uncovering of the "social location" of American evangelicals. As a
whole-and this is certainly reflective of the electronic church's view
ers and listeners, too-they represent a subculture that is generally
older than other religious groupings and disproportionately represented
by females. The majority of this population are married, with the larg
est concentrations of evangelicals in the rural areas and small towns of
the South , West Central, and Mid-Atlantic regions, and in the medi
um-sized cities of the South and Midwest. They are underrepresented
in the large cities, and most likely to be found in the lower echelons of
educational achievement, income level, and occupational status-

66

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

within the lower-middle and laboring classes. Thus the evangelicals

live and work in an environment more distant from the "secularizing"
forces of modernity and pluralism-and the high culture of urban
American elites-than do non evangelical (i . e. , liberal) Protestants and
Catholics. In general, theirs is a worldview in which the perceived
spiritual or "supernatural" dimensions of reality seem to play an inti
mate and intricate role within everyday life . 52
When one assesses the social location and religious beliefs of evan
gelicals, then, it is very easy to see why the popular religion carried by
the electronic church is so appealing to them. What appears to the
highly cultured, elite viewer as simplistic spirituality, political reaction,
and moral puritanism is for the regular viewer or listener the very
power of God "unto salvation . " The TV and radio evangelists confirm
traditional values in words easy to understand; they provide a pragmatic
technique for abundant living here and now (with the hope of heaven
as well); and they offer meaning in the midst of an otherwise mundane
existence in modern mass culture. Again, popular religion is for every
day people with everyday problems in search of a solution. It offers
nothing less than that, and nothing more.
Because evangelical Christianity, by its very nature, has something
to proclaim that it feels the world needs, its leaders have always made
good use of the mass media for the transmission of that message. The
word "evangelical" itself comes from the Greek euangelion, meaning
"good news, " and the word "evangelism" signifies the practice, the
method, of spreading the good news. The Lutheran and Calvinist
Reformation was evangelical, since it was centered on the proclama
tion to the masses of the word of God . In the ensuing centuries, evan
gelicals have shared their faith through the media of the pulpit,
popular hymnody, the printed word, the camp meeting, the city reviv
al campaign, and, now, the electronic church. Today the evangelicals
not only have something to share with the world, they have something
to sell to it.
Perhaps the best way to understand the religion of mass culture as a
whole, and the electronic church in particular, is in terms of market
ing, of retailing salvation . Although marketing principles have been
used in the past with varying degrees of success by religious organiza-

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity

tions, few have attained such a high level of success as the leading TV
and radio evangelists who preach to millions of people and spend hun
dreds of millions of dollars in the process. Many large corporations do
not have budgets as high as these individuals and their organizations,
nor do they retain the "brand loyalty" of so many faithful "consumers"
of their products.
Franklin B. Krohn, an economics and business administration
scholar, explains the electronic church phenomenon in terms of its
effective use of the principles of retailing to a mass clientele. The
functions of marketing, obviously, involve the concept of satisfying
human needs and wants in a sensitive manner. Robert H. Schuller's
principle of success is to "find a need and fill it, find a hurt and heal
it, " his adaption of an old slogan of Henry J. Kaiser. Oral Roberts
claims to "try to give people what they need . " And, just as in secular
retailing, the television evangelists must adjust their product offerings
to meet the changing desires of their viewers. Radio preachers must do
the same. Whenever a broadcaster touches a "hot" subject--even acci
dentally-he will know about it in a matter of days, if not before that.
An unpopular statement by him, or his guests, will be indicated in the
mail, the broadcaster's lifeline. And it will be indicated with Gallup
like accuracy. Thus TV and radio evangelists focus on those issues and
answers that bring in a "positive response, " mail with a check in it.
In the first place, good retailers of religion must know their market
and attempt to isolate demographic and psychographic variables by
which to group potential consumers. These groupings are based upon
geographic, personality, and socioeconomic factors, discovered
through marketing research. Television and radio evangelists see their
audience as primarily fundamentalists and evangelicals who are politi
cally and culturally conservative and who are seeking methodological
guidance in religious matters. As we have seen , the various electronic
church evangelists each appeal to a somewhat different segment of the
primary audience. Their formats and styles vary. Some perform heal
ing; others emphasize patriotism and traditional morality; some, suc
cess through positive thinking; others, musical entertainment (but
always with a "message").
Second, successful retailers of religion must "develop" their product.

68

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

That "product, " of course, is the real-or imagined-benefits received

by the consumer. In this sense, consumers don't purchase cars, they
purchase transportation ; consumers don't buy toothpaste, they buy
dental health ; they don't purchase life insurance, they purchase protec
tion for their loved ones. So it is in the electronic church. Jim Bakker
demonstrates his awareness of this marketing orientation when he
states, "We have a better product than soap or automobiles. We have
eternal life. " The products offered by the evangelists of the electronic
church include spiritual and physical health , emotional and mental
well-being, solutions to common personal and family problems, and
financial success-salvation, in the here and now and in the hereafter.
Third , effective retailers of religion must set a price for their product
that their clientele can meet and feel is fair. Of course, the price paid
for the product is often more than the actual amount of money ex
changed . In the electronic church, viewers or listeners may have to
surrender their "freedom of thought"-" on faith"-to a given evange
list, and it will take time to obtain the benefits. This loss of freedom
and the time used to obtain the benefits, as well as the actual money
contributed, are all included in the price . Furthermore, the leaders of
the electronic church know that the more consumers pay and the long
er they purchase the product, the more likely they are to remain
"brand loyal . " Viewers and listeners must accept on faith what the
evangelists tell about the value of their product. In evangelical Chris
tianity, salvation has always been by faith; the larger one's faith, the
bigger the results. Thus members of the electronic church give on
faith , and they receive on faith. The substantiality of the "benefits"
they receive from their investment matter only insofar as the recipients
feel they are getting what was promised.
Fourth , good retailers of religion know that TV and radio can get
their product directly into the homes of potential consumers. By
direct delivery, under the most appealing circumstances, the electronic
church maximizes its exposure to the elderly, the infirm, and the so
cially retarded believer. In addition to not having to travel to the local
church to receive the benefits, the viewer or listener can also escape
the effort of personal interaction .
Fifth and finally, successful retailers of religion know how to adver
tise and promote their product. It is through this sales promotion and

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity

advertising ("Madison Avenue, " if you will) that potential consumers

are influenced to purchase what is offered. Commercial marketers
commonly advertise, offer premiums, and engage in direct selling of
their products and services. As we have seen, TV and radio preachers
offer premiums in the form of Bibles, books, lapel pins, and the like.
These offerings are made to obtain names for their mailing lists. View
ers or listeners who respond receive correspondence from then on,
encouraging them to become "regular" contributors. Rarely are items
offered "for sale"; rather, they are sent "without cost" to anyone who
makes a "freewill offering. " Jerry Falwell's distribution of "Jesus First"
pins stimulates the important, but often subtle, sales promotion tech
nique of opinion leadership, by which one person gives advice to a
second person concerning acceptance of a product. Falwell emphasizes
that he will send two "Jesus First" pins to any viewer, the second pin
to be given to an acquaintance. Thus, the effectiveness of the distribu
tion of pins is doubled .
In addition to direct selling attempts, the leading TV evangelists, as
we have said, use telephones to achieve more direct communication .
Viewers are urged to call the preacher's representatives who become
sales people for the product. Toll-free numbers are provided for view
ers wishing to obtain a premium or donate money; but those desiring
spiritual counsel alone must pay for their own calls. 53
The electronic church, with its celebrity leaders, its eleborate stag
ing, and its successful techniques for marketing salvation, is a signifi
cant enough phenomenon in its own right to warrant the attention of
all those concerned about the molding of public opinion in America .
But popular religion as a whole, and the electronic church in particu
lar, have had a profound effect even on the institutional church, whose
values, leadership, and style of operation are increasingly shaped by
the religious "models" offered by the mass media. The topic at hand,
therefore, takes on even more importance.
The Local Pastor as Mini-Celebrity

Popular religion in America has always stressed churchgoing as a

Christian responsibility, especially since World War II. This concern
was most visible in the ad campaigns of the 1 9 50s encouraging Ameri-

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

cans to "attend the church of your choice, " and in the emergence of
the "church growth" movement in the 1 970s. Even in the 1 96os,
resistance to the organized church and synagogue was expressed mostly
by the college-educated young, in the "underground church" and in
the Jesus People movement. And by the mid-7os, the Jesus People had
either founded their own churches-like Chuck Smith's Calvary
Chapel in Costa Mesa, California, and its offshoots-or had made
their way back into the already established evangelical and pentecostal
churches.
The charge by many commentators that the electronic church is
"stealing members" away from the institutional church is not borne
out by survey research . Gallup reports that 62 percent of the viewers of
religious TV are regular churchgoers, and this figure is particularly
impressive when one considers the large number of elderly and infirm
viewers who are unable to attend church because of physical disabili
ties. In the same manner as the revivalists of previous generations, the
television and radio evangelists of the 1 98os not only encourage their
listeners and viewers to attend church, they refer them to local
churches which support their shows.
Their focus on the electronic church merely as an "alternative"
and an invisible one-to organized religion has made the critics ne
glect a far more important issue related to the phenomenon. Because
so many viewers of religious television are also active church members
and regular churchgoers, the TV image has become, understandably,
the model for what viewers feel their own churches should be like
both in form and in content. Celebrity leadership, professional-level
musical entertainment, and idyllic staging must all be present in the
local congregation just as they are in the electronic church. Further
more, the aspiring pastor knows that the best evidence for a successful
local church is the establishment of its own TV ministry.
By their very nature, the mass media confer status on individuals
and institutions. Thus, when a pastor and his church start a television
show, they are likely to lose their identity as private citizens and
become celebrities. In Phillipsburg, New Jersey, we see a case in point.
Here Pastor Russell Allen of the Fellowship Church walks down the
main street of town only to be looked at and stopped by strangers asking

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity

him for the same kind of personal advice he gives on his TV program,
"Lord of Life, " and on his radio show, "Sunday Reveille Time. " Allen
and his associates enjoy being local celebrities, finding the loss of
privacy to be more than made up by the atmosphere of excitement
their programs bring to the church. Of course, religious broadcasters
on television must worry about matters of less or no concern to their
noncelebrity colleagues. TV evangelists, religious entertainers, and
their guests worry about thinning hairlines and thickening middles.
Television as a medium requires that those in the glare of bright lights
be properly attired in an appealing manner and suitably made-up.
Make-up artists, hairdressers, and fashion consultants are a necessary
requisite to a successful ministry on TV. Indeed, the better the content
of the message is staged, the more convincing it will appear to the
viewers. 54
The understandable and increasing desire of religious television
viewers to "flesh out" popular shows in their own congregations has
been greatly facilitated by Robert H. Schuller's "Institute for Successful
Church Leadership," held several times each year on the campus of
the Crystal Cathedral , and in "video workshops" held in local
churches across the nation by the institute's staff. Here Schuller teach
es ministers and lay leaders of any denomination the methods by
which they can adapt the principles of possibility thinking preached on
the "Hour of Power" to their own congregations, using his church as
the model for what other churches can become.
The rational methodology inherent in modernity requires that social
phenomena of all kinds, including religion, be interpreted less and less
in moral and theological terms and more and more by reference to
empirical evidence about society itself. Sociology, for instance, is now
accepted as the source of the language, the assumptions, and the con
ceptual apparatus for socially acceptable types of explanation of all
those phenomena that depend on social interaction . In our modern
consumer society, then, marketing research is aided by the sociology
that tells the retailers who their clients are and what they want. In
American religion, it is now common for denominations, local con
gregations, and other organizations-including those of the electronic
church-to consult outside experts in the social and behavioral

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

sciences to acquire a rational, social-scientific understanding of their

own operation, their relative success, effectiveness, influence, and or
ganizational resilience and competence. The leaders of modern
American religion feel that social scientists and their students in the
marketplace (the Gallup organization is financed primarily by market
ing research) often know more about such issues as appeal, authority,
conflict resolution, and the effectiveness of different membership re
cruitment and fund raising techniques than they themselves. 5 5
No one has done a better job o f utilizing pscyhology, sociology, and
marketing research in the ministry than Robert H. Schuller. He has
developed for local pastors a rational technique by which they and
their congregations can understand their own church-and its needs
by reference to the empirical data of what people want from going to
church . Find a need and fill it, find a hurt and heal it.
The professional ministers and lay leaders who attend Schuller's in
stitutes find themselves on the campus of the Crystal Cathedral,
where, in the course of several days, they get a first-hand glimpse of
the day-to-day operation of the actual congregation behind the TV
image of the "Hour of Power. " Thus the Crystal Cathedral and its
pastor become the living model of what other churches can become.
Those attending in person, or viewing the main lectures on videotape,
see and hear Schuller teach his mind cure theology in the context of
discussions led by his professional staff on the general and specific
methods for building a successful local church ministry, adaptable-so
he insists-to any church in any environment.
"Church growth" itself has become in the 1970s and 1 98os a "soft
science, " and is based on the theory, devised by Donald McGavran of
Fuller Theological Seminary, that people prefer attending church with
"their own kind of people" in terms of age, background, social and
economic status, goals, and cultural orientation. This "homogeneous
unit principle" of church growth is accepted and taught by Schuller. It
is extremely important, he feels, for local pastors to know their "target
population" of potential church members, and know what they want
(Schuller rang 3 , 500 doorbells his first year in Garden Grove to find
out those desires). Once pastors know their communities' wants and

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity

73

needs, they must then find out how to sa tisfy their potential clientele.
Here Schuller develops his "principles of retailing" for church leaders,
a marketing methodology at the local level for individual congregations
similar in character to Franklin B. Krohn's description of the retailing
techniques of the electronic church at the mass media level of national
T V.
Garden Grove Community Church was founded in Orange County
in the 1 9 50s at a time when suburban "shopping centers" were replac
ing the inner city as the primary marketplace for middle-class Ameri
cans. Schuller terms these shopping centers "one of the most
phenomenal successes of American business in the twentieth century, "
and focuses his principles of retailing religion on the marketing prin
ciples a modern shopping center must meet to attract and keep cus
tomers.
In the first place, Schuller declares that the successful church is
readily accessible. Shopping centers are normally located at major
highway interchanges or at the junctions of big streets or throughways.
The first thing good businessmen or women need is a good road to
their place of business. The best product cannot be sold and will not be
bought, he insists, if potential consumers cannot get to it. By Schul
ler's analysis, So percent of all church buildings in America are located
in the wrong place. Accessibility, the easier the better, is crucial to
successful sales.
Second, the successful local church has surplus parking. In his eval
uation of the facilities of individual churches across the nation, Schull
er discovered that very few have even ample parking, enough off-street
parking spaces for the already faithful members who can be expected to
attend on an average Sunday. Successful retailing, however, requires
more than ample parking; it demands surplus parking. With the acres
of surplus parking around most shopping centers, modern Americans
have become used to this convenience, and they demand it. In Schull
er's opinion, the faithful may tolerate congestion in their church's
parking lot, but unchurched visitors will not. If they drive up to the
church campus on a given Sunday only to see the entire parking lot
filled, with additional cars parked along the curbs in every direction,

74

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

the odds are that they'll drive on. Because we are conditioned to expect
convenience, surplus parking is a great asset to the local church that
wants to grow.
In the third place, the successful church-retailing religion-has a
large enough inventory to satisfy the needs of its clientele. Shopping
centers, with their diversity of general and specialized shops, attract
consumers with differing needs . Before entering a given store, the
shopper wants to know that it has exactly what he wants. Time is too
valuable to waste making a trip only to find out that the store selected
doesn't have the sought-after goods. Customers, therefore, will go
where the business has a reputation for having a wide inventory range.
So it is with the local church. Most churches are too small to meet the
diverse needs and wants of their present and potential constituency, in
terms of both staff and program. Secular society offers alternative and
appealing ways the public can have their needs met, be they entertain
ment or fellowship, and the church must compete for its clientele. For
Schuller, the church with a wide inventory-with attractive goods for
all ages, from youth to senior citizens-is the successful church .
A fourth characteristic of the successful church is service. It services
what it sells. Schuller insists that a business's "service department" is
what will make the retailer succeed year after year. If a customer pur
chases an item and finds out that the shop he bought it from doesn't
service what it sells, the chances are good that he will not return. The
Garden Grove pastor puts the primary responsibility for carrying out a
church's service to its community in the hands of the laity. It is the
role of professional ministry staff, then, including the clergy, to train
the laity in this service with workable techniques to call on the un
churched, visit members, counsel people with problems over the
phone, and direct the whole education and "nurture" program of the
church. Schuller's own church is structured on the corporate model of
bureaucratic leadership, with him-as senior minister-on top. But
here the laity provide the "personal" services that keep the membership
happy.
Fifth, and this is very important, the successful church has visibility.
People know about it. A given church may have a marketable product,
but its potential customers must be aware that it exists and that it has

Celebrity Leaders in American Christianity

75

the product. At this point, Schuller emphasizes the need for advertis
ing, in good taste, and the more the better-publicity that appeals not
j ust to the settled believer, but to the unchurched "seeker" in secular
society. Today, obviously, the ultimate form of advertising for a
church is its own TV show, with its pastor as star, or superstar, as in
Schuller's case.
Sixth, and finally, the successful local church has a good cash flow.
It borrows wisely. The Garden Grove pastor has no qualms about a
congregation's borrowing money to expand its ministry, but he warns
its leaders against not building up their church's income to the point
where it can reasonably afford to borrow funds. When that point is
reached, then, money should be borrowed only for those things that
have collateral, nondepreciable value-not for salaries or interest on
capital debt. Building up a church's income means building up its cash
flow base, at least to the point where it can pay the interest on the
expansion, and the utilities. Like accessibility, surplus parking, ade
quate inventory, service after sales, and visibility, a good cash flow-in
the context of wise borrowing-is an essential characteristic of today's
successful church. 56
In the 1 98os, by virtue of their mass visibility and popular appeal,
the stars and superstars of the electronic church-TV evangelists and
their guests, especially-have become the leading personalities of pop
ular religion in America, teaching it and modeling it by means of a
media image. Theirs is a leadership of influence, based on appeal; and
influence is power, albeit it indirect and unstructured in character.
Television evangelists stage their shows, select their guests, gear their
message, and market their product in ways conceived to meet the
needs and wants of present and prospective viewers. In testimony and
song, preaching and teaching, the leaders of the electronic church and
of popular religion as a whole offer a simple, rational-though experi
ential-pragmatic technique of acquiring salvation in one's personal
life, in the family, and in the church . The religion of mass culture
asserts that everything is understandable, and everything is remediable.
It had better be! Here the medium shapes the message, but so does the
method .

C H A P T E R 4

New Christian Values

In form and content, popular religion stands squarely apart from the
religion of all elites. The message proclaimed and modeled by its lead
ers is simple, easily applied, available to all . It helps everyday people
meet their everyday problems. In modern America, academic theology
espoused by even eminent theologians is regarded by popular religion
ists as irrelevant to their concerns, because its current is too "cerebral"
and not geared to reality in the everyday world. Pat Robertson has
made the point well. Television in general, he argues, brings an un
relieved message of war and suffering to the viewers who are already
depressed and worried. They want to be encouraged-and assured
with simple certitudes. In watching religious TV, the viewers don't
want their lives complicated further by theological subtleties amd
metaphysical abstractions. Robertson illustrates his point by referring to
the fact that out of 1 . 4 million telephone calls received by the " 700
Club" in 1 979, "not one caller asked about the theology of Karl Barth,
Reinhold Niebuhr, or Paul Tillich. "57
We have already discussed the functions and characteristics of popu
lar religion in mass culture. Popular religion, carried by the mass
media and shaped by it, functions to provide a feeling of self-worth in
an anonymous society characterized by aimlessness. It eases decision
making in a technological culture that offers many opportunites, many
possibilities, to the upwardly mobile public. And it provides a rational
technique of successful l iving, based on the affirmation that God is a
good God, that he is within easy reach, and that faith in him works-it
brings results. This pragmatic understanding of the nature of God,
then, requires less of the traditional Christian stress on dogma and
more emphasis on the compatibility of faith and reason. Indeed, the

New Christian Values

77

faith of popular religion is often as reasonable as common sense itself.

The religion of mass culture is characterized by the assumption that
salvation is a here-and-now thing as well as an eternal state in the
hereafter. Here the Protestant ethic of hard work in a diligent and
systematic manner, with self-sacrifice, if need be, for the greater glory
of God, has been mentalized. The activist concept of goodness in
traditional Protestantism, centering on service rendered to God and
neighbor, has been redefined in popular religion to the point that good
and bad refer merely to psychic processes or states. Goodness equals
positive thinking; evil , negative thinking. Good and bad thinking are
the only kind of good and bad there are.
While it was being mentalized, the faith of popular religion in
America also became instrumentalized into a how-to-do-it "technology
of salvation" through thought control. Salvation, moreover, meant
deliverance from suffering and poverty, which were seen merely as the
consequences of negative thinking, easily remediable by anyone who
practices the correct mind cure. In the religion of mass culture, both
poverty and suffering have lost their divine significance .
Finally, popular religion is characterized in the 1 98os by a high
regard for subjective rel igious experience-the experience of the new
birth-as the necessary catalyst, the motivating force to effect personal
and social change. And when social change is demanded, it is linked
closely with America's national aspirations, the realization of which is
the "proof'' of God's "election"-usually measured in terms of its
material abundance and prestige among the nations of the world. Pop
ular religion, in that sense, is civil religion.
It is not at all easy to neatly separate the message from the medium
in the religion of mass culture, but it is equally hard to precisely distin
guish between that message and its technique of application . The stress
on method in popular religion is quite understandable as a derivative of
the rise of science in the nineteeth and twentieth centuries. With ever
increasing scientific orientations, society itself became more and more
affected by rationalistic assumptions. As social processes in general
were increasingly subjected to rational planning and organization, in
cluding the institutions of religion, so the public became more and
more involved in social activities in which their own emotional (and

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

"nonrational") dispositions were less immediately relevant. During this

period, men and women have become more rational, more matter-of
fact, in their thinking processes as individuals. But even more impor
tant, perhaps, has been their sustained involvement in rational organi
zations--corporations, public service agencies, educational institu
tions, government-and in the increasingly elaborate scientific tech
nology that makes them run . Such involvement, moreover, was bound
to have its impact on religion.
Because so much of our everyday behavior is controlled by cause
and-effect thinking, and because we know more about the "actual"
workings of the physical and social worlds-through science-then we
knew in the past, Americans simply have to be more "rational" in the
1 98os than in previous generations. Today we are more preoccupied
with immediate, empirical ends and pragmatic tests, since we partici
pate in a society that is increasingly regulated by devices amd machines
that operate according to the criteria of efficiency and that provide
"reasonable answers" to the questions asked. 5 8 In popular religion, the
rationalization inherent in modernity takes place primarily in the form
of the codification of mental processes and of the behavioral aspects of
spirituality, such as the empirical evaluation of time spent on going to
church, reading the Bible, praying, "witnessing" to one's faith, and of
the amount of money given to religious causes. The religion of mass
culture is oriented toward results that can be measured as the determin
ing factor in the quality of a believer's spirituality-by adding up the
numbers of souls saved or new members received, the amount of money
contributed to the local church or to a popular TV evangelist. Thus the
validity of faith in th e popular religion of modern America is assessed
more in terms of "impressive figures" in this sense than in any other
way.
The essential theological content of popular religion in the 1 98os
derives from the conceptual and functional integration of New
Thought and revivalistic Christianity within mass culture beginning in
the 1 9 50s. This amalgamation of these two highly divergent schools of
thought may seem unlikely at first, and it requires an explanation .
Modern revivalism, o n the one hand, had become by the time of
Moody and Sunday the popular religion of the rural and urban Prates-

New Christian Values

79

tant laboring classes. Its fundamentalist theology was based on black

and white biblical literalism, Calvinistic pessimism about the possibil
ity of eradicating human sinfulness and sinful propensity, even after
conversion ("There is none good, no not one"), and an understanding
of salvation-from the results of that sin--centering on the "accep
tance" of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross as the sufficient "payment" to
God for all human sin . Salvation was a gift, a "pardon"; and like a
pardon, it had to be accepted to be effective.
Revivalism was experiential religion, and it was the experience of
conversion, and of "rededication , " in the context of the fellowship of
kindred hearts that constituted salvation's primary reward in this life.
That experiential dimension of religiosity was radicalized further in
pentecostalism, a movement that appealed even more to the lower
strata of society than did nonpentecostal fundamentalism . Here, the
post-conversion experience of Spirit baptism, with its speaking in
tongues, prophecy, and healing, offered more than mere experience in
its worship-it offered ecstasy. But the "real" rewards for such labor
ing-class fundamentalists and pentecostals had to wait for heaven-or
the premillennial "rapture"-when God would "make it up" to faithful
believers deprived of the "good life" in the here and now. This belief
is well illustrated in the Christian lyrics adapted to the popular country
song of the early 1 9 50s, "On Top of Old Smokey, " which was sung in
the revival crusades of that era:
I'm glad I'm a Christian,
I'm trusting the Lord,
I'm reading my Bible,
Believing each word.
The past is forgiven,
From sin I am free,
A mansion in heaven
Is waiting for me.

Until Billy Graham, fundamentalist revivalism was also avowedly

sectarian in its refusal to have anything to do with unbelievers, includ
ing those Christians it accused of being "modernists . " Such a stance
was easy to follow at the time, since the primary associations of the

8o

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

born-again working class were mainly in the family and in church, not
in the secular community around them . Their social location was still
distant from the modernizing influences of urban America, and the
"fundies" (as their modernist opponents termed them) were an entity
unto themselves.
New Thought, on the other hand, emerged out of very different soil,
the very post-enlightenment scientific rationality embodied in the lib
eralism that revivalism feared so much. This tradition, from its incep
tion, was popular among the more literate and economically
prosperous classes of American society. Both modern revivalism and
New Thought were highly individualistic in basic orientation, but they
worked out their personal salvation in different ways to achieve the
desired results. The New Thought practitioners already had a measure
of material success. Thus the promise of mansions in heaven, sur
rounded by streets of gold and pearly gates, had far less appeal to them
than to the fundamentalist have-nots . They didn't need pie-in-the-sky
by-and-by; rather, what they wanted from religion was an immediately
effective cure for the mental and emotional anxieties inherent in up
ward mobility. If revivalistic Christianity offered an experiential soul
cure to the poor and would-be rich, New Thought offered peace of
mind and emotional tranquility to those already on the way up. Salva
tion was mentalized.
U nlike modern revivalism, and due to its higher class origins, New
Thought was never blatantly antiintellectual in its theological content
and method. It didn't fear the rise of science and scientific assumptions
about the world, and its faith was always felt to be completely compati
ble with reason. New Thought was also nonsectarian in its willingness
to relate to religious and nonreligious outsiders. The Unity School of
Christianity itself stressed unity-including the unity of all religions-
as a prime metaphysical belief. Because of their higher class standing,
the New Thought practitioners were typically much more involved in
"the world"-in nonchurch business and leisure activities-than were
the revivalistic Christians. Interaction at the primary level with friends
and colleagues of other (or no) religious persuasions was part of their
everyday lives. Furthermore, given the essential nature of New
"hought as a mental therapy, open to all, and not as a church, its

New Christian Values

practitioners had few vested institutional interests to protect by avoiding

contact with non-New Thought outsiders, and the movement accom
modated easily to other religious-and secular-symbol systems.
Prior to the mid- 1 970s, it was entirely appropriate to describe Nor
man Vincent Peale as "the rich man's Billy Graham"-holding forth
each Sunday morning in the pulpit of his fashionable Marble Collegi
ate Church in midtown Manhattan. Peale's ordination and early pasto
ral ministry was in the Methodist Church, where he rose to sufficient
prominence to warrant a call, just before his move to New York City,
to the First Methodist Church of Los Angeles, then the largest Meth
odist congregation in the United States. And despite his long pastorate
thereafter in the Calvinistic Reformed Church in America, Peale did
not reject the fundamental tenets of Methodism he grew up with;
rather, he integrated them with popular psychology to attract the un
churched who wanted something more sophisticated than traditional
Christian theology seemed to offer.
John Wesley's Methodist theology was never overly "dogmatic" in
the sense that Calvinism had become, and it shunned sectarianism.
Relationships with other Christians and with nonbelievers were moti
vated more on the basis of a common heart than on doctrinal agree
ment. Furthermore, Wesleyan theology substituted human free will
for the Calvinist belief in predestination. And, in marked contrast to
Calvinism, it always affirmed the possibility and desirability of human
perfection-"entire sanctification"-in this world, through a willful
change of attitude and behavior.
Peale's early spiritual pilgrimage was completely compatible with
these traditional Methodist teachings, which were informed, in the
course of his education and experience, by an unqualified belief in the
American way of life, his own determination to succeed, and his study
and practice of popular psychology, a topic he relates as follows:
As a child I had the worst inferiority complex you have ever seen. I was so
bashful that if my mother had two or three ladies visiting her, I wouldn't
pass through the room they were i n to avoid talking to them. I remember
once when I got forced i nto a Sunday school program , and a little girl sitting
in the front row said, "Oh, look at his knees shake . "

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

This debilitating inferiority complex, indicating a poor self-image, re

mained with Peale into college, until the day he consciously willed to
change his l ife, praying, "Look, Lord, I can't live this way. I know you
can save people from drunkenness, immorality, gambling. Can't you
save me from my inferiority complex?" Immediately thereafter, Peale
goes on to say, he experienced a great feeling of peace in which God
seemed to assure him, ''I'll help you . " As a good Methodist, Norman
Vincent Peale believed that "I can do all things through Christ who
strengthens me, " and this strength was facilitated when "the Lord got
me into reading people like Thoreau, Emerson, Marcus Aurelius, and
William James, who wrote all about what one could do with the hu
man mind. For example, William James once said, 'The greatest dis
covery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by
altering his attitude and mind. ' "59 From there, of course, he worked
out his own popular theology, stressing positive thinking as the power
unto salvation.
The rapprochement of Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale,
already a fact in 1 9 57, was seen at the time merely as the symbolic
gesture on the part of two popular religious leaders of their willingness
to cooperate with each other in evangelism . It took another two
decades for the content and method of revivalistic Christianity and
New Thought to blend together at the grass-roots level of popular reli
gion in America. Both approaches to spirituality had to compromise
and accommodate to each other, and this interaction produced results
that were of great consequence to religion in American life, even
though there was no intentional "planning" to bring New Thought
and revivalism together.
Accommodation

"Values" may be defined as the social principles, goals, or standards

held or accepted by an individual, class, or society. The most impor
tant value behind the message of popular religion in America today is
accommodation. It has to be, since the religion of mass culture-by its
very definition and its popularity-must be broad enough in character
to appeal to the "masses. " Upward social mobility has brought with it

New Christia n Values

a general resistance within popular religion against sectarianism. Here

there is an increasingly marked predilection not to want to keep people
out, despite the often highly visible conservative-liberal disputes be
tween the religious elites, academic theologians, and denominational
bureaucrats. For eample, when some of Jim Bakker's supporters be
gan to complain about his ecumenical association with "heretics and
liberals, " he replied that such interaction on his part was merely the
result of his following God's dictates to him on the matter, namely,
that "you love 'em, and I'll judge 'em . "
Pluralism and the principle o f voluntary association, both traditional
characteristics of American society, have together been a contributing
factor in the ascendancy of accommodation as the prime value behind
the content of popular religion. When competing religious traditions
are allowed to coexist in freedom, with equal protection under the law,
and when the leaders of these different traditions travel in the same
economic and social circles, they come to know each other and toler
ate each other in the mutual recognition of common interests and
goals of greater consequence than their avowed theological differences.
Jerry Falwell illustrates this point well . Not long age, fundamentalist
leaders like Falwell would have had nothing to do with "papist" Ro
man Catholics, with the "cult" of Mormonism, or with Jews of any
persuasion. Now, however, his Moral Majority runs with the support
of sizeable groupings within all three of these traditions. It's a very
pragmatic matter, after all. Like the Catholics, Falwell opposes abor
tion . Like the Mormons, he is against the Equal Rights Amendment;
and like the Jews, Falwell is pro-Israel . The leaders of the religion of
mass culture know that success and influence among the public is
determined by large numbers of fans and by big budgets more than by
theological agreement.
Voluntary association as a principle goes hand-in-hand with the
high degree of pluralism in modern American culture, and it too has
contributed to the primacy of accommodation as a value in popular
religion. The religion of mass culture has a general clientele. And
although leaders seek to instill brand loyalty in their present and poten
tial clients, they rarely demand exclusive loyalty from their adherents.
Even if they did, leaders might not get that kind of single-minded

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

fidelity. With more money and leisure time available, and in the con
text of the church as a voluntary association, the practitioners of popu
lar religion are not only free to pick and choose one offering out of the
many, they are also free to select-and embrace-more than one at
the same time. For example, an active Episcopal laywoman may also
be a regular viewer of Robert H. Schuller's "Hour of Power, " and a
contributor to both organizations. Likewise, a wealthy businessman
may be active in his local Baptist church, a faithful viewer of Pat
Robertson's "7oo Club, " and a regular participant in a Catholic charis
matic prayer group, giving money to all three ministries; while a sup
porter of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority might also practice yoga and
be a "graduate" of the Human Potential movement's est (Erhard Semi
nar Training).
Upward mobility, in the context of pluralism and the principles of
voluntary association, is the root cause of the growth of accommoda
tion within popular religion as a whole-a process to make it more
appealing to mass culture. The specific mutual accommodation within
that process of the New Thought method of realizing salvation to the
revivalistic new birth experience can be illustrated by certain key
"events" in the history of both traditions. New Thought came to re
quire an authenticating experience to initiate its rational technique,
and the second birth, obviously, needed a method of nurture, of reach
ing adulthood, for its new born .
During the 1 9 50s, 1 96os, and 1 970s, religious experience-once
relegated in the popular mind to the unsophisticated "fringes" of
minorities and working-class whites in the wider society-gradually
became acceptable to the middle class who, for the first time in genera
tions, saw prominent individuals within its own ranks testify to being
born again or Spirit filled. Much mass media attention was given to
the whole evangelical resurgence in the 1 970s as an important histori
cal occurrence, epitomized by the election of a twice-born president in
1 976, and by the fact that all three major presidential candidates in
1 980 described themselves as born-again believers. Even in the 1 9 50s,
however, a few farsighted academic theologians were opening up to the
pentecostal experience with its expressions of ecstatic enthusiasm, call
ing it a "third force" in world Christendom, with Protestantism and
Catholicism-and a force to be reckoned with. 60 Then, j ust a few years

\ew Christian Values

Bs

after the Graham-Peale rapprochement, the course of affirmative popu

lar regard for experiential religiosity within the upper-middle levels of
society took a leap forward. In 1 960, the rector of a fashionable Episcopal
parish in Southern California's San Fernando Valley announced that he
had been filled with the Spirit and spoke with tongues. Although this
announcement forced Father Dennis Bennett's resignation, a "move
ment" had begun that would take the pentecostal experience-with its
speaking in tongues, healing and prophecy-into the mainstream of
American Protestantism and, by 1 967, into Catholicism. Thus what was
once seen as evidence of mental imbalance or worse, and appropriate
only for the poor and minorities, was reassessed by theologians and social
scientists. It had to be, since some of their own colleagues in the
academy had testified to the pentecostal experience. The results of this
scholarly reassessment uncovered the fact that the anxieties of upward
mobility and the turbulence of the modern era do require therapy; and
speaking in tongues might be more appropriately regarded as good ther
apy than as evidence of mental imbalance. It may not be "true, " but it
can be therapeutic-an effective emotional release in the course of
making it. So, in a matter of j ust a few decades, the "holy rollers" on
the margins of society had become the "new charismatics" at top, people
like Ruth Carter Stapleton, Bob Dylan, and Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. 6 1
Somewhat ironically, the experience of Spirit baptism became wide
ly acceptable in mass culture as a "legitimate" dimension of religion
more than a decade before the born-again experience became visibly
popular. Conversion had always been a prior requirement to baptism
in the Spirit, and the new charismatics of the 1 96os were just as "born
again" as the celebrities who celebrated their conversion experiences
on TV in the 1 970s. But it took the public testimony of a Charles
Colson and a Jimmy Carter to their new birth to really make the
experience legitimate in the wider society. By 1 976, America had a
born-again believer in the White House. The themes of revivalistic
Christianity and the legitimacy of religious experience were now
"preached" from the Oval Office. Thus revivalism, both in its evan
gelical and pentecostal forms, had finally "arrived" in the religion of
mass culture. It wasn't merely popular now, however, it was downright
chic.
The accommodation of New Thought to revivalistic Christianity

86

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

comes as no great surprise to anyone familiar \vith the mmement's

individualistic, yet very open, worldview. Rooted in the rationa l i ty of
liberalism, New Thought, by its very nature, was inclusive. It s h u n n ed
the dogmatism of exclusion . And its enthusiastic fellowship with s u c
cessful people in all fields-the wealthy and famous-who affirmed i b
technique vindicated its claims to truthfulness in the public mind. As
soon as the new evangelicals and the new charismatics became visibly
"successful" in the 1 97os-in terms of numbers and money-all the
retailers of success in religion, including the positive thinkers, took a
fresh interest in these Americans and their leaders who were a far cry
from the "fightin' fundies" and "holy rollers" of the revivalistic past.
No longer was the evangelical conversion experience the target of ridi
cule in the mass media. Rather than a sign of sickness, it had become
the evidence of good health in mass culture-a therapeutic experience
that could actually enhance and strengthen the mental technology of
New Thought for realizing salvation, the abundant life, in the here
and now. Conversion was seen as a motivational catalyst in the life of
faith . "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. "
The high value of accommodation in liberal Christianity as a whole
and in New Thought in particular is a historical given; but it is not so
in American revivalism since Moody, and in the fundamentalist ideol
ogy it produced. Modern revivalism, the popular religion of working
class Protestants, retained its sectarian, nonaccommodating character
until the emergence, in the early 1 940s, of the new evangelicals with
their avowed social inclusivism, albeit in nascent form . But it took
another three decades for upward mobility among the evangelicals to
bring forth the degree of accommodation present today, even at the
grass roots level , in the evangelical movement as a whole.
The major "events" in this accommodation process began in the
early 1 940s, when young evangelical theologians-with their new doc
torates from prestigious secular universities-began challenging the al
together "other-worldly" stance of modern revivalism and its less
highly educated fundamentalist theologians. This critique was epito
mized in the groundbreaking work by Carl F. H. Henry, The Uneasy
Conscience of !Aodern Fundamentalism, published in 1 947, an essay
that condemned the lack of a social conscience in the movement.

New Christian Values

Second, in the early 1 9 50s, Billy Graham launched his ecumenical

evangelism, reacting against the fundamentalist insistence on doctrinal
agreement as the sine qua non for interdenominational cooperation in
revival campaigns. Even very liberal church leaders like the late Epis
copal Bishop James Pike and U nited Methodist Bishop Gerald Kenne
dy took prominant roles in his crusades, sitting with Graham on the
platform . Third, the Jesus People movement of young, college-educat
ed, born-again believers accommodated revivalistic Christianity further
by outrightly rejecting its longstanding cultural "taboos"-those forbid
ding the use of alcohol and tobacco and participation in such "world
ly" activities as dancing and rock music. The Jesus People had picked
up new values in the secular counterculture, and sought to "Christian
ize" these values in their movement, including the value of "getting
high"-be it on Jesus or on alcohol and pot.
A fourth-and very important--event in the evangelical accommo
dation process was the rise, out of the Jesus People movement, of a
"new class" of leftward-leaning young evangelical and charismatic
writers, thinkers, and activists, who gradually took their place among
the leaders of the liberal establishment in America, espousing all the
causes traditional revivalism had called "un-American, " "pro-commu
nist, " and "humanistic. " The candidacy of John Anderson in the 1 980
presidential campaign is perhaps the best example of the new evangeli
cals' cultural accommodation at this point. A "first" in the recent
history of American revivalism, the emergence of these "young evan
gelicals" has been overshadowed by the much larger and more visible
constituency of New Right evangelicals and fundamentalists, exempli
fied by the Moral Majority. But their importance today is still more
than meets the eye. 62
Finally, the accommodation of revivalistic Christianity to "main
line" Christianity was further evidenced by the growing positive rela
tions between pentecostals and Catholics and Protestant liberals in the
charismatic renewal that paralleled the emergence of the Jesus People
movement and the young evangelicals in the 1 96os and 1 970s; by the
increasingly instrumentalized and nondogmatic message of the elec
tronic church; and by the ready acceptance in evangelical churches of
the same kind of popular psychology fashionable in the wider society

88

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

but Christianized in the "umbrella ministry" of Robert H. Schuller

with its advocacy of an inclusive membership and ministry within the
church: "God loves you, and so do I . "
All of these factors and events i n the development of the modern
evangelical movement have led to its effective accommodation of con
version and salvation to the broad themes of popular religion, a process
to satisfy the needs and wants of an affluent, bored , impatient, and
anxiety-ridden society of upwardly mobile consumers. Once given
away freely and spontaneously, born-again Christianity is now artfully
packaged and sold over the airways just like everything else . Thus, in
a matter of a few short decades, accommodation-compromise-has
replaced the dogmatic exclusivism preached by the revivalists or previ
ous generations as a prime value among evangelicals. "Separation from
the world" is now a dead issue for them, and remains a live option only
for the self-avowed "separatist fundamentalists" within the broader
evangelical ranks. But this "old-fashioned" sectarian stance is dying
even there, if the accommodating ministry of Jerry Falwell himself
"Mr. Fundamentalist" of the 1 98os-is any representative example of
the values and goals of modern fundamentalism. 63
Success

In a functional sense, accommodation is the most important core

value behind the content of popular religion. But, in a "qualitative"
sense, success is the preeminent value. Accommodation, after all, is
only the means to an end; and that end, of course, is success.
We have seen how New Thought was a highly individualistic system
of practical metaphysics. Its nondogmatic, goal-oriented mental tech
nique of achieving success was rooted in the classical individualistic
premise that each person, whether he likes it or not, is in charge of his
own life; and if he tries hard enough, he can achieve anything he
wishes. In classical individualism, the state of "failure"-be it suffering
in general or poverty in particular-is brought on by people them
selves, by their own volition. The poor are poor because they don't
work hard enough . New Thought, then, mentalized poverty and suf-

New Christia n Values

fering to make the end-getting "out" of the state of failure-more

achievable in the public mind. But the means to that end still required
a personal decision, the will to believe that the means proposed will
yield the promised results. God exists because he is useful, and God
helps those who help themselves.
In the same way that New Thought themes have been adapted to
popular secular humanism in the Human Potential movement, they
have also been easily adapted to popular religious symbol systems
Christian, Jewish, and Eastern. In popular religion, God is the over
riding symbol . Here his existence is "proved, " not by the formulation
of metaphysical abstractions, but by the "fact" that he can be easily
utilized-as a healer, a friend, a moral support, and as the key to
success. Academic theologians often forget that the dominant feature
in most religious people's working idea of God is practical rather than
theoretical, and is found not in what God is conceived to be, but in
what he is relied upon to do. Thus they should not be surprised when
the public turn to the pragmatic theologians of the mass media for
guidance, to the "systematic theology" preached and modeled by Nor
man Vincent Peale and Robert H. Schuller. For them, and for other
"popular theologians, " theology is not primarily conceptual, it is func
tional and relational .
The positive-thinking technique of achieving salvation taught by
Schuller and Peale is an explicitly Christian expression of the New
Thought system. That is, it makes the New Thought method seem
appropriate to the lives of born-again believers and other Christians by
its frequent use of Christian symbolism to legitimize its technique, to
guarantee its effectiveness. Salvation is a mental technique; but, to
quote Peale, "Jesus can help you think positively. " In answering the
question, "How do you keep the positive power alive in your life?" he
explained to the editor of Christian Life:
By living with Jesus. To me that's what positive thinking is all about. When
you do that, you are excited all the time. I really believe that if you l ive in
Christ, tides of health will flow through you . A real Christian should be
happy, excited, and loving. I work more now than I did when I was 40 years
old, and I haven't got a thing in the world wrong with me that I know of. 64

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

Jesus wants you to be successful. "Living with Jesus" as the source of

health, friendship, and moral support is an experience for born-again
Christians that motiva tes them to persist with the positive thinking
method. Here we see the "ideal" integration of New Thought and
revivalistic Christianity in the daily life of the believer.
But Schuller goes one step further. For him, Jesus doesn't merely
function as the giver of personal solace; he is also the ideal business
consultant. Christ himself, in Schuller's theology, is seen as the
"world's greatest possibility thinker. " If he can help those who think
positively at the personal level, he can also do so for those who must
lead the local church at the corporate level . Schuller describes what
the Crystal Cathedral does to symbolize Christ's role in the work of his
own congregation:
Ever since that day when I surrendered my church to Jesus Christ and
asked H i m to run the business, the center chair in our board meeting has
been empty. The center chair where I , as presiding chairman of the board
sat, is an empty chair. The members of the board know that Christ is there.
We believe that this is His business and expect to receive inspiration, bright
ideas, and courage from H i m . 6 5

New Thought was a nineteenth-century reaction to the overempha

sis in popular Calvinism on predestination, human depravity, and self
effacement, for which it substituted free will, human potential, and
"development" as its chief working principles. Popular religion in the
1 98os, resting on the integration of the conversion experience and
these New Thought principles, is also a reaction against the traditional
stress in modern revivalism on human sinfulness and on man and
woman's total inability to save themselves, here and now, and in the
hereafter. More than anything else, it is a popular reassertion of per
sonal self-worth in a technological society marked by the demise of
honor, widespread anonymity, and the common feeling that "I don't
count. " In the religion of mass culture preached by Peale and Schull
er, human beings are no longer viewed as hopeless sinners in the
hands of an angry God, entirely dependent on God's grace, but rather
as persons with infinite value, fully capable of achieving personal and

New Christian Values

social betterment-of becoming a "moral majority"-through a willful

change of consciousness. To quote Schuller, "Jesus never called any
one a sinner. "
The empty chair reserved for Christ at Robert H . Schuller's church
board meetings illustrates the point well. Although Christ "sits" sym
bolically in the center chair, reserved for the chairman of the board, he
is not really the one who directs the board in its decisions. Rather,
more as a consultant than a director, Christ is seen to give Schuller
and his board members "big ideas" and the courage to carry them out.
For the eminent Crystal Cathedral pastor, it is God who gives people
good ideas and sound advice, but the people themselves must imple
ment that advice personally. In a word, God's method is men and
women. If they won't do it, no one will.
To put it crassly but truthfully, positive thinking, including Schul
ler's brand of possibility thinking, is the metaphysics of the upwardly
mobile entrepreneur. In New Thought, self-realization was substituted
for self-sacrifice. According to Schuller, self-love is the necessary
prerequisite to salvation, because the very image of God in each and
every person is that individual's feeling of self-worth . Real salvation is
to recover your dignity as though you had never lost it. Self-love,
"actualized" in life by the technique of possibility thinking, is for
Schuller "the dynamic force of success. " And there is no real possibil
ity of success without it.
The essential content of Schuller's brand of popular religion is,
clearly, nothing new; nor is it particularly original. As a system of
thought, success through rational positive thinking came to maturity in
the pragmatism of William James. Here the message is really a method
-with a long history in American life. Since what Schuller preaches
and teaches is a flexible mental technique rather than a dogmatic the
ology, he, like Peale, is still able to affirm all the traditional Calvinistic
doctrinal requirements of his denomination, the Reformed Church in
America. The classical Christian symbolism remains intact; only the
existential meaning of that symbolism is changed. Both Schuller and
Peale equate positive thinking with the New Testament demand for
faith . Faith, then, is worked out concretely-and rationally-through

92

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

this positive mental process. For Schuller, turning the im possible into
the best possibility is the guaranteed result of possibility thinking. "You
are God's project, " he says, "and God does not fail . "
Robert H . Schuller insists that, as God's good creation, every man
and woman has infinite value in God's sight, and God wants all of
humanity to succeed in realizing the abundant life-the good life-he
originally intended for the crown of his creation . In his message, a
solution is offered to the biggest problem of mass culture-boredom,
the result of affluence and surplus leisure time in a technological soci
ety drained of meaning. Possibility thinking generates enthusiasm, and
so eliminates that modern malaise by making those who practice it
"risk-runners, chance-takers, and high-adventure-seeking sanctified
speculators. " Possibility thinkers are dreamers, because faith begins
with the act of imagining. "Reject all impossibility thoughts, " Schuller
declares, and "imagine yourself as a friend of the mighty, a partner of
the wealthy, and a co-worker with God . " Possibility thinkers also really
know what they want, and they exhibit a persistent desire to get it.
"Faith in deeper water, " the Garden Grove pastor suggests, "is wanting
something so badly that someday, somehow, somewhere, sometime,
you know you shall have it. Great desire marshals great determina
tion . " Finally, knowing what they want, desiring it with their whole
heart, possibility thinkers dare to succeed in getting what they desire
because, as Schuller explains, "if you want your dream badly enough ,
you will plan, organize, reorganize and work, until you get what you
want. " Possibil ity thinking rejects the negative, the impossible, the
bad; it affirms and visualizes the positive, the potential, the good, and
then endeavors to achieve it. Of itself, this mental technique-cen
tered on "visualizing" big things-is what makes things happen. It sets
the mind in motion and motivates the body to respond. Biblically
speaking, such is the faith that "moves mountains. " 66
Although the essential content of Schuller's message is not new, his
style and approach are . And it is his catchy slogans, created in the best
tradition of Madison Avenue, that have served to make his pragmatic
teaching even more popular in the 1 98os than Sheen and Peale's was
in previous generations. A sampling of these slogans illustrates the
point well:

New Christian Values

93

I would rather attempt to do something great and fail, than attempt to do

nothing and succeed .
God weighs our prayers, He doesn't count them .
Problems are guidel ines, not stop signals!
Every time one door closes another door opens.
What you do with your problem is far more important than what your
problem does to you .
Delays are opportunities in disguise.
Attitude more than age determines energy.
Great ideas attract big people .
The difficult w e d o i mmediately-the impossible takes a little longer.
Inch by i nch anything's a cinch .

All of Schuller's books, illustrated by slogans such as these and an

infinite variety of personal success stories to give them credence, out
line his specific mental method, his "cycle of success. " Dreaming
leads to chance-taking, chance-taking generates excitement, and ex
citement generates the energy that produces success. For Schuller, the
foremost theoretician of popular religion in the 1 98os, sin is negative
thinking, original sin is a poor self-image, and hell is looking back on
one's life only to see "what I could have become, but didn't. " Here
everything is not only understandable and remediable, everything is
achievable as well. Even tragedy, according to the Crystal Cathedral
pastor, is not only remediable, it can be turned into an "inspiring
triumph" through possibility thinking, a belief epitomized in Schuller's
slogan, "The cross is a plus sign . " 67
Schuller, Peale, and the other leaders of popular religion in Amer
ica who, to one degree or another, imitate their stance-Pat Robert
son, Jim Bakker, and Jerry Falwell among them-affirm and
communicate the core values of accommodation and success that lie
behind the individual variations of their own specific theological sys
tems, however much the dogmatic remnants of fundamentalism and
sectarianism may, from time to time, emerge in their sermons over TV
and in their pulpits. They have pretty much accommodated to each

94

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

other and to mass culture, and mass culture has accommodated to

them.
Immediate Results

In the original Protestant work ethic, thrift and industry were the
keys to both material success and spiritual fulfillment. As a land of vast
opportunity, America has fostered the popular stress on individual
initiative . The self-made man, the traditional hero of the American
dream, owed his success to the practice of sobriety, moderation, self
discipline, and avoidance of debt-all in the context of general indus
try and thrift. He lived for the future and shunned self-indulgence and
conspicuous consumption in favor of painstaking and patient accumu
lation. And as long as the future looked bright-in terms of an ever
expanding economy, with unlimited resources-the self-made man
found in this deferred gratification not only his principal joy, but also
an abundant source of future profits.
The rise of technology and the emergence and spread of "install
ment buying, " enhanced by the advertising industry, has changed the
whole concept of time in the traditional Protestant work ethic. Results
are still promised, but they are available right away. Buy now, pay
later. The mentalization of the Protestant work ethic in popular reli
gion went along with and further enhanced this more general shift of
consciousness in the American mass culture. The mind-cure tech
nique for abundant living in the here and now was both easier and
faster than the workaholism and often arduous physical discipline
previously demanded.
Another condition also contributed mightily to the increasing popu
lar desire for instant gratification . We live in an age of diminishing
expectations that puts the focus of the wider culture on living in the
now. Natural resources are being depleted rapidly. Inflation erodes
investments and savings, while advertising continues to exhort con
sumers to buy now and pay later. And nuclear holocaust-a literal
Armageddon-might be just around the corner. With such uncertainty
about the future, the traditional Protestant virtues calling for patience
and delayed gratification in view of future rewards no longer produce

New Christian Values

95

enthusiasm . Only fools put off until tomorrow the fun they can have
today. 6 8
The dominent trend toward seeking immediate results is as much a
core value behind the message of popular religion in the 1 98os as it is
in mass culture as a whole. In its rational mental technology of salva
tion, we can not only be saved in a matter of minutes, we can also
achieve the fullness of "sanctification, " of Christian maturity, in "ten
easy steps. " Here even the experience of ecstasy in religion has been
rationalized. For instance, in traditional (or "classical") pentecostalism
the experience of speaking in tongues-the utterance of generally sim
ple syllables not matched systematically with a semantic system-was
usually the result of months, even years, of "tarrying at the altar, "
praying for the "supernatural" intervention of the Holy Spirit in the
seeking believer's life. Not so any longer. Following the assessment of
modern social and behavioral scientists that speaking in tongues is a
"symbolic, pleasureful, expressive, and therapeutic experience, " a
form of "learned behavior" that can occur independently of any par
ticipating psychological or emotional state, Dennis and Rita Bennett
teach the new charismatics that they don't have to wait endlessly to be
"zapped from on high" in order to speak in tongues. Rather, it is, an
orderly and rational process that can begin right now and develop fur
ther with practice. "It doesn't matter, " they declare, "if the first sounds
are just 'priming the pump, ' for the real flow will assuredly come . . . .
Keep on with those sounds. Offer them to God . . . . As you do, they
will develop and grow into a fully developed language. " 69
The major share of credit for the contemporary transformation of
the functional emphasis in modern revivalism on the hereafter into a
stress on the here and now must be given to Oral Roberts. Roberts, of
course, began his healing revivalism in the dominant ethos of Protes
tant fundamentalism that affirmed an imminent, and apocalyptic, re
turn of Christ. First, the fundamentalists believed, Christ would come
back "secretly, " to "rapture"-"catch up"-all true believers alive at
the time, and take them directly to heaven with him while the rest of
the world undergoes the promised seven-year "great tribulation , " ruled
by the Antichrist, with the battle of Armageddon between the forces of
Christ and Antichrist at its end. Then, and only then, they believed,

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

Christ would return-with his raptured saints-to set up his millennia}

reign, the Kingdom of God on earth.
This "dispensational" doctrine of the Last Days originated in Great
Britain in the early nineteenth century and became increasingly popu
lar in the United States after the Civil War. Here it transformed the
this-worldly postmillennialism of earlier revivalism-in which Christ
was to return after the thousand years of righteousness on earth-into
the more other-worldly dispensational premillennialism that became
dominant in fundamentalist Christianity as a whole, and also in the
pentecostal movement of which Oral Roberts was to become a leader.
Dispensationalism, taught to the Bible-reading public in the Scofield
Reference Bible, first published in 1 909, stressed the doctrine of the
imminent rapture, and so made planning for the material future on
earth an option at best, and a ridiculous enterprise at worst. Funda
mentalist theologians and other leaders of the movement most often
argued against efforts to reform society, believing, with their fellow
Calvinists, that human sinfulness was so deeply ingrained in the indi
vidual and in society that its social consequences could only be recti
fied by God's direct and cataclysmic intervention in the world in the
Second Coming. And since this divine action would be soon, it further
diminished interest among the fundamentalists in the reconstruction of
society. For them the time was too short, and the prospects for social
betterment too remote, to warrant the effort. But there were still hun
dreds of millions of souls to be saved before the rapture, and evange
lism was worth the effort.
Until the advent of evangelical and charismatic upward mobility in
the 1 96os and 1 9 70s, and before the integration of New Thought with
revivalism, dispensational eschatology also caused fundamentalist lead
ers in general to resist long-term investments in vast church organiza
tions and educational institutions in favor of spending the hard-earned
money contributed by their laboring-class followers on direct evange
lism alone (Aimee Semple McPherson was one major exception here).
Some fundamentalist denominations even neglected to provide their
professional ministers with life insurance and retirement benefits. If
they really believed in the imminent rapture, why bother?
At this point, it is important to note that Wesleyan theology, basic to
the Methodist tradition as a whole, and to most pentecostalism , had

New Christian Values

97

traditionally been more open to social betterment than modern Calvin

ism, expressed in revivalism, had been . But in the late nineteenth
century, despite its dominant doctrines of free will , nondogmatism,
and moral perfectionism, most of the theologically orthodox Wesley
ans in America joined forces with Calvinistic revivalism against the
modernists. And, in so doing, their own theological characteristics
were rendered less important-in their own lives, and in their
churches-than the dispensational doctrine of the Second Coming,
which became increasingly emphasized in popular fundamentalism .
In a sense, the conservative Wesleyans were coopted by their Calvin
istic and dispensational fellow believers.
Then came Oral Roberts, whose new-style TV healing evangelism
restored in popular religion the traditional Wesleyan concern for salva
tion of the "whole person"-the spirit, yes, but also the physical body
and the mind. Raised in a poor family himself, and healed of tuber
culosis as a youth, Roberts entered the faith-healing ministry-a min
istry to the poor and their specific needs-from a first-hand experience
of poverty and illness. Because the plight of the hopelessly ill surround
ed him daily from the beginning, he came to understand very early
that salvation is not j ust a "spiritual" matter for the soul and its home
in the life to come. Like himself, Jesus had healed the sick in body;
and for him, the acceptance in most of fundamentalism of saved souls
in sick bodies was wrong, a contradiction in terms.
Oral Roberts's concern for the salvation of the body as well as the
soul was expanded in 1 962 to include salvation of the mind with the
groundbreaking for Oral Roberts University, one of the most modern
and technologically efficient university campuses in the world. In the
process of establishing ORU, the popular TV evangelist became more
theologically conversant. His preaching and teaching started to focus
more on individual responsibility and on salvation-spiritual , physical,
and intellectual-in the now, blending themes from Wesleyanism and
existentialism, with the positive thinking approach of New Thought,
into the experience of salvation proclaimed in the revivalist tradition .
For Roberts, being born again leads inevitably-by faith-to the
"abundant life" (the title of the magazine published by his evangelistic
association). In 1 968, the former Pentecostal Holiness healing evange
list was welcomed into the ministry of the mainline United Methodist

The Rise of the Religious Personality Cult

Church, an act that symbolized the mutual accommodation of revival

ism and mainstream Christianity in America. In the religion of mass
culture today, Oral Roberts is as much a celebrity leader as anyone
else. And millions of Americans have learned and abide by his favorite
slogans "Our God is a Good God, " "Expect a Miracle , " and "Some
thing Good is Going to Happen to You . "
Finally, i t should be mentioned here that a n apparent contradiction
exists in the expressed theology of popular religion in the 1 98os. On
the one hand, only a few of the leaders of the religion of mass culture
today-Schuller and Roberts, most notable among them-do not
preach and teach the traditional fundamentalist doctrine of the immi
nent rapture. On the other hand, those who do--including Robertson,
Bakker, and Falwell-are at the same time, planning and building,
grand churches, universities, and communications organizations for
the long-term future. This contradiction between declared faith and
actual practice gives the best evidence that they too are really more
concerned about immediate results in the here and now, and about the
future of the good life in America, than about the imminent Second
Coming and life in the hereafter. Just like the popular masses of their
readers, listeners, and viewers, the leaders of the religion of mass cul
ture have accommodated to the world .
In Part One, we discussed the nature and functions of "popular
religion" in modern America in the larger context of the rise of mass
culture as a whole, itself the product of advanced technology-includ
ing the electronic mass media-which has given the public more
money, more leisure time, and a longer life in which to use both.
Here life is lived in two distinct compartments. Work is the means;
play, the end . And boredom is the problem in search of a solution .
We traced the origins and development of the "personality cult" in
contemporary popular religion through the long tradition of American
revivalism, focusing on the leading personalities of revivalistic Chris
tianity, from Charles G. Finney to Oral Roberts and Billy Graham,
and on the specific ways these professional evangelists made effective
use of the media to spread the word. We also examined the means by
which the leaders of revivalism not only shared their faith, but also

New Christian Values

99

"instrumentalized" it, through the advance team, the decision card,

and the computer data bank-aided in recent years by the rational
positive-thinking mind-cure technique first popularized in New
Thought.
The religion of mass culture, we have asserted, helps everyday
people meet their everyday needs. Its leaders, therefore, must cater to
the masses and give their viewers, listeners, and readers what they
want-or they'll soon go out of business. In this connection, they
confirm the values their followers already hold dear, and do so in
words easy to understand. They provide a relatively easy technique for
abundant living in the here and now-and the hereafter. And they
offer a sense of meaning to their "clientele" of consumers in the midst
of the mundane, modern, workaday world, drained of meaning. All of
this, then, is dispensed in a simple "plan" of salvation, integrating the
revivalistic conversion experience with the mental method of New
Thought. Behind the content of that plan, then , stand the core values
of accommodation, success, and immediate results as new Christian
virtues. Everything in popular religion is understandable, remediable,
and achievable. And the "truth" proclaimed by its leaders is rationally
authenticated by empirical ends and pragmatic tests.
The stars and superstars of the electronic church and their celebrity
guests have become the chief teachers and models of the religion of
mass culture in America today. But j ust how influential are they? And
by wha t authority do they lead? These are questions that remain to be
considered.

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C H A P T E R 5

The Nature of Religious

Authority and How It Works

If "authority" is perceived by the public as one of the most important

problems in modern western society as a whole-in government, on
the job, and in the family-it is the critical issue in American religion
today. Traditional channels of authority, and "respect" for the same
from papal "infallibility" and biblical "inerrancy" to the spiritual au
thority of the local minister, priest, or rabbi-have eroded steadily
since the scientific revolution, while vocal questioning of all kinds of
religious authority and of those who enjoy the status to wield it has also
increased dramatically. This breakdown of the scope of authority in
religion, of course, is related directly to its erosion in the wider society.
When the church, the clergy, and theology itself-once the "queen of
the sciences"-lost their high status in modern culture as a whole, they
also lost a large measure of their authority within the institutions and
movements of religion themselves. The erosion of clerical status and
the authority once inherent in it was the direct result of the rise of
advanced scientific discovery and the ever expanding growth of plural
ism over the same period of time, in both Europe and America.
The scientific method affected the status of religion and its leaders in
the whole of Western society, and it had an especially debilitating
effect on its intellectual prestige. Since modern science had answers
and positive tangible fruits, it came increasingly to command respect
and approval . In earlier generations those credited with knowledge, the
"wise men" of society, had necessarily been religionists, since the
church maintained virtual dominance over intellectual life; and its

1 04

Authority in Modern American Religion

intelligentsia held control of cultured, civilized, and educational val

ues. But, as time went on, intellectual concerns passed beyond the
knowledge and ability of minister and theologian. Even if many of the
early scientists had come from their numbers, as science became more
sophisticated-and specialized-and as scientific education developed,
so the possibility of the cleric being a scientist diminished . Science,
then, grew up outside the control of the religious intelligentsia, and a
new professional grouping gradually came into being, one that chal
lenged their traditional authority.
As the social prestige of science and scientists rose, so also did the
respect accorded their canons of rational planning and organization,
geared to empirical results. Increasingly, science attracted the better
minds, provoked more public concern , gained increased access to the
mass media of communication, and won higher rewards in terms of
salaries. Whereas ministers of religion had been specialists at earlier
stages of social development, with the advance of science and technol
ogy, they were left as distinctly amateur practitioners, if that. More
over, their special expertise, their knowledge of theology and the
license to perform sacramental acts, became significantly less "rele
vant" to a pragmatic, scientifically oriented society.
The prestige of scientific procedures and results was such that it
eventually had a profound effect on theology itself (as we have already
seen in the emergence of New Thought). As the authority of geology,
biology, and the "social sciences" increased, so the authenticity of the
traditional Christian interpretation of the world became, in the nine
teenth and twentieth centuries, patently less tenable among academi
cians as a whole. And it was the very application of the scientific
method to the Bible itself in "higher criticism"-with its canons of
objectivity, neutrality, and empiricism-that contributed greatly to the
widespread scrutinization of religious authority to follow. 70
After 1 8oo, Protestant ministers in America came in increasing
numbers from the lower social and economic strata, a trend that con
tinued throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth.
But despite their more humble origins, the high status of American
ministers remained relatively intact throughout the wider society until
about 1 8 50, when they began noticeably to lose that standing, espe-

Religious Authority and How It Works

1 05

cially with respect to their once overarching infl uence on the practical
affairs of the community and their standing in intellectual circles. Of
course, ministers of the more established denominations did continue
to move in the higher circles of most cities and towns, but their actual
influence waned considerably in the secular organizations-political
parties, labor unions, manufacturers' associations, farm groups-that
were most effective in determining the direction of community affairs.
Ministers were still called upon for support of the obvious moral con
cerns, but when problems became more complex and ambiguous,
their advice was usually not sought. Instead, the services of "special
ists" were solicited to solve the problems of an urbanized, technologi
cal society that required the kind of "professional competence" few
clergy possessed.
In terms of intellectual status, the professional ministry and the
theological academy have also taken a beating. For example, before
the Civil War, 90 percent of all college presidents in the United States
were ordained ministers. Today, except for small, tightly controlled
church-related colleges, it is extremely rare for the presidency of a
university or college to be held by a minister. And, in many instances,
ordination would actually be a handicap for an individual being con
sidered for such a position in modern America.
We have already suggested that, because they offered increasingly
higher prestige and better salaries, the secular professions attracted the
more intelligent and talented job seekers. After 1 8 50, it became clear
that the ministry was no longer luring as large a number of graduates
of the outstanding universities as it had done prior to that time. More
seminary recruits came from small denominational colleges and, later,
from the burgeoning "state colleges" that had once been "normal
schools" for the training of teachers. In this regard, for example, from
1 8 50 to 1 89 5 , the number of Yale graduates who entered the ministry
decreased more than 6o percent, while the total number of the Ivy
League university's graduates doubled. And the percentage of all col
lege graduates entering the ministry has declined over the past 1 2 5
years.
Today the "best" students who graduate from the "best" colleges and
universities are far more likely to enroll in an academically oriented

1 06

Authority in Modern American Religion

Ph. D. program, or, if money is important, to go to business school,

law school, or medical school, than they are to attend seminary. And
even the most prestigious university divinity schools in America
Harvard, Yale, and Chicago--do not attract, overall, as high a calibre
of students as is drawn by the other graduate and professional schools
on each respective campus. Furthermore, the prestige of these theolog
ical faculties within the larger university community is also not com
parable with that accorded professors of medicine, business, law,
economics, political science, and other secular disciplines.
If the rise of the scientific method alienated the ministry and aca
demic theology from the larger intellectual community in America,
the church itself contributed to that alienation as well. American Prot
estantism has always been lay-centered and lay-controlled; and, in
many ways, this tradition of a strong lay ministry mitigated against
ministerial education, at least in any traditional, formal sense. If a
conscientious and consecrated lay man or woman could do the work of
evangelism and preaching-as had been the case on the frontier and in
much of the revivalism that followed-why bother to send a person to
seminary at all? Methodists, Baptists, and sectarian fundamentalists
were the most prone to adopt this attitude, but other Christians also
had a high regard for lay ministry.
The Protestant churches in America, especially those serving the
lower social and economic strata of society, have also had a longstand
ing suspicion of higher education in general. This was particularly so
in the face of the intellectual revolution of the late nineteenth century,
which produced pro-intellectual "liberals" and many anti-intellectual
"conservatives" in virtually all the Protestant denominations. The
unaccommodating conservative forces-the fundamentalists--deliber
ately cultivated an attitude of ignorance and obscurantism. They com
pletely "wrote off'' and dissociated themselves from the "modern"
universities and "liberal" seminaries at the same time that these institu
tions enjoyed an increasingly high regard by the wider society in gen
eral and among the intelligentsia in particular. It was small wonder,
then, that such an uncompromising attitude further weakened the in
tellectual status of the ministry. 71
No less than the rise of science, the expansion of pluralism-and the

Religious Authority a nd How It Works

1 07

principle of toleration inherent in it-has also been a major cause of

the decline in stature and scope of religious authority in modern Amer
ica. The roots of religious pluralism go back to the emergence of Prot
estantism in Reformation Europe as a protest movement against the
dominant authority of the pope and of Catholicism more generally;
and the development of pluralism, and of toleration, from that point
forward coincided with the larger process of "modernization . " From
the sixteenth until the nineteenth, and sometimes even the twentieth
centuries, the situation in Europe was what Martin E. Marty of the
University of Chicago has call ed a "host cul ture-guest culture. " One
faith would dominate in one territory and be established by law, but,
increasingly, it had to make allowance for "nonconformists" and "dis
senters. " By the eighteenth century, with the enlightenment in full
bloom, it was possible in many nations for the first time to publicly
disavow any faith. But this host-guest picture in the development of
post-Reformation Europe differs significantly from the American style
of pluralism, based on the principles that "any number can play, " that
all are equally protected by the law, and that none are to be legally
privileged over the rest.
The founders of most of the American colonies brought with them
their European habits, and in nine of the original thirteen colonies
they established a single church that dominated as late as the time of
independence. But the social interaction of the people in the colonies,
and later the states, together with the growth of upward mobility, the
rise of many new denominations in the face of religious freedom (guar
anteed by the First Amendment), and the arrival of wave upon wave of
immigrants all functioned to kill the old European idea of "territorial
ism . " Thus the rel igious map of America was changing, and the lines
could never be drawn neatly again. There would be no legally estab
lished monopolies of religion, no "national church" anywhere in the
United States. Increasingly, the grinding and mixing process of Ameri
can life, as Marty puts it, would insure that no single church body had
restrictive dominance in any region. 72
By the 1 96os, and into the seventies, religious pluralism in America
expanded in scope even further with widespread assertions of new par
ticularities. For example, various ethnic, racial, and sexual groups

1 08

Authority in Modern American Religion

were linked with religious claims. Black Muslims wanted to be cut out
of pluralism entirely, asking, as they did, for a couple of the states all
to themselves. (Since the death of Elijah Muhammad, however, the
Muslims have changed their name and have repudiated this separatist
posture. ) Gay Christians, condemned by their own churches, formed a
distinctively gay denomination, the U niversal Fellowship of Met
ropolitan Community Churches (which now considers itself a part of
the larger charismatic renewal movement). And they were joined by
feminist women and countercultural young people who also estab
lished their own religious movements and communities. Black power,
woman power, youth power-even gay power-were voiced (or un
voiced) claims arguing that only in one's own group could one find
identity and meaning, and that the "blur" of pluralism could only lead
to rootlessness and chaos. But the authority claims of these new reli
gious groupings actually enhanced the power of pluralism in America,
because only where pluralism exists and is protected by law can such
diverse claims be made and tolerated without an adverse effect on the
rational ordering of society. 73
The development and expansion of pluralism, with governmental
recognition of the "legitimacy" of each religious tradition, old and
new, made it impossible for any one religious leader or group to wield
authority over any other group or over those who have no church
affiliation at all. Moreover, it has also "relativized" the very concept of
authority itself. Pluralism forces individuals and groups to tolerate each
other, to agree to disagree, however distasteful such "agreement" might
appear on the surface. When the truth claims of one church or reli
gion cannot be legally, or socially, imposed on another, its authority is
thereby relativized and weakened. Without the overarching social rec
ognition of one belief system over another, the freedom of choice of
the consumers of religion is strengthened. And choice itself under
mines authority.
Upward mobility generates an ever-increasing array of choices for
everyday people in everyday life. Modern Americans must regularly
choose between competing consumer commodities. But they must also
choose between far-reaching alternatives in personal lifestyle. Biogra
phy, too, is a sequence of choices; many, if not most of them, new

Religious Authority and How It Works

1 09

with modernity--choices of education and occupational careers, of

marriage partners and diverse styles of marital and nonmarital cohabi
tation, of alternative patterns of child-rearing, of a near-infinite variety
of voluntary associations, of social and political commitments. In reli
gion, as in the rest of modern life, each of us must make our own
choices about what to believe and how to express those beliefs in con
duct. For example, even professional ministers now have many more
choices open to them in the practice of their vocation. Not long ago,
divorce and remarriage constituted an anathema to the career of almost
any American minister. Now it is acceptable in many denominations.
In prior decades, a ministerial candidate admitting his homosexual
preference and practice would have been denied ordination; not so
today, at least not in the more liberal mainline denominations such as
the Episcopal Church and the United Church of Christ, in which
there are a number of self-professed lesbians and gay men in the minis
try. U ntil the 1 970s, minorities and women were largely excluded
from the Protestant ministry in denominations traditionally controlled
by white males. But no longer. Both women and minorities are now
actively recruited, in the spirit of "affirmative action, " for staff posi
tions in denominational hierarchies once reserved for white men.
Even the far more conservative local congregations of the same
denominations officially welcome black members and often will at
least seriously consider minorities and women for pastoral positions.
Here the professional ministry has become a new vocational "possibil
ity" for believers once "automatically" excluded, and their widespread
"availability" today gives the churches themselves greater room for
choice.
Pluralism and voluntary association, then, enforced by the rule of
law, have necessitated the growth of accommodation in religion, mak
ing any claim to universal authority questionable, while the advance
ment of science and technology-with its rational, critical
methodology of eval uation-has undermined any claim to particular
authority in rel igion as well . This freedom of choice, moreover, a
direct product of modernity, is one big reason that all deterministic
worldviews-from orthodox Calvinism to orthodox Marxism-are
gradually declining in popularity. In the 1 98os, both predestination

1 10

Authority in Modern American Religion

and the historical "inevitability" of communism can be legitimately

described as anti-modern positions.
Again, pluralism, in its distinctively American form, has itself been
an inhibiting and restraining force on traditional patterns of authority
as a whole; but that force has been strengthened further by the domi
nant trend in all Western nations toward increased democratic partici
pation (in however token a form) and egalitarianism (in strict monetary
terms, if not in cultural and social terms). The ideological justification
for this development is that individuals, men and women both, are not
very unequal in natural endowment, and that environmental and edu
cational provision can be equalized, even perhaps to a point where
nurture will "correct"-or "remedy"-nature in regard to such
inequalities as might naturally exist. In this kind of pluralistic and
egalitarian society, shaped by rationality and scientific analysis, the
ideal of leadership has been democratized to such a degree that "ex
traordinary" qualities, however much needed, are not normally reck
oned with in the framework of social planning. 74 Authority itself is
questioned, and its scope is severely limited, while power, expressed in
"influence" is gained more often than not by indirect and unstructured
means. Thus all authority in modern America-including religious
authority-must be evaluated in this context.
The influence of religious leaders in America today is a function of
the following variables. First, their influence is determined by their
base of operation, the "organization" of their ministry. In the very act
of establishing their ministries, leaders build the "environment" for
their work gradually. In so doing, they must cope with the fact that the
more followers or fans they have, the more they need an increasingly
structured and complex organization to transmit and carry out their
message. Institutionalization, of course, is something to cope with for
any "visionary" leaders, because the rational organization inherent in
it will inevitably restrict the implementation of their vision and actual
ly serve to limit their real authority. Once established, an organization
seeks more than just carrying out the will of its founder. It seeks to
perpetuate itself, and does so by controlling the public "image" of its
prime leader in ways that suppress the nonrational eccentricities com
mon in the early careers of many such leaders-spontaneity, whimsi-

Religious Authority a nd How It Works

I l l

cality, and unpredictability. For example, Billy Graham-now the

titular head of the vast Billy Graham Evangelistic Association-may
still occasionally get a "direct" inspiration from God to change the style
or course of his ministry. Such divine leading would not have been a
"problem" for him as an unknown itinerant evangelist in the 1 940s; at
least he would have been free to act on it in the manner of his own
choosing. Now, however, even an inspiration from God-were it to
affect Graham's public image-would have to be processed through his
organization and modified by it, if not rejected outright.
Second, the influence of religious leaders is a function of the form
of communication they and their organizations use to communicate
with their members, followers, or fans. Jerry Falwell communicates
"directly" to his audience by the spoken word on 1V, and "indirectly"
by computerized follow-up mail signed by the evangelist "himself. " He
is a visible authority to his constituency. But the head of a mainline
Protestant ecumenical agency, like the National Council of Churches,
with its very formal and routinized bureaucratic structure, communi
cates primarily with her subordinates-through memos and dictums
who are charged with "carrying out" the wishes of their leader (to
whatever degree that is possible). Here, then, leadership has lost its
personal quality, having become invisible and anonymous.
Third, the infl uence of religious leaders is a function of their par
ticular constituency or audience, the people they communicate and
interact with. The general secretary of the National Council of
Churches really influences her staff subordinates who communicate
and interact with her directly, albeit with memos. But her influence
wanes farther on down the line, and it is practically nil among the
average members of the local churches which belong to the council.
They don't even know her name. Falwell and Graham, however,
communicate with the "masses , " and they are the ones who are in
fluenced by their message.
Finally, the influence of religious leaders is determined by their
cultural milieu, the time and space in which they find themselves
leaders. In modern America, popular religious leaders achieve their
status by virtue of the fame visibility gives them . Celebrity leaders of
popular religion do have an influence on the masses, and local church

1 12

Authority in Modern American Religion

pastors can enhance their authority as well simply by rubbing elbows

with "real" celebrities.
Clout with God: A New Typology of Religious Leadership

In recent years, until the late 1 970s, little of substance was written
by Protestant and secular scholars concerning the nature and function
of religious authority in modern America, the authority exercised with
in the institutional church itself and its wider impact on society as a
whole. And for good reason . Because the decline in status of the pro
fessional minister as a leader in nonsectarian, "mainline" Protestant
ism has been a gradual process over the last 1 2 5 years, numerous
scholars documented and evaluated that demise in definitive ways-for
their times, at least-generations before the present resurgence of reli
gion in America. There seemed little more to say. When the power
and influence of the churches and their ministers waned, when-in
terms of numbers and finances-they were characterized more by
"failure" than success, even academicians lost interest in them, prefer
ring to concentrate their scholarship on the issue of authority and lea
dership where it really mattered, in business and government. But with
the almost spontaneous emergence of vast evangelical empires-and
their apparent political clout-and of new religious "cults" accused of
"authoritarian" practices over their youthful adherents, both Protestant
and nonreligious academicians have taken a renewed interest in dis
tinctively "religious" leadership and authority .
The situation in Catholicism, however, has been quite different,
because the decline of the authority of the priest-and of his status
within the church-was a more recent and "sudden" phenomenon
that became widely observable only after the Second Vatican Council,
in the mid-6os and thereafter. Vatican II opened the doors of the
Roman Catholic Church throughout the world to the same moderniz
ing forces that weakened the scope of authority in the Protestant minis
try years before-the scientific method in general, and higher biblical
criticism (and its correlates) in particular. Catholic ecumenism very
quickly led to the "Protestantization" of Catholicism; and contempo
rary Catholic scholars, using the same critical and social-scientific

Religious Authority a nd How It Works

1 13

methods as their Protestant colleagues, have produced a large body of

literature on both sides of the authority question-centering, of course,
on the "infallibility" of the pope and its consequences for the life and
work of modern Catholics.
Old typologies formulated to describe and compare different patterns
of religious leadership, once definitive, have become increasingly less
useful in the wake of new, technologically conditioned patterns that
began emerging in America in the 1 96os-patterns of authority based
more on appeal and pragmatic "effectiveness" than on the divine en
dowment of "charisma" and the traditional popular regard for position,
education, and training, recognized in the act of ordination. Further
more, the creation of new typologies of religious leadership is a more
complex-and controversial-task for scholars than it was in the past.
With the accommodating forces of modernity, its individualism, plu
ralism, and unwillingness to keep people out, labels of any kind have
become increasingly suspect and unpopular among the American pub
lic as a whole-this despite the continuing "warfare" of academic
theologians concerning their own particular doctrinal differences. And
the labeling process in religion has also been rendered more difficult by
the new presence on the American landscape of "invisible religion, "
which both undergirds and overarches the once clearly defined tradi
tional ecclesiastical and theological boundaries. What follows, there
fore, is a typology that describes dominant trends as ideal types rather
than empirically tested realities. As in all typologies, the categories
chosen are general and must always be open to the presence of the
notable exception.
The Celebrity Leader

The most highly visible leaders of modern American religion are the
mass media "celebrities, " the entertainers, whose "leadership" rests pri
marily in their mass appeal . Although revivalists since Moody have
solicited the support and participation of local and national celebrities
to create public interest in their campaigns, these notables functioned
only as part of the evangelists' supporting cast. Even Billy Sunday, the
baseball star turned revivalist, was an ordained Presbyterian minister. It
was not his celebrity status per se that gave him the authority to preach

1 14

Authority in Modern American Religion

the word, although it helped. Rather, it was Sunday's background and

experience in the professional ministry, attested to by his ordination,
that gave him "clout with God" in the eyes of those who listened to his
message. Today, however, born-again (or otherwise religious) stars or
superstars attain their status as "leaders" simply by being famous, by
being visible-as a beauty queen, a pop singer, a corporate executive,
a politician-and nothing else. Such a leader no longer needs a theo
logical education and formal training and experience in the ministry,
because success-in any field-gives them their authority.
Celebrities are the leaders of the invisible religion that undergirds
and overarches other kinds of religion. The mass media confer status
on, and so enhance the authority and influence of people who are
already professionally trained ministers, who have "come up through
the ranks"-individuals like Jerry Falwell and Robert H. Schuller. But
they also grant spiritual authority to others who have no such formal
training and experience--entertainers like Pat Boone, B. J. Thomas,
and Cheryll Prewitt-whether they like it or not. Wha t a person does
actually matters less than the fact that he or she has "made it. " Success
has to be ratified by visibility.
In the pure sense of the word, celebrities exist only to be "cele
brated. " They have fans rather than followers. Yet, they have influ
ence, because they provide those fans with an ideal and compelling
model for what the successful Christian and the successful Christian
ministry are like. Celebrity leaders, then, may be authorities for the
"private" rel igious l ives of their fans; and that "authority" takes on
added significance when those fans seek to actualize the invisible reli
gion carried by the mass media-with all its "special effects"-in the
"real" life and work of their own churches.
Celebrities are leaders of American religion because contemporary
mass culture surrounds religious stars and superstars with glamour and
excitement, and it encourages believers and nonbelievers alike to iden
tify themselves with these successful individuals-and their institutions
-and to reject the "herd" that live in failure. In American life, the
dream of success has been drained of any meaning beyond itself; thus
modern men and women have nothing against which to measure their
achievements except the achievements of others. As in the wider soci-

1 14

Authority in Modern American Religion

the word, although it helped. Rather, it was Sunday's background and

experience in the professional ministry, attested to by his ordination,
that gave him "clout with God" in the eyes of those who listened to his
message. Today, however, born-again (or otherwise religious) stars or
superstars attain their status as "leaders" simply by being famous, by
being visible-as a beauty queen, a pop singer, a corporate executive,
a politician-and nothing else. Such a leader no longer needs a theo
logical education and formal training and experience in the ministry,
because success-in any field-gives them their authority.
Celebrities are the leaders of the invisible religion that undergirds
and overarches other kinds of religion. The mass media confer status
on, and so enhance the authority and influence of people who are
already professionally trained ministers, who have "come up through
the ranks"-individuals like Jerry Falwell and Robert H. Schuller. But
they also grant spiritual authority to others who have no such formal
training and experience--entertainers like Pat Boone, B. J. Thomas,
and Cheryll Prewitt-whether they like it or not. What a person does
actually matters less than the fact that he or she has "made it. " Success
has to be ratified by visibility.
In the pure sense of the word, celebrities exist only to be "cele
brated. " They have fans rather than followers. Yet, they have influ
ence, because they provide those fans with an ideal and compelling
model for what the successful Christian and the successful Christian
ministry are like. Celebrity leaders, then, may be authorities for the
"private" religious lives of their fans; and that "authority" takes on
added significance when those fans seek to actualize the invisible reli
gion carried by the mass media-with all its "special effects"-in the
"real" life and work of their own churches.
Celebrities are leaders of American religion because contemporary
mass culture surrounds religious stars and superstars with glamour and
excitement, and it encourages believers and nonbelievers alike to iden
tify themselves with these successful individuals-and their institutions
-and to reject the "herd" that live in failure. In American life, the
dream of success has been drained of any meaning beyond itself; thus
modern men and women have nothing against which to measure their
achievements except the achievements of others. As in the wider soci-

Religious Authority and How It Works

1 15

ety, so also in religion . Celebrity leaders of modern American religion

wield influence as religious authorities as long as they are successful;
and the greater their success, the greater their infl uence.
The Pragmatic Leader

Modern American society conducts its work on the principle of free

exchange, in which the Golden Rule-"do unto others as you would
have them do unto you"-is interpreted as meaning "be fair in your
exchange with others. "75 Our society is run by a managerial bureau
cracy, by professional politicians and corporate board chairmen . And its
citizens are motivated by mass suggestion that encourages them to pro
duce more and consume more-as purposes in themselves. Popular
religion, carried by the mass media, fits well into the wider cultural
context. It too markets its products to the masses-through celebrity
leaders who influence their fans to invest their money in goods that
"won't perish" and promise them a fair return for that investment in
terms of spiritual well-being, physical health , and financial prosperity.
Oral Roberts terms the motivation to invest in such a way "seed-faith . "
But the celebrity leaders of the electronic church are not an alto
gether "workable" model for the effective operation of the local congre
gation, which is still the heart of American religion , because (as
Schuller himself reminds us) the electronic church is not a real
church. It is only an image, lacking the reality of warm, loving human
encounter and communion. Another leadership model is therefore
necessary for the day-to-day life and work of the local church . And so
Schuller teaches his minister-students how to become what might well
be called "pragmatic leaders" of their congregations, good chairmen
(or chairwomen) of the board who acknowledge Christ's general direc
torship of the universe, while they "do their part. " The pragmatic
leader is the kind of minister who presides over the most successful
churches in the land-by Schuller's criteria and example-and Schul
ler himself is fast becoming the dominant ideal type of ministerial
leader among modern Americans.
Schuller teaches that the world needs an "ideal person" as a model
to live by. In the larger sense, that model is Jesus Christ, the world's
greatest possibility thinker. But local pastors, as Christ's "vicars" on

1 16

Authority in Modern American Religion

earth, have the particular responsibility of "fleshing out" that ideal

before their congregations. Pragmatic church leaders, then, should be
able to advertise their churches and services in the following way:
"With Christ as chairman of our board, we have the technology, the
systems, the products, and the resources to maintain our leadership in
this community. " Their authority is dependent on their effectiveness,
and submission to that authority is a pragmatic matter as well . Effec
tiveness, of course, has to be demonstrated regularly by pragmatic
church leaders-in their preaching and teaching, but also in their
membership recruitment and raising of money. Here achievement is
everything. "Each new peak [of experiencing achievement] , " the Crys
tal Cathedral pastor says, "releases a new peek of new peaks to scale . "
Very simply, pragmatic leaders of successful churches i n modern
America are possibility thinkers of the first order who offer workable
solutions to the stated problems of their congregations and commu
nities. They know what people want, and give it to them-abundantly.
"Find a need and fill it, find a hurt and heal it. " Pragmatic leaders of
religion, like the good business executives they are, set specific goals
for their churches, especially with respect to membership and budget.
And the goals they set are long-term goals, five or ten years down the
line. In the process, then, pragmatic church leaders seek visibility for
their congregations, knowing that "churches that aren't doing anything
that merits publicity don't get publicity. " In Schuller's vocabulary,
they a nalyze the needs and potentialities of their churches and com
munities, organize their staffs and make concrete plans to move the
church ahead, and "clima tize " their members with positive and inspir
ing sermons so that they will want to get behind the dream and make
it come true. Because pragmatic church leaders preach with an air of
excitement-and expectancy-their sermons make them and their pul
pit the "passionate nucleus" of the church and the motivating force
that inspires its members to become "reproducers," a necessary re
quirement for church growth. Taking the priesthood of all believers
seriously, they train their laity to carry out the larger ministry of the
church . No good business is run by its chairman alone.
Pragmatic church leaders, then, retail religion to interested consum-

Religious Authority and How It Works

1 17

ers, and give them exactly what they want-inspiration, entertain

ment, fellowship, and comfort-in fair exchange for their "offerings"
of time and money.
The Heroic Leader

The word "charisma, " applied to a leader, was used by sociologist

Max Weber to denote a quality not of the leader, but of a relationship
between "followers" and the person in whom they put their trust. The
leader's claim, or theirs on the leader's behalf, was that this person
authority to lead because of supernatural competencies. Both Jesus
and Muhammad were "charismatic" leaders in that sense of the word.
In primitive societies there was no alternative to reposing trust in a
man or woman as the agent of social transformation, or as the savior
from prevailing miseries. In those cultures and conditions such an
individual , in a way that is no longer true in the modern world, had a
chance-however slight-of actually accomplishing something. But in
the modern world, with its cumulative rationality and machine tech
nology, a man or woman per se is a much less plausible instrument. In
those times, a person could make the difference, because moral solu
tions to problems-solutions in terms of appropriate attitudes and be
havior-might still work. But ours is really a "post-moral" age, in
which the rights and wrongs of behavior are increasingly determined
by purely technical considerations. In this sense, too, the appeal of
charisma, of the man or woman whose supernatural nobility and
power would save us, is primitive.
Today, in the midst of an advanced technological society, most
leaders who are termed "charismatic" by the massess-by their media,
especially-are not felt to have real supernatural endowment, and it is
not on the basis of such endowment that their authority, their influ
ence, rests. Instead, modern charismatic leaders are so merely because
of the strength of their personalities-their appeal-wherein lies what
eYer "authority" they may have. And since personal appeal in mass
culture is often "manufactured" to suit public taste-as in the "image"
of Christian leaders portrayed by the electronic church-the charis
matic leader today is really the celebrity leader. Pat Boone and Cheryl

1 18

Authority in Modern American Religion

Prewitt are good examples of this diluted understanding of charisma in

modern American religion, as John Lennon and Elvis were in the
wider culture.
Despite all this, however, the appeal of real charisma remains a fact
of life within modern consciousness, albeit in a weakened form, as a
reassertion of faith in human values and dispositions that, if supernatu
ral, are also apparently natural-natural, that is, because they are not
technological . There continues to exist a profound felt need, even in a
technological society, for the leader who is "different" from everybody
else, the extraordinary individual who stands out from the rest by vir
tue not only of ability-or visibility-but because of "nobility. " In
times of rapid social change, when established institutions and values
crumble-as in modern America-people still look for extraordinary
leaders whose nobility, expressed in such uncommon qualities as big
ness of spirit, courage, self-esteem, generosity, openness, honesty,
humility, and sensitivity toward others, authenticates their authority. 7 6
Like "heroes" in general, heroic leaders of religion do from time to
time actually emerge; but they are rare, very rare. From their teaching,
and from the truth of that teaching borne out in the example of their
lives, flow the qualities of goodness that give even modern men and
women the motivation, if not the power, to transcend themselves and
their own self-interest for the sake of the collective good. In modern
Christianity, heroic leaders are most often the "saints" who embody
the one quality so rare in our culture that it can rightly be called
super natu ral . That quality is agape, the New Testament Greek word
meaning self-giving, unconditional love-the love of God .
The Authority of the Bible

In modern American religion, the authority-the influence-of

celebrity leaders rests on their visibility, especially in the mass media;
pragmatic leaders on their ability, verified by achievement and mea
sured in terms of empirical results; heroic leaders on their nobility,
their "natural" (nontechnological) power-given by God, and beyond
mere common sense. The degree of authority recognized in religious
leaders, then, is normally a function of the degree of their visibility,

Religious Authority and How It Works

1 19

ability, or nobility; but, in American mass culture, visibility also en

hances the authority already recognized in the pragmatic leader or the
heroic leader, in a Robert H. Schuller or a Martin Luther King, Jr.
In American Protestantism, this functional understanding of reli
gious authority is set in the context of the authority of the Bible, which
-theoretically at least-is the absolute and final authority for religion
and life, God's own "revelation" of himself to humanity. In Catho
licism, the Bible is also authoritative, but only in the context of an
authoritative church Tradition and an "infallible" papacy, through
which the Bible is interpreted. Moreover, Protestantism in America
has not only emphasized the Reformation doctrine of sola Scriptura
(the absolute authority of "Scripture alone"), it has also most often
insisted on the right of individual believers to interpret the Bible for
themselves, guided by the Holy Spirit. This highly individualistic prin
ciple of biblical interpretation has been taught most emphatically
among the Baptists, the most important force in modern revivalism .
The majority of the leaders of popular religion in the electronic
church, and the bestselling evangelical authors they feature as guests
Jerry Falwell , Pat Robertson, and Hal Lindsey among them-make the
claim that their teaching is based on the absolute and final authority of
Scripture. This assertion is put forward verbally by the leaders them
selves on their TV and radio shows and in their books; but it is also
dramatized by their holding a Bible while preaching or by being photo
graphed with a Bible on their laps . Furthermore, and this is very im
portant, the Bible is not j ust "authoritative" in the claims of these
leaders, it is inerrant (infallible), "verbally inspired" in all matters it
discusses, not only those pertaining to faith and conduct, but those
regarding history and the cosmos as well . (Here we have to remind
ourselves of the Gallup survey reporting that a full 38 percent of
American adults-46 percent of the Protestants and 3 1 percent of the
Catholics-affirm the Bible to be the very word of God, to be taken
literally. 77 )
The doctrine of biblical inerrancy, based on the "propositional"
character of revelation, was formulated and systematized by fundamen
talist theologians (mainly Presbyterians and Baptists) and popularized
by the revivalists during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Authority in Modern American Religion

120

This was in opposition to the "modernist" accommodation of Scripture

to the results of critical scientific inquiry, which challenged the tradi
tional Christian understanding of biblical authority. And while the
doctrine was developed as a "supernaturally" grounded-and literalis
tic-alternative to the "naturalistic" and figurative principles of biblical
interpretation utilized by the modernists, inerrancy itself was the prod
uct of the scientific method . In its systematic form, the doctrine of
inerrancy is a highly rational apologetic device, reminiscent, in its
application, of the "inductive method" of philosophical and scientific
inquiry invented by Francis Bacon ( 1 5 6 1 - 1 626), the father of the no
tion of science as a systematic study.
The following "parallel" arguments present an excellent illustration
of how the apologetics employed by theologians of biblical inerrancy
follow the same kind of rational argumentation employed by their own
chosen enemy, the "scientific naturalist":
EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT (Parallel Version)

Supernaturalist Theologian

Na turalist Philosopher

We, as fundamentalists, cannot be

We, as naturalists, cannot be too

too careful in defend ing our faith in

careful in upholding our belief in a

an inerrant Bible.

closed system of natural causation .

We know that some unbelieving

We

modernists allege errors to exist in

supernaturalists claim that miracles

the Bible, such as the order of Pe

have occurred, such as the resurrec

ter's denials and the number of

tion of Jesus.

cock-crows.

know

that

some

irrational

If we were to admit the reality of

If we were to adm it the presence of

events

contradictions or errors in Scrip

would have no defense against all

ture, we would have no assurance

kinds of superstition.

of any sure word from God.

l ike the resurrection,

we

What shall we say to the apologists

How do we meet these allegations?

for Christianity? By all means let us

By all means, let us propose solu

take refuge in alternative explana

tions

and

harmonizations-e. g. ,

tions for the "resu rrection , " its cen

that Peter denied Jesus 6, 8, or 9

tral doctrine, such as the Swoon

times, indeed , as many as neces

Theory, the Wrong Tomb Theor.

sary.

or the Hallucination Theory.

Religious Authority and How It Works

121

But above all, let us not lose our

But if all else fails, let us never

confidence in the truthful character

abandon our rational comm itment

of our God . Surely th is faith should

to a closed system of cause-and-ef

make us stop short of admitting er

fect. Science m ust rule out the pos

ror in His Word . God cannot err.

sibility of a "resurrection . " Miracles

Even if we cannot fi nd any satisfac

just don't happen.

tory way to solve an apparent dis

Even though we must admit that no

crepancy in the Bible, let us assure

alternative explanation accounts for

ourselves that one day, even if in

the evidence of Easter morning as

heaven, we will be given that solu

well as the so-called resurrection

tion .

does, let us rationally assure our

selves that one day we will find the
answer. 78

On the basis of the "evidence" offered by the supernaturalist theolo

gian, the masses of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians in Amer
ica hand in their "verdict" by declaring, in no uncertain terms, "The
Bible says it. I believe it. And that settles it!" Or does it, really? While
the everyday born-again believers and their favorite TV evangelists and
bestselling authors all continue to affirm biblical inerrancy in their
attempts to preserve the absolute authority of Scripture, that doctri.ne
has waned considerably within the evangelical colleges and theological
seminaries in the United States, none of which remain "untainted" by
the questioning of inerrancy among their professorial faculty, espe
cially among the younger ones with the "better" doctorates. Even a few
of the leading fundamentalist institutions of higher education, includ
ing Moody Bible Institute of Chicago and Dallas Theological Semi
nary, have begun to feel the blow.
It may seem strange that faculty members who question inerrancy
are still able to sign their college or seminary's required statement of
faith each year-with its inerrancy clause. But such action can be
explained by noting that even submission to the absolute authority of
an inerrant Bible-by the formality of a signature-has itself become a
pragmatic, instrumental gesture of "compliance. " It secures their jobs
and allows them to continue influencing the students they would oth
cmise lose.
Bel ief in the inerrancy of the Bible constituted the last chasm of real

122

Authority i n Modern American Religion

separateness between evangelical Christians and modernity. Once the

historical critical method of biblical interpretation, formerly the prove
nance only of "liberal" seminaries and colleges, had become more or
less the normative approach in the leading evangelical institutions of
higher learning-by the mid-seventies-an enduring bridge over the
chasm had been built, and the evangelical accommodation to moder
nity went into high gear. 79 Well aware of this "compromising" trend in
the attitude of new evangelical intellectuals toward inerrancy, Jerry
Falwell identifies himself as an "old-time fundamentalist" and separates
himself from the increasingly "modernistic" views of both mainline
liberals and evangelicals. In a recent Penthouse interview, the popular
TV evangelist makes his point extremely well:
The reason I use the word fundamentalist in preference to the word evan

gelical is th is: 20 years ago I did not obj ect to the word evangelical, because
it meant the same thing that fundamen talist means today. But today there
are many who have come in . . . u nder the shelter of evangel icalism who in
fact are not evangelicals. The basic tenet of former evangelical Christianity,
now what I call fundamen talist Christianity, is that we have one basic
document on which we predicate everything we believe , our faith , our prac
tice, our life-style, our homes, et cetera, government-the inerrancy of
scripture, not only in matters of theology, but science, geography, history et
cetera-total and entirely, the very word of God . 80

Falwell and many other leaders of popular religion in America (but

not Robert H. Schuller and Oral Roberts) insist that an uncompromis
ing commitment to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy is the mark of the
true Christian . Goodness, or morality, then, is equated with right be
lief (i . e. , "orthodoxy") in God's propositional revelation contained in
the words of Scripture. Here the Moral Majority evangelist and like
minded born-again colleagues are right in line with the mainstream of
classical (Aristotelian) Western philosophy and theology. From the
Eastern standpoint-Indian and Chinese-and in the trad i ti o n of
Western mysticism , the religious task is not merely to th i n k right. but
to act right, and to become one with the One in the a c t of concentrat
ed meditation . But the opposite is true for the m a i n stream of Western
thought. Since one is expected to find the ulti mate truth in right
thought, major emphasis has been on thought itself-more than on
action . In religious development, this led to the formulation of d og-

Religious Authority and How It Works

123

mas, endless arguments about differing doctrinal systems, and intoler

ance of the "nonbeliever" or heretic. It furthermore led to the stress on
"believing in God" as the chief aim of a religious attitude. And while
the notion that one ought to live right did remain on the books, people
who believed in God-even if they did not live God-felt themselves
to be morally superior to those who lived God but did not "believe" in
him. In the dominant vVestern religious systems, even the very love of
God has been essentially a thought experience of belief in God's exis
tence, God's j ustice, God's love. (This emphasis on thought has also
had another consequence of great historical importance. The idea that
one could find the truth in thought led not only to dogma, but to
science as well . In scientific thought-including the distinctively reli
gious New Thought-correct thinking, both from the aspect of intel
lectual honesty, as well as from the aspect of the application of
scientific thought to practice-that is, to technique-is really all the
truth there is. )
For popular religionists i n America, truth is something one believes
much more than something one does. Thus popular religious leaders,
armed for battle with an inerrant Bible, demand only that their follow
ers and fans believe the word of salvation they declare. Here even the
born-again experience of conversion is effectively rationalized as a spe
cific "plan" of salvation, requiring only mental assent to Bill Bright's
"Four Spiritual Laws, "* recitation of "the sinner's prayer" at a rescue
mission, or utilization of some other similar technique of right
thinking.
In assessing the nature and significance of religious authority in
modern America, we shall have to consider the fact that the present
"crisis" in that authority is closely related to the continued insistence
by the leaders of Western religion as a whole that right belief and the
correct mental attitude are all that count. Such a position, promulgat
ed and strengthened both by overt authority and by the anonymous
authority of the market and public opinion, was challenged boldly by
Karl Marx when he said, "The philosophers have interpreted the world
in different ways-the task, however, is to change it. " And it is chalFor the Four Spiritual Laws in their entirety, see Quebedeaux, I Found It! , pp.
94-96.

Authority in Modern American Religion

lenged today by those contemporary Christian theologians who, taking

their cue from Marx, argue that the central issue in modern Christian
ity is not orthodoxy-right doctrine-but orthop rax is -right conduct.
For these critics, the authority of religious leaders rests much more on
the truth of their actions-their deeds-than on the truth of what they
believe, what they think. S I
The Rise of Thought and the Decline of Knowledge

It is often charged by their critics that fundamentalist and evangeli

cal Christians and their leaders in the ministry-along with all other
religious "sectarians"-scorn the pursuit of theological knowledge, that
they are "anti-intellectual" to the core, and that theirs is a professional
ministry whose authority rests not at all on the attainment of a graduate
or even baccalaureate degree in theology. This accusation is less true
in the 1 98os than it was in previous decades-especially with respect to
the younger evangelicals-but the recent Gallup survey for Christian
ity Today does present hard evidence that contemporary evangelicals
and fundamentalists as a whole are still among the poorest educated
religious groups in modern America, Christian or otherwise. These
theologically conservative believers are, at the same time, often pitted
against their Protestant liberal counterparts who, it is said, value the
pursuit of advanced theological knowledge for its own sake, and make
it obligatory for their professional ministers . Again, the Gallup survey
su i4; tantiates the general validity of this assertion as well .
According t o Gallup, the population o f fundamentalists and evan
gelicals in the United States is the only religious group that exceeds the
average of the national sample not completing the eighth grade (8. 6
percent versus 5 3 percent) or high school (28. 8 percent versus 2 2
percent). A t the same time it falls under the average o f the national
sample of those with high school or trade school educations ( 3 8 . 3
percent versus 39 8 percent), incompleted college or university training
( 1 5 . 3 percent versus 1 7. 5 percent), and completed university or college
educations (8. 9 percent versus 1 5 . 5 percent). Protestant liberals and
Roman Catholics closely parallel each other, while mirroring the na
tional breakdown as a whole ( 1 4. 4 percent of the Protestant l iberals and
Catholics hold at least a baccalaureate degree). But non-Christians

Religious Authority and How It Works

(including Jews) far exceed all other religious groupings in educational

achievement, with 68 percent of them having received some college or
university training, compared to 3 1 . 8 percent of the Protestant liberals
and 24. 4 percent of evangelicals and fundamentalists. The outright
"secularists" are the only others coming even close to this statistic, with
approximately 46 percent.
While the general pattern of low educational achievement relative to
other religious groups remains constant when controlling for age, edu
cational achievement increases significantly among the younger evan
gelicals. Whereas only 42 percent of all fundamentalist and evangelical
Christians between the ages of 5 1 and 65 completed at least a high
school education, in the eighteen to thirty-five year age bracket the
percentage of evangelicals achieving this level jumps to 82 . 8 percent. 8 2
It has been pointed out that the prominence of "lay control" of the
church and of "lay ministries"-the priesthood of all believers-in
American Protestantism as a whole resulted in a natural tendency
therein to deemphasize the need for a "learned" professional ministry.
And while the emergence of fundamentalism in the late nineteenth
century strengthened the distrust of "modern" higher education in gen
eral and theological education in particular among the lower strata of
Protestants, mainline Protestantism--despite the generally higher level
of educational achievement of its adherents-struggled well into the
twentieth century to make a graduate seminary education mandatory
for its own leaders in ministry. This it did not so much because of any
inherently antiintellectual feelings on the part of church authorities,
who would have preferred imposing the requirement on candidates
earlier; rather, it was because there simply were not enough ministerial
hopefuls available who had earned such a credential already or were
willing to spend seven years in college and seminary before they could
be ordained.
An analysis of the 1 926 Religious Census figures for seventeen of the
largest white Protestant denominations in the United States shows that
over 40 percent of all ordained ministers of these denominations were
graduates neither of college nor of theological seminary, while only 3 3
percent were graduates of both. (Fundamentalism, of course, estab
lished scores of its own "Bible institutes" and ministerial training col-

1 26

Authority in Modern American Religion

leges, but these were hardly equivalent in quality to the mainline

denominational schools. Nor did most fundamentalists require their
ministers to attend even their own institutions for ordination and em
ployment. ) Today, however, the standard-and almost always en
forced-regulation for ordination in mainline Protestant denomina
tions (including the American Baptist Churches and the United Meth
odist Church, among the last to accommodate at this point) is a four
year baccalaureate and a three-year Master of Divinity degree from an
accredited theological seminary or divinity school. And while the self
conscious evangelical denominations are rapidly catching up to that
educational standard, most of the avowed fundamentalist groups con
tinue to deny the absolute need for formal higher education on the part
of their ministerial leadership.
So those who view the mainline Protestant ministry as more learned
and "sophisticated" in their attainment of knowledge than their evan
gelical and fundamentalist counterparts have a legitimate point. But
with the rise of science and its impact on theology, the actual content
of theological education as "truth" became less important than the
"correctness" of method, the method of scholarly investigation per se
and the method of its practical "application"-both among liberals
and among conservatives. The need for theological knowledge was
transformed into a need for ministerial expertise. Thus ministerial edu
cation, no less than education in general, has moved away from the
classical pattern toward a greater emphasis on "practical arts" and voca
tional training (always the stress in the fundamentalist Bible schools).
An obvious evidence of this shift was seen decades ago in the gradual
deemphasis of classical language study, most mainline seminaries hav
ing dropped requirements in Hebrew and Greek, once a preeminent
feature of their curricula.
In the usual seminary curricula of the early 1 87os, as a case in
point, there was stress on exegetical theology (i . e. , explanation or criti
cal interpretation) and the study of the original biblical languages. By
1 89 5 , however, there was less emphasis on these disciplines and more
on historical theology and practical theology. New kinds of courses
were being introduced, such as sociology and ethics, which were often
informed more by political and economic "realities" than by tradition-

Religious Authority and How It Works

1 27

al biblical injunctions; and more time was allotted to the technique of

preaching. By the early 1 920s, the average seminary curriculum
became even more specialized and practical . Stress on requirements in
the original biblical languages declined further, and there was a
marked increase in offerings of courses in religious education-as a
pedagogical method-in psychology of religion, and in "applied theol
ogy" more generally. The program of study in the mainline Protestant
seminary would soon be characterized as practical rather than dogmat
ic, as sociocentric rather than purely ecclesiastical . And so it would
continue. 8 3
The ministry is generally considered the predecessor of other estab
lished professions. In the distant past, medicine, law, and teaching
were included within it. The first really esoteric knowledge was devel
oped in religion; and very early in human history, religious practi
tioners were required to have special-and long-training, were given
monopolies in the performance of many religious practices, and fre
quently formed themselves into secret societies for self-government
(somewhat analogous to today's "professional associations"). They were
the guardians of the most important values, and their performances
were vital to the health , wealth, and fortune of the community and its
members-until the rise of science and technology, which undid all
this, and significantly undercut the role of priests and ministers and the
scope of their authority in society. Today, the ordained clergy tend to
be less gifted than their counterparts in law, medicine, and the secular
academy, because the "tangible" rewards of the ministry (i. e. , status
and salary) are minimal by comparison . The clergy and other religious
leaders no longer perform what are held to be vital functions by the
wider society. They do not possess knowledge to which others don't
have access. They have no monopoly over the performance of certain
crucial social functions, and they don't even have professional associa
tions of note.
But there has been a longstanding desire among those in the minis
try to regain their deflated status by becoming as much like their secu
lar professional counterparts as possible, a desire once discerned only
among mainline "liberal" religious leaders, but now seen among those
formerly termed sectarian -evangelicals and fundamentalists. Sectari-

1 28

Authority in lv1odern American Religion

an religion in America has been characterized by religious exclusive

ness, rejection of secular values, and no attempt at developing an ex
tensive rationalistic religious system of its own . Sects have mostly been
movements of social protest in religious form, found chiefly among the
isolated and politically weak peoples of the frontier, among the lower
social strata in industrial areas, and among oppressed racial and ethnic
groups. Thus the opposition by sect members to a highly educated and
"professionally" trained clergy was and is, in part, at least, a manifesta
tion of "class" hostility. But sects that arose and took root in American
soil are continuing to accommodate to the wider society at an ever
widening pace (as we have already seen in the case of revivalistic Chris
tianity, especially in its evangelical and charismatic adherents). Fron
tier America has disappeared, the waves of immigration have ceased,
and there are fewer unorganized persons in suppressed social strata .
And with this accommodation of sectarian religion to the American
mainstream and its advanced technology and bureaucratic organiza
tion, it too developed the need for a duly trained and "certified" profes
sional leadership. 84
In prescientific times, authority-in "traditional" religion-was ac
corded priests or ministers on the basis on long and special training in
theology. Their knowledge was gained over the course of years, and it
was universally regarded as crucially important for salvation itself-and
by no means the provenance of the "average" man or woman. Recog
nition of that authority was gained for a religious leader by being ap
pointed-"called"-to an established position of leadership in a given
community after having attained the required theological education
and ecclesiastical experience, after having "paid one's dues . " In main
line Protestantism today, and increasingly in Catholicism, the "offi
cial" road to ("pragmatic") religious leadership still follows the same
ideal. To be a recognized professional minister, one must be a college
or university graduate and a graduate of an accredited theological
seminary, where one has studied for the same length of time as that
required for lawyers and a year less than that required for medical
doctors. Work experience, as a student assistant in a parish or congre
gation or other kind of ministry, is also expected before a ministerial
candidate can be certified as a professional by ordination and called to

Religious Authority and How It Works

1 29

a church position . As traditionally sectarian religion continues on the

course of upward mobility, it too is beginning to impose the same
expectations on its own candidates for the ministry.
The celebrity leaders of popular religion in America, in contrast to
the pragmatic leaders, follow a different scenario. Their authority and
influence lies in their visibility, not their ability per se-in their media
fame, mass appeal, and enthusiasm for what they do. The ecclesiasti
cal standing and experience of celebrity leaders are not important to
their fans, nor is their probable lack of a formal theological education .
Who cares, really, if they didn't graduate from seminary, or even from
college? Cheryl Prewitt, Charles Colson, and Pat Boone-to name just
a few contemporary celebrity leaders-all lack seminary education, or
dained status, and ministerial standing in a recognized denomination .
Of course, given the increasing upward mobility of popular religion
ists as a whole, there is less hostility among them toward traditional
ecclesiastical credentials than there was in prior decades. For instance,
a charismatic Episcopal priest who graduated from Harvard College
and Yale Divinity School and is the rector of a prestigious urban parish
would be welcomed as a guest on the "7oo Club"-provided his stated
opinions reinforced, or at least did not contradict, those of the viewers.
Moreover, the show's host would build up those ecclesiastical and aca
demic credentials to strengthen his own "authority. " So far, so good.
Nevertheless, on the same program there might also appear a newly
converted race car driver, the author (with the aid of a ghost writer) of
a bestselling account of that conversion, who didn't even graduate
from high school and may not even be an active church member.
Furthermore, if he is better looking, better-known, and more en
thusiastic about his faith than the Episcopal priest before him, the
viewers will probably take his spiritual authority more seriously than
that of the priest.
The general rise in educational standards required for professional
ministers in American denominations has not signaled a concurrent
resurgence of the old quest for truth in biblical exegesis and doctrine
per se. Rather, since truth-in the modern sense-has already been
"found" in the scientific method as applied to the study of theology,
seminary education in the 1 98os is geared pragmatically to the acquisi-

Authority in Modern American Religion

tion of expertise and technique, both in intellectual life (through right

thinking) and in the practice of ministry (through the right method),
much more than to the traditional search for truth by gaining "knowl
edge" alone. Today the typical American theological seminary or
divinity school has increasingly become an "objective scholars' club"
(to use a somewhat pejorative but popular label), patterned after the
scientific approach taken to scholarship in "religious studies" by secu
lar university faculties. Here, ideally, religion is studied objectively in
a "value-free" environment, with all the tools of literary and historical
criticism and of the social and behavioral sciences. In seminary, future
pragmatic church leaders learn how to make it in the parish, and they
are taught that the social impact of doctrine and belief-how they
function in society-is more important than the metaphysical quality
of any given dogma. The question for the seminary professors and their
students, then, isn't so much whether a belief is "true" in the tradition
al sense, but whether it works; and if it does, how it works.
That a pragmatic theological education is what mainline Christians
and Jews in modern America really want for their ordained clergy
leaders is borne out by the exhaustive study Ministry in America , pub
lished in 1 980. There was a time when Protestants-libera} or conser
vative in theology-sought strong spiritual leadership, personal counsel
based on the Bible, even evangelistic flair in their ministers. Now,
however, most liberal churches and synagogues want mostly "pop psy
chology, " according to the report on the professional ministry in the
United States and Canada. The survey sample covered forty-three
Protestant denominations with fifty-five million members (plus Roman
Catholics, Orthodox, Unitarian-Universalists, and Reform Jews) who
listed what they consider to be the most desirable traits for their clergy
as follows: ( 1 ) an open and affirming style; ( 2 ) caring for people under
stress (with no mention of any religious content); and ( 3) congregation
al leadership ability. To a striking degree, many church people put
appealing personal qualities well above the traditional pastoral concern
for doctrine and spiritual life, or other-worldly values based on the
teachings of the Bible.
In this regard, United Methodists, for example, want clergy who are

Religious Authority and How It Works

"open, accepting, self-critical, patient, participatory, and exemplary. "

All of these are qualities involved with psychological jargon, interper
sonal relations, and group dynamics-more reminiscent of Dale
Carnegie and Michael Murphy of Esalen than John Wesley. The
Episcopalians' desires for their priests are similar, reflecting little inter
est in the Bible as a source of doctrine and specific moral guidance.
Here the parishioners' approval of a priest depends not so much on his
faith as on how he gets along with people, with heavy emphasis on
humility and lack of ego-strength. The United Church of Christ,
America's most liberal Christian denomination, is especially note
worthy in regard to how little interest its members display concerning
a pastor's personal religiosity, biblical faith, piety, evangelistic zeal, or
explicit emphasis on liturgy and spiritual renewal. Lutherans and
Southern Baptists, on the other hand, still place a great deal of impor
tance on theological knowledge and the affirmation of certain doc
trines, and on biblical preaching, as do other self-professed
evangelicals. Nevertheless, even these theological conservatives are
gradually seeing the rise of the objective scholars' club in their own
seminaries, infused with "relational theology" (an evangelical expres
sion of the Human Potential movement) and the science of church
growth. When it comes to the study of theology, the new "universities"
established by the leaders of the electronic church (other than Oral
Roberts University) are focused more on the training of media techni
cians than academic theologians. Thus we can see that with the rise of
rational scientific thought in modern theological education in America
there has been a parallel decline in learning to acquire biblical and
theological knowledge as an end in itself. Faith has been instrumental
ized, and the method has become the message. 8 5
Authority and Class: The Economic Components of
Religion in America

At this point, it is appropriate to consider the actual scope of author

ity wielded by religious leaders in modern America. Over whom do
they have authority? And what is the nature of that authority? How

Authority in Modern American Religion

significant is it in the lives of their followers and fans? Does it have an

impact on the wider society outside their own following? If so, how
much?
Democracy in America, individualism and pluralism, together with
the Constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and freedom of
association, rooted in the enlightenment, have resulted in the fact that
submission or nonsubmission to any religious authority is-by law-a
voluntary act. Within this context, at one extreme of the spectrum,
some Americans submit completely to the authority claimed by reli
gious leaders or their closest followers almost without question . At the
opposite extreme those who question all authority (in principle, at
least) submit only to that imposed upon them by law, and reject every
other kind of authority that seeks their submission, including that of
religion . One way to understand this spectrum is to see the scope of
authority in America as a function of class and of age.
Peter Berger, the eminent sociologist of religion, describes what he
terms "the class struggle in American religion"-a struggle reminiscent
of (and perhaps derivative of) the old modernist-fundamentalist contro
versy that began after the Civil War-a class warfare between the
"established" urban elites and the masses of rural-born, but upwardly
mobile, city dwellers. Today's class struggle, according to Berger, is
not one of proletariat pitted against bourgeoisie, in the stereotyped
Marxist sense. Rather, it is a struggle between two elites, two groups of
leaders. On the one side is the old elite of business enterprise, on the
other side a new elite composed of those whose livelihood derives from
the "manipulation of symbols"-intellectuals and educators and others
influenced directly by them, such as secular media people, members
of the "helping professions , " and a potpourri of planners and bureau
crats. This latter grouping is now generally referred to as the "new
class" in America .
In Berger's opinion, the rise of the new class is due to the fact that
in modern technological societies a diminishing proportion of the la
bor force is occupied in the production and distribution of material
goods-the activity that was the economic base of the old capitalist
class or bourgeoisie . Instead , an increasing number of people are oc
cupied in the production and distribution of "symbolic knowledge. "

Religious Authority and How It Works

1 33

And if a class is defined by a particular relation to the means of produc

tion (as Marx, for one, proposed), then indeed there is a new class.
Like other classes, it is stratified within itself; and, like other classes, it
develops its own subcultures.
Berger goes on to say that the current class struggle is between the
new "knowledge class" and the old business class. As in all class strug
gles, this one is over power and privilege. The new class is a rising class
with its own specific and identifiable vested interests. But in the public
rhetoric of democracy, vested interests are typically couched in terms
of the "general welfare. " In this the new class is no different from its
current adversary. Just as the business class sincerely believes that what
is good for business is good for America, the new class feels that its own
interests are identical with the wider "public interest. " It so happens
that many of the vested interests of the new class depend on miscella
neous state interventions; indeed, a large portion of the new class is
economically dependent on the public sector for employment or sub
sidization. Thus it should come as no surprise that this new class,
when compared to the business class-with its primary ties to the pri
vate sector-is more "statist" in its political and social orientation; or,
in other words, more on the "left. "
The stated goals of the business class are, of course, conservative and
on the "right. " The leaders of the business class seek to conserve the
old values that made America "great, " such as free enterprise without
government interference or "regulation , " success through individual
initiative and the principle of free exchange, might makes right, law
and order, and the sanctity of the family-together with a high regard
for traditional, male-dominated patterns of authority, both in the
home and in the church. The expressed goals of the new class are also
individualistic, but they are much more explicitly related to the values
of "secular humanism" inherent in modernity than are those of the
business class. Included here are freedom of choice (as in the "right" to
abortion), open options in lifestyle (such as gay or "straight" cohabita
tion outside of marriage), personal authenticity (through self-aware
ness), equal rights for all people (with a bent for "egalitarian marriage"
and "affirmative action" in hiring), and achieved roles based on per
sonal preference. Although the new class puts a high premium on

1 34

Authority in tv!odern American Religion

"freedom of choice" and on egalitarian patterns of authority, it fully

supports the "right"-nay, obligation-of the state to regulate personal
freedom, in the wider public interest, but only when such intervention
does not impinge on its own class interests. An excellent recent exam
ple of the difference between business class and new class goals and
values expressed by their leaders was the 1 980 presidential debate be
tween Ronald Reagan and John Anderson , in which Anderson aligned
himself with the new class and Reagan with the business class.
But what, exactly, does this "class analysis" have to do with the state
of the church and of modern religion in America? A lot. Precisely the
issues on which Christians divide today-including that of authority
are those that are part of the present class struggle in the wider society.
One of the easiest empirical procedures to determine very quickly the
agenda of the new class at any given moment, Berger points out, is to
look up the latest pronouncements on social issues of the National
Council of Churches and, to a somewhat lesser extent, of the denomi
national organizations of mainline Protestantism, which are run by
liberal bureaucrats who are both informed and formed by new class
theoreticians in the theological and secular academy. Conversely, vir
tually point by point, the leaders of the "New Christian Right"-in
cluding Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson-represent the agenda of the
business class (and other social strata interested in material production)
with which the new class is locked in battle. What is more, much of
the current upsurge of right-leaning fundamentalist and evangelical
Christianity can be explained as a popular reaction within mass culture
against the power grab of the burgeoning new class and its high culture
leadership. 86
How much authority, then, do new class and business class religious
leaders exert over their followings? What is its scope? The bumper
sticker that reads "Question authority" is mainly popular in university
communities, at the very center of the forces of modernity and its new
class theoreticians . As religious Americans move up the ladder of so
cial mobility, they tend to become increasingly less willing to accept
their local pastors (who are sometimes less educated than themselves)
as spiritual authorities in any absolute sense, and surely not as holders
of authority merely by virtue of a claim to be called "directly by God"
(as in fundamentalism). While liberal clergy have become more

Religious Authority and How It Works

1 35

"professionalized" to suit their upwardly mobile congregations, their

status-and whatever inherent authority it still has-has come to be
largely unheeded. Since religion itself is restricted in influence to a
very small part of the day-to-day lives of mainline Protestants (the pri
mary associations of whom are largely outside the church), all of their
religious leaders (including the local pastor) have only the smallest
influence among them. The liberal minister's authority as a bearer of
religious knowledge or as a representative of a sacred organization is
minimal . Mainline religious groups have taken on many new nonreli
gious functions. Churches have become recreational and social centers
(if not "Christian country clubs"), and in this process ministers have
lost many of their strictly "religious" functions and their religious pres
tige. They have become administrators, recreation leaders, and social
workers. Liberal Protestant ministers in the 1 98os-representing the
new class-have no more authority than that which can be com
manded through their people's belief in the minister's sincerity and
good sense. 87
The situation is quite different for the ministerial leaders of conser
vative Protestantism who represent business class interests . As Gallup
has shown us, most modern American fundamentalists and evangeli
cals still come from the lower strata of society located at some distance
from the urban- and university-centered forces of modernity. Here,
ministers most often define their authority as more or less given
directly by God, 88 and this definition is accepted, again, more or less,
by their members and followers and fans. But it is accepted to a propor
tionately lesser degree the higher the educational and income level of
the congregation or audience over which a minister presides. In conser
vative Protestantism , most of the primary associations of believers are
with fellow believers, and their day-to-day lives are more integrally
related to religious activities in general and the work of the local church
in particular than those of mainline liberal Protestants. Thus the author
ity and influence of local pastors in this context-in a church or other
group that can and would exclude them for noncompliance-have a
much wider scope than in mainline Protestantism. The influence and
authority of leaders here are both more important and questioned less.
If authority in the leadership of Protestant liberalism today is
grounded in common sense and "self-awareness, " such is not the case

1 36

Authority in Modern American Religion

in most of fundamentalist and evangelical Protestantism. Here reli

gious leaders usually base their authority on the absolute authority of
Scripture-biblical inerrancy-on the surface, at least. Yet in reality,
that authority is centered not on the Bible per se, but on the particular
interpretation of an inerrant Bible, and even of the doctrine of iner
rancy itself, taught by a given ministerial leader-in the local church,
in a bestselling book, on radio or TV. And when it comes to broader
class interests, the vast majority of theologically conservative celebrity
leaders and pragmatic church leaders function as representatives of the
business class and its values, including its insistence on a return to
traditional patterns of authority in the church and in society as a
whole.
In modern American society, authority and its social recognition are
mainly a function of class, but they are also a function of age . In this
regard, the Jesus People movement was one excellent example of
young people, including the highly educated from upwardly mobile
backgrounds, who were willing to question, challenge, and finally re
ject the "traditional" patterns of authority imposed upon them by the
elders of their churches in favor of developing their own new patterns
in their own institutions. The rise of Eastern and Western new reli
gious movements-"cults"-which became popular about the same
time as the Jesus People movement, provides another excellent exam
ple of authority in religion being a function of age. Even highly edu
cated young people from affluent backgrounds were willing to submit
to the very strict, if not "totalistic," authority imposed by the leaders of
these movements-almost without question-something their more
"established" but not more sophisticated elders would never have
done.
Young people have always played an important role in American
religion. The conversion of youth-especially teenagers-had been
one of the prime claims to success of revivalists in previous generations;
and the converted young were often the chief motivating force in the
various "awakenings" of religious zeal in American history. Today, in
modern technological society, affluence has resulted in a widespread
search for meaning, while permissiveness has resulted in a renewed
hunger for strictness, for discipline-especially among the young. Be-

Religious Authority a nd How It Works

1 37

ing relatively free from material possessions and family obligations,

young people in general are much more willing to adopt "radical"
countercultural values and lifestyles. And students, by virtue of their
close proximity to the forces of modernity in the academy, and also by
virtue of their relative freedom from binding social attachments, are
often more ready to actually implement the idealism-secular or reli
gious-taught by their professors than are their professors themselves.
Here it must be remembered that the radicalism of tenured faculty, at
least-because of their secure and established status, and the needs of
their families-is often only of the "armchair" variety, restricted to the
rhetoric of formal lectures and writing.

C H A PT E R 6

The Decline of Authority

in the West

The belief that America and the West as a whole have been overtaken
by a crisis of authority is expressed largely by the new generation of
academically respectable "neoconservative" scholars (most of whom
are social scientists). Among these are Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer,
James Q. Wilson, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, all present or former
professors at Harvard; Robert Nisbet of Columbia; Seymour Martin
Lipset of Stanford; and, in the area of religion in particular, Peter
Berger and Michael Novak, who have been associated with a number
of educational institutions. They are joined, however, by a number of
scholars on the left who are also concerned about the breakdown of
authority in modern Western society. Among these scholars are Chris
topher Lasch of the University of Rochester, who particularly laments
the demise of traditional parental authority; and even Michael Walzer
of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies, an "unreconstructed
democrat" by his own designation . Walzer denies that the left would
like to do away with authority. Rather, he insists, 'the goal of demo
crats and socialists is to share and legitimize, but not to abolish author
ity. " He goes on to say that "in the future society too, it is crucial that
some men and women be able to exercise authority and that others,
despite their new and often touchy dignity, be willing to accept it. " 89
For Walzer and his like-minded colleagues, egalitarianism is good; but
it should not be interpreted to mean the abolition of certain individuals
"set apart" from the masses as leaders.
Simply stated, the crisis of authority today is a collapse of authority
in government, the military, the university, the corporate world, in the

The Decline of Authority in the West

1 39

church and synagogue, and in the family. Old patterns of trust and
deference have broken down. Political and religious leaders, military
officers, and factory foremen alike cannot command obedience; profes
sors and schoolteachers cannot command respect. All governing insti
tutions have lost their legitimacy and clout, and the confidence of
leading elites has been sapped, bringing with it a state of general social
instability. Since the Vietnam War and Watergate, Americans tend
not to believe in or trust their leaders. The agreement of neoconserva
tives and liberals that authority is in a state of disrepair is significant;
however, the former part company from the latter by refusing to em
phasize the role of capitalist institutions in producing the crisis (a role
described masterfully by Christopher Lasch in his recent bestseller, The
Culture of Narcissism ).
A number of these scholars link the present crisis of authority with
the decline of the infl uence of religion (as anything more than a mere
"restraining force" in society), the lure of hedonism (in the culture of
narcissism), and the march of equality (with its egalitarianism and af
firmative action). But there is almost unanimity among the neoconser
vatives, at least, on one primary explanation. They believe that behind
the crisis of authority looms the rising influence of the new class itself.
Michael Novak describes the leaders of the new class as "know-every
things , " many of whom are "affl uent professionals, secular in their
values and tastes and initiatives, indifferent to or hostile to the family,
equipped with postgraduate degrees and economic security and cul
tural power" (as manipulators of symbols). Their interests, Novak goes
on to say, stand in sharp contrast to the values of "most Americans"
who still believe in "the traditional values of honesty, decency, hard
work, competitive advancement, and religious faith. " He also points
out that the new class, supported by the knowledge industry, supplies
over 3 5 percent of America's Gross National Product; thus it wields
real "established power, " and is the chief motivating force behind gov
ernment expansion. For the neoconservatives, the new class represents
an "adversary culture" whose leaders engage in what Novak calls "cul
tural nihilism. "90
Daniel Bell has suggested that another good reason for the contem
porary demise of authority has to do with the increasing pluralism of

Authority in Modern American Religion

modern life and the ambiguity inherent in it (here he joins Peter Berg
er). When there are many different groups contending with one an
other, demanding their "rights, " leaders have to make clear to
individuals the necessity of some degree of compromise in their desires
and goals. What makes this so difficult in modern society, however, is
that there is no one unambiguous enemy against whom to rally the
people. Some see the enemy in the new class, but they are unclear as
to exactly who is to be included in that class (and most of the new class
critics are academics themselves who work in the knowledge industry).
Others (the fundamentalists, for instance) see the enemy as "secular
humanism, " but what that means varies from critic to critic. Still
others identify the enemy as "atheistic communism, " but do not dis
tinguish between "soft" and "hard" forms of communism (Yugoslavia
versus Albania, for instance), nor do they neatly separate "atheism"
and "communism" (both, apparently, are viewed as essentially the
same). All this, of course, goes to show that there is no one common
enemy to attack. Furthermore, what qualifies as an enemy one day
may be seen as a friend the next day (as in the case of China).
One thing is certain. We no longer live in a world that is simply
bipolar in character; we have to live with diverse viewpoints of a half
dozen of our allies, some of whom have contradictory aims and ambi
tions. Mass communications, as Bell maintains, also complicates the
ability of leaders to lead. Under TV's "pitiless glare , " for example,
people find out instantly all the nasty little things about their leaders
until they get bored-or disgusted. Thus the new class, increasing plu
ralism and ambiguity about common enemies, and mass communica
tions have together affected the authority of leaders adversely-as
much in religion as in politics-to the point that the only kind of
leader the people will respond to, in Bell's words, is "someone who can
resonate-provide an eloquence and create conviction. "9 1
The Demise of Honor and Respect for Position

The general "deinstitutionalization" of modern Western society has

been a major factor in the decline of authority by virtue of position,
and it has given added rise to the emphasis on "personality" in itself as

The Decline of Authority in the West

sufficient grounds for leadership. Furthermore, the demise of "honor"

once associated with "holding an office" has also been a contributing
factor in the weakening of regard for authority. In the opinion of Peter
Berger, honor occupies about the same place in contemporary usage as
chastity. An individual asserting it and one who claims to have lost it
are more likely to be the object of amusement than of admiration or
sympathy. Both concepts-chastity and honor-have an unambigu
ously "outdated" status in the modern West. Intellectuals especially,
by definition in the vanguard of modernity, are about as likely to admit
to honor as to be found out as chaste. At best, honor and chastity are
seen as ideological leftovers in the consciousness of obsolete classes,
such as military officers and ethnic grandmothers.
According to Berger, honor is commonly understood as an aristo
cratic concept, or at least associated with a hierarchical order of soci
ety. It is certainly true that Western notions of honor have been
strongly influenced by the medieval codes of chivalry rooted in the
social structures of feudalism, long dead. It is also true that concepts of
honor have survived into the modern era best in groups retaining a
hierarchical-rather than egalitarian-view of society, such as the no
bility, the military, and traditional professions like law and medicine.
In such groups, honor is a direct expression of status, a source of
solidarity among social equals and a demarcation line against social
inferiors.
It was only with the rise of the bourgeoisie, particularly in the con
sciousness of the critical intellectuals, that not only the honor of the
ancien regime and its hierarchical prototypes was debunked, but that
an understanding of man, woman, and society emerged that would
eventually liquidate any conception of honor.
Berger goes on to say that the modern discovery of "dignity" took
place precisely amid the wreckage of debunked conceptions of honor.
Dignity, however, is rooted in the "solitary self, " because dignity, as
against honor, always relates to the intrinsic humanity divested of all
socially imposed rules or norms. It pertains to the self as such, to the
individual regardless of position in society. Where dignity is ascendant
and honor wanes, all biological and historical differentiations among
people are viewed either as downright unreal or essentially irrelevant.

Authority in Modern American Religion

The traditional concept of honor implies that one's very identity is

linked to institutional roles, to one's position. The modern concept of
dignity, by contrast, implies that identity is essentially independent of
institutional roles.
The social location of honor lies in a world of relatively intact, stable
institutions, a world in which individuals can, with subjective certain
ty, attach their identities to the institutional roles society assigns them .
The disintegration of this world as a result of the forces of modernity
has not only made honor increasingly meaningless, it has also served to
redefine identity apart from and often against the institutional roles
through which individuals express themselves in society. Institutions
including church, synagogue, and family--cease to be the "home" of
the self; instead, they become oppressive realities that distort and es
trange the self. Modern men and women, with their "identity crises, "
are ever i n search o f themselves because of this situation .
But the unrestrained enthusiasm in modernity for total liberation of
the self from the "repression" of institutions fails to take into account
certain fundamental requirements of people, notably those of order
that institutional structuring of society without which collectivities and
individuals descend into dehumanizing chaos. In other words, the de
mise of honor and respect for position in society has been a very costly
price to pay for whatever "liberations" modern men and women may
have achieved in the process, but it has made plausible the emergence
of celebrities as leaders-in religion and elsewhere-by virtue of their
visibility and appeal alone. In addition, it has contributed to the wide
spread loss of a sense of value and self-worth in individuals in an
anonymous, technologically run society. Celebrity leaders, of course,
have no real institutional home and no inherent identity but the digni
ty of their solitary selves-and that only as long as their visibility and
appeal remain intact. There are no institutional props for celebrity
leadership. 92
Celebrity Leaders Turned Pragmatic: Their Organizations
and Monuments

Entrance into celebrity-dam is a fleeting experience for the vast

majority who enter its ranks-one bestseller, one great season on the

The Decline of Authority in the West

1 43

playing field, one hit song, one year of high Nielson ratings, followed
by the almost inevitable road to diminished appeal and visibility and,
finally, relative anonymity. Even those "fortunate" celebrities who
make it over the course of many years are also quickly forgotten-as
soon as the public is no longer interested in the product they offer. For
celebrity leaders to maintain their leadership, they must usually ( 1 )
create an ongoing organization to implement their original "vision";
and/or (2) build a "monument" by which succeeding generations may
remember them, their vision and example.
In the process of organizing and building for the future, the celebrity
leader must become the pragmatic leader, the titular head of an orga
nization that can perpetuate itself successfully even if its founder loses
media popularity. Thus Oral Roberts University and the TV evange
list's City of Faith medical center will continue operation in a rela
ti\ely unabated manner even if Roberts himself is demoted in the
public eye. And when he dies, both institutions will function as a
monument to and a consequence of his original vision . Our society
may indeed be deinstitutionalized, in that new organizations are less
appealing than in the past, and there is less respect for those who run
them. Nevertheless, the overarching organization of society remains a
social necessity, and even celebrity leaders, whose authority rests on
their person as the measure of truth, must create "bureaucracies" to
carry out that influence effectively. The ideal leader of modern Ameri
can religion is both visible and pragmatic. Visibility attracts fans to
celebrities: pragmatism makes them "authentic" leaders and turns their
fans into followers; and the monuments they build keep people think
ing about them long after the leaders themselves are dead . Monu
ments, moremer, are the only kind of "eternal life" that makes
pragmatic sense in a scientific age.
Accord ing to Robert H. Schuller, possibility thinking leaders leave
great monuments behind when they die, if not great organizations as
well. Iany of the leaders of popular religion in America, of course,
have built and are building monuments and organizations by which
they expect to live on. The Billy Graham Center at the evangelist's
alma mater, \Vheaton College in Illinois, will house his archives in
"the world's largest colonial style building. " Both Pat Robertson and
Jim Bakker are constructing universities to carry on these leaders'

1 44

Authority in Modern American Religion

media vision by training students in the technology of mass communi

cations. Bill B right, the popular innovator of evangelistic techniques,
especially for college students, is also building a graduate uniYersity of
pragmatically oriented professional schools. Its school of theology, for
example, was conceived to focus on the practical development of e\an
gelistic skills in the same way Bakker and Robertson's universities cen
ter on the acquisition of mass media expertise. Jerry Falwell's Liberty
Baptist College and Seminary will become the place where the TV
evangelist's Moral Majority values and vision can be taught to the
young (hence the word "liberty" in its name). Oral Roberts University,
as we have said, will function as a monument to its founder; but it will
also perpetuate Roberts's pentecostal vision in the "charismatic life
style" it requires of both faculty and students, while his medical school
and City of Faith will further implement Roberts's Yision of physical
healing for all through the mutual cooperation of medicine and charis
matic religion, of faith and reason. And Schuller himself has built the
Crystal Cathedral . Here institutes on successful church leadership
bearing his name will continue to train ministers in the Schuller meth
od of pragmatic pastoral leadership and church growth throughout the
United States and the world long after he is gone.
The Crystal Cathedral itself represents the epitome of the kind of
"appropriate"monument Schuller feels a possibility thinking leader
should leave behind, and he has made it very clear that this massive
edifice is the culmination of his own ministerial career. The $ 1 8 mil
lion glass church, designed by premier architects Philip Johnson and
John Burgee, has been severely criticized by many American religious
leaders who feel that such a vast amount of money could have been
better spent elsewhere. But, like the possibility thinker he is, Schuller
used such negative criticism to his own advantage by "turning it
around, " by labeling the controversial structure in his later fund raising
appeals as "the most talked about religious building of the 2oth cen
tury . "
The church is a spectacular structure, built o f reflective glass i n the
shape of a stretched-out four-pointed star so that it is 4 1 5 feet from
point to point in one direction and 207 feet from point to point in the
other. There is a marble pulpit in one of the points of the star, and

The Decline of Authority in the West

1 45

balconies in the others. The walls and roof are all glass- 1 0 , 900 panes
in all, supported by a network of white-painted m tal trusses. The
cathedral can seat about three thousand people and will house the
world's largest concert organ. The ability of the architecture to excite
the average churchgoer is perhaps as interesting as the architecture
itself. Utilizing sleek industrial materials in the tradition of late mod
ern architecture, the Crystal Cathedral is an abstract object, and the
goal is the creation of pure forms. What is supposed to make the
cathedral pleasing is not the symbolic religious association it brings to
mind, as would be the case in most churches. Rather, it is intended to
be pleasing as a pure object in itself.
That kind of abstract building rarely communicates well to the pub
lic; but this building does have many things going for it to elicit popu
lar appeal . For instance, there is the space itself, which is truly noble.
It is 1 28 feet high, a real rarity of design in an age of mean eight-foot
ceilings. And the space is well crafted, with the angles of the star giving
it an energetic motion. Moreover, the metal trusses holding the glass
in place create a vibrant texture and rhythm, very much in step with
Schuller's dramatic and "flowing" style of pulpit delivery. And because
the sun and the clouds and the sky are all visible through the glass,
there is a sense of nature present at all times, faintly reminiscent of the
time, not long ago, when Orange County was just that-a county in
the country with countless orange groves, now completely replaced by
homes and office buildings and shopping centers.
Popular religion is fully understandable, and the Crystal Cathedral
of this 1V preacher bears out this fact very well. It lacks that certain
sense of mystery, of the unknown, which marks most of the great
religious structures of the past. It lacks "ineffable space, " a quality of
space that cannot be fully understood or grasped. Here the simple
geometries make it all clear from the beginning; and after an initial
gasp, even the least sophisticated visitor is likely to comprehend the
special qualities in their entirety. Not only does the Crystal Cathedral
communicate the belief that all things are understandable, it also pro
\ides "empirical evidence" that all things are achievable-and visible
-as well . Furthermore, even the elaborate amplification system, with
speakers placed behind every seat, is geared to the style of popular mass

Authority in Modern American Religion

media religion . It makes each voice sound as if it is coming from a

movie sound track.
If the Crystal Cathedral built by Robert H. Schuller is not the deep
est or the most profound religious building of our time, it is at least
among the most entertaining. Here at Garden Grove the goals of popu
lar religion and architecture have been united in a monument that tells
more than a l ittle about the priorities of each of these pursuits and of
their leading innovators in the modern era. 93
The Method Is the Message: The Reign of Superficiality

At the onset of our discussion, we referred to the Gallup survey

research data suggesting that the U nited States is the most "religious"
fully developed country on the face of the earth. This is so, according
to Gallup, by virtue of the very high percentage of Americans who
believe in God and an afterlife, who attend church or synagogue regu
larly, and who declare that religious belief is an important aspect of
their lives. But while the eminent pollster does feel that America may
be in the early stages of a "profound" religious awakening, he is also
compelled-as a result of his research-to raise the questions, "Are we
really as religious as we appear? Or are we perhaps only superficially
religious?"
Gallup's motivation for asking these questions is based on the con
tradictory evidence of his religious surveys. On the one hand, he says,
religion appears to be increasing its influence on society. On the other
hand, however, morality-a concomitant of religion-is losing its in
fluence. We may be outwardly religious, Gallup declares, but the
secular world would seem to offer abundant evidence that religion is
not greatly affecting our l ives. The United States has one of the worst
records in the world in terms of criminal victimization . We live in a
"ripoff society" marked by consumer fraud, political corruption, tax
cheating, bribery, and payoffs, to name j ust a few of the contemporary
problems in America that are inconsistent with religious values.
Furthermore, while Americans may be impressively religious with
respect to belief and outward manifestations, Gallup's surveys indicate

The Decline of Authority in the West

1 47

a wide gap between religious belief and practice in our nation. For
example, the prayer life of many Americans may be considered rudi
mentary and underdeveloped. Most of our people pray, he states, "but
in an unstructured and superficial manner. . . . Prayers are usually
prayers of petition rather than prayers of thanksgiving, intercession, or
seeking forgiveness. God for some is viewed as a 'divine Santa Claus. ' "
Then, Gallup informs us that his surveys reveal a "shocking" lack of
knowledge regarding even the most basic facts concerning religious
doctrine and the history of our own churches. And we are in a "sorry
state of biblical knowledge, " evidenced most clearly by the teenage
respondents to his surveys. For instance, six in ten American teenagers
are unable to name any of the four Gospels of the New Testament;
four in ten teens who attend church cannot do so. Three in ten teen
agers say they do not know what religious happening is celebrated at
Easter. And one-third of American teens do not know the number of
disciples Jesus had, while one in five among regular churchgoers is
ignorant of the number. 94
Religion exists to provide an ultimate purpose around which to orga
nize life. But when we examine the "structure of reality" religion gives
to life in modern America, it is manifestly apparent that much of
contemporary religion-especially popular religion-is superficial,
only skin-deep. The reign of superficiality in modern American reli
gion, moreover, is discerned easily by careful examination of the con
tent of religion. Its message reflects no depth of knowledge, because
theological knowledge itself is unnecessary, and the acquisition of
knowledge (apart from "pragmatic knowledge") is not encouraged. But
superficiality is also present in the practice of religion. Although mod
ern religion in America does provide individuals with entertainment to
ease their boredom, consolation in finding out who they are, and en
couragement to change their direction, its "products" are seen to be
almost entirely for me, for my family and friends, and for my kind of
people. Its therapeutic approach to self-awareness (and its inherent
"authority") produces a de facto self-centeredness that results in an
almost total lack of deep, fulfilling relationships. The constant talk of
building "community" in modern American religion reflects this rela-

Authority in Modern American Religion

tional emptiness. Thus it is at the level of the need for deep knowledge
and relationships that the charge of superficiality-in religion itself and
in its leadership-must be evaluated.
The present decline of knowledge in the West is not restricted to the
theological enterprise alone. It has become a fact of life in Western
civilization as a whole, with potentially dire consequences, because the
pursuit of knowledge and the very progress of civilization have always
been necessary concomitants. In his highly important study, History of
the Idea of Progress, Robert Nisbet argues the point well . Of all the
challenges to which the idea of progress in history is subjected in our
time, he asserts, none is more deadly in possibility than the present
fast-changing position of knowledge and the person of knowledge, the
intellectual . In his analysis of the problem, Nisbet distinguishes be
tween what William James calls "knowledge about" and "knowledge
of. " The first is the inherent province of the scientist, historian,
philosopher, theologian , academic technologist, and others who
manipulate symbols, those whose primary function is that of advancing
our knowledge about the cosmos, society, and humanity. The second
is, as James noted, the common possession of all living beings and
describes, simply, the habits, adjustments, and techniques we employ
in the business of living. In our discussion, we have already termed the
latter instrumental thought as opposed to this traditional knowledge
about.
Nisbet points out that the whole idea of progress in history had its
origin in the Greek fascination with knowledge-knowledge about
and in the realization that this knowledge had required long ages of
slow, gradual, and continuous advancement in order to reach the level
the Greeks knew. Inherent in the Greek and Roman idea of progress,
then, was a profound and unvarying faith in objective knowledge per
se. And appreciation of such knowledge never flagged in the history of
Christianity as a whole until the present time-not in the Middle
Ages, not in the Puritan seventeenth century, nor in the ensuing cen
turies thereafter.
The general appreciation of the work of the scholar, the scientist,
and philosopher, did not wane during the enlightenment, the whole of
the nineteenth century, and the first half of the twentieth. Not even in

The Decline of Authority in the West

1 49

the medieval university nor in the Renaissance libraries did the profes
sional man of knowledge rank as high as he did in Western Europe
from the middle of the eighteenth to the middle of the twentieth cen
tury. If he enjoyed somewhat less status in the United States in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries than in Europe, it was by no
means a low status. The extraordinary speed with which not only pub
lic and private schools but also colleges and universities were founded
in the nineteenth century (mainly by churches and religious leaders) is
itself sufficient evidence of American appreciation of both science and
the humanities. But in our present age, the scholar and the scientist
and their works do not enjoy anything like this respect-even self
respec t -o nce a staple of Western civilization.
As recently as the 1 9 50s, it would have seemed absurd had anyone
predicted that the day would soon come when scientists, not to men
tion intellectuals in the humanities, would find themselves not only
substantially reduced in popular esteem, but-far more importantly
beset more and more frequently by a lack of self-esteem concerning
their overall value to society on social, ethical, and aesthetic grounds,
and their capacity for extending the limits of knowledge. The hard fact
is that among even some of our most highly respected scientists at the
present time there are very serious doubts as to , first, the sheer ability
of scientists to proceed much farther than they have in the acquisition
of important new knowledge and, second, the social and psychological
value of such acquisition, even if it did occur. This "degradation" of
knowledge, to use Nisbet's word, even among scientists themselves, is
evidenced most clearly in the so-called "anti-science movement, " and
it comes at a time when confidence in increasing knowledge-as op
posed to mere technique and instrumentality-once the very founda
tion of the progress of civilization, has been greatly diminished, if not
erased almost entirely. 95
Robert Nisbet's complaint about the degradation of knowledge and
its "uncivilizing" consequences in modern Western culture is evi
denced in American Christianity, specifically, by the generally anti
intellectual posture of fundamentalism and its radio and TV evange
lists, by the therapeutic pop psychology of the Protestant and Catholic
"mainline , " and by the overemphasis on religious experience (as op-

Authority in Modern American Religion

posed to theological knowledge) among the born-again and Spirit

filled. In all of these groups, the decline of knowledge and of theology
itself has been further enhanced by their increasing focus on entertain
ment in lieu of deep teaching and preaching. At the same time, the
widespread popular stress on technique-on the instrumentalization of
faith-rather than on theological content and its acquisition through
study suggests a significant trend away from interest in knowledge
about the message to knowledge of its "practical" application alone.
The method is the message, or at least a popular substitute for it.
It is interesting to speculate whether this increasing interest in the
"technology of salvation" as a method for actualizing the abundant life
is evidence of a profound religious awakening at all, or whether it is, in
fact, proof of an actual decline in authentic faith in modern American
life. Louis Schneider and Sanford M. Dornbusch suggested as early as
1 9 5 8 that popular religion in America shows clear signs that our faith
has indeed declined. They insist that the evidence for this demise can
be discerned in the prominent effort to exhibit the virtues of faith in
terms of the results it brings, while the primary affirmation that it
proclaims an objective truth recedes into the background (epitomized
today in the thought of Norman Vincent Peale and Robert H. Schull
er). When faith lapses, these sociologists speculate, the things it may
ordinarily achieve for us without any particular thought or effort on
our part become objects of technologically oriented endeavor. For ex
ample, it has been suggested that the current preoccupation with the
"technology" of sexual intercourse (in the plethora of sex manuals and
therapies) is good evidence that love has become a problematic and
dubious matter. And we can also propose that the present flourishing
of technologies of child-rearing (such as Parent Effectiveness Training)
gives proof that the "natural" love for children is no longer an easy and
spontaneous thing ("Have you hugged your kid today?"). Similar con
siderations, apply in the religious consciousness as well. 96
If salvation by technology signals both a degeneration of interest in
knowledge about God and an actual decline in faith in God as a value
in and of itself, the current stress on the person as the measure of
truth-in the pulpit and on the TV screen-also has contributed to the
degradation of knowledge in modern American religion . The eminent

The Decline of Authority in the West

theologian P. T. Forsyth pointed out this potential

Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale, declaring:

1 907, in his

You hear it said, with a great air of religious common sense, that it is the
man that the modern age demands in the pulpit, and not his doctrine. It is
the man that counts, and not his creed. But this is one of those shallow and
plausible half-truths which have the success that always follows when the
easy, obvious underpart is blandly offered for the arduous whole. No man
has any right i n the pulpit i n virtue of his personality or manhood in itself,
but only in virtue of the sacramental value of his personality for his message.
We have no business to worship the elements, which means, i n this case, to
idolize the preacher. . . . To be ready to accept any kind of message from a
magnetic man is to lose the Gospel in mere impressionism . It is to sacrifice
the moral in rel igion to the aesthetic. And it is fatal to the authority either
of the pulpit or the Gospel . The Church does not live by its preachers, but
by its Word . 97

The shift of emphasis in modern American religion from theological

learning per se to its pragmatic application by a mental method merely
reflects the much more comprehensive shift in our culture from "clas
sical" learning to the mere acquisition of skills, where truth itself
validity-is the method, practiced correctly. Modern society is some
times termed a "skill society" because of the premium it places on
technical expertise and innovation, the contemporary foundations both
of capitalism and of modernity. In this sense, then, modern American
religion has no depth of knowledge apart from pragmatic knowledge,
which is knowledge without heart. And if the pursuit of knowledge
"about, " unlike this knowledge "of, " is indeed the foundational crux of
civilization itself, then we can rightly interpret the now highly observ
able lack of "civility" among popular religionists (within their class and
in relation to other classes) to be the direct result of the degradation of
knowledge in contemporary Western society. True civilized behavior
does have depth, and the absence of civilizing knowledge in modern
American rel igion is good confirmation of its shallowness.
But contemporary religion in America is also marked by a lack of
deep and fulfilling personal relationships-an absence that provides yet
more evidence of its superficiality. This deficiency is the direct conse
quence of popular religion's de facto self-centeredness that maximizes

Authority in Modern American Religion

self-awareness and self-development and minimizes self-sacrifice for

others. The relational superficiality of the religion of modernity is
manifested both in its method and in its message. In a culture that has
been instrumentalized by the scientific method, in which everything is
understandable, remediable, and achievable, God isn't really necessary
at all, because "right thinking" men and women can do it themselves.
God exists for them only when he is useful to the method of their own
self-actualization . Modern American religion, very simply, doesn't
care about doing anything for God. It wants only to use him. Even the
popular exclamation "Praise the Lord ! " is little more than a thank-you
note to God for having been useful in helping "me" acquire something
"I" wanted. God is the giver, I am the receiver, but not vice versa .
When God becomes a divine Santa Claus, our relationship with him
-even with God himself-is superficial , in that it stresses taking but
not giving. Both are necessary to any deep relationship.
If, as a possibility thinker, I can do anything -by an act of the will
and a positive mental technique-not only do I not need God (unless
I think he's useful), but I really don't need anyone else either (unless
he or she happens to be useful for whatever it is I want). Any kind of
religion carried by the mass media, of course, is especially vulnerable
at this point, because that which is carried by the mass media must
give its fans what they want, what they think is useful for themselves.
People most often expose themselves only those to media offerings that
coincide with their own predilections and desires. Thus there are no
prophets on TV-only profits. If God is a divine Santa Claus in mod
ern American religion, then its celebrity and pragmatic leaders are his
reindeer. When taking precedes giving as a norm , people in relation
ship with other people literally become commodities, created and so
cialized to be bought and sold. Relationships here are not only
superficial, they have become trivialized as well.
The fundamental relational problem in American religion today,
just as in the wider culture, is precisely this de facto centering on the
self and its own desires regardless of the consequences for others. Ac
cording to Arnold Toynbee, self-centeredness isn't just a sin , it is the
"original sin . " But in the religion of modernity, sin has been "neutral
ized" as a mere psychic process-negative thinking-and it has
become a meaningless concept. Forgive us our negative thoughts, oh

The Decline of Authority in the West

1 53

useful Force (or Whatever), as we forgive those who haven't yet discov
ered how to think positive thoughts about us. Sin has become mean
ingless, but so have the classical Christian consequences of
sin-tragedy, suffering, and poverty.
The beliefs and behavior of the religion of modernity in America
indicate a naive attempt to live in the world as if, from the Christian
perspective, there had never been a Fall from what Cod intended man
and woman to be in the first place. But in a fallen world, sin and
evil-including aggressive evil-are real , and so are poverty and suffer
ing and tragedy. Positive thinking, therefore, breaks down as a success
ful technique of abundant living when its practitioners have to face
these things in their own lives-a spouse dying of cancer, a job ter
minated, a home town plagued by terrorism, and, perhaps ultimately,
the whole world devastated by nuclear holocaust. Failure to acknowl
edge the reality of sin indicates that self-awareness has not resulted in
awareness of one's own true self, one's predilection toward sin and
one's reaping of its consequences. Superficiality, then, exists in the
modern believer's relationship with Cod, with others, and with one's
own true self. Jesus may not have called anyone a sinner; but he did
believe in hell , he did address the Pharisees as those whose father was
the devil , and he did know suffering and its divine significance first
hand-in the extreme. In biblical religion , the cross is not a plus sign .
Superficiality in relationships is a growing problem in the whole of
American society, despite the popularity of the Human Potential
movement with its "sensitivity training" and group encounter tech
niques during the last two decades. In a narcissistic culture, established
on the foundation of rampant individualism and hedonism, knowledge
of the method alone has not brought with it either unity or commu
nity. Rather, it has made our de facto self-centeredness better orga
nized and even more intense.
In his recent book, New Rules: Searching for Self-Fulfillment in a
World Turned Upside Down, Daniel Yankelovich maintains, on the
basis of his firm's survey research, that modern Americans are increas
ingly hungry for deeper personal relationships. There is a growing con
viction, he asserts, that a me-first, satisfy-all-my-desires attitude leads
inevitably to relationships that are "superficial, transitory, and ulti
mately unsatisfying. " Seventy percent of Americans now recognize that

1 54

Authority in Modern American Religion

while they have many acquaintances, they have few close friends, and
they experience that as a serious void in their lives. Furthermore, two
out of five (4 1 percent) state that they have fewer close friends now
than they had in the recent past.
Feeling this void, in Yankelovich's opinion, causes people to grow
less preoccupied with themselves (potentially, at least) and to look for
closer ties to others. In 1 97 3 , 3 2 percent-roughly one third-of
Americans felt .an intense need to compensate for the impersonal and
threatening aspects of modern l ife by seeking mutual identification
with others based on ethnic bonds or ties of shared interests, needs,
background, age, or values (as in religion). But by the beginning of the
1 98os, the number of Americans deeply involved in the "search for
community" had increased from 3 2 percent to 47 percent, a large and
significant j ump in just a few short years. 98
In Celebration of Discipline, Richard ] . Foster insists that superfi
ciality is the curse of our age. 99 In modern American religion, superfi
ciality derives from the fact that most individuals view religion primarily
as a therapeutic means to get relief from boredom through entertain
ment. The celebrity leaders of popular religion, and their imitators in
the leadership of the institutional church, have fans, but not followers .
And because celebrities merely entertain and do not offer deep teaching,
they can hardly impose a discipline on others to incorporate in their
daily lives. Fans, obviously, are not disciples .
If modern religious leaders have fans, but not followers, then the
question has to be raised whether they are actually "leaders" at all . In
the case of the electronic church , we can even suggest that it really
doesn't matter if its leaders don't personally believe or practice what
they preach and teach over radio and TV, any more than it matters
whether the actors in an "inspiring" movie actually believe or practice
in daily life the lines they are saying. Religion carried by the mass
media-invisible religion--constitutes the ultimate in relational
superficiality, because the only communication and interpersonal rela
tionships between celebrity and fans are the printed page, the record or
tape, the radio voice, the video image, the computer-written letter,
and the anonymous phone call. Such "relationships , " of course, are
not real at all .

The Decline of Authority in the West

1 55

Ours is a chronically bored mass culture, and, as Erich Fromm puts

it in his masterpiece, The Art of Loving, to be bored or boring is to be
unloving. Boredom itself indicates the presence of superficial relation
ships, or no relationships at all . People who are really interested in
other people, who care about them and demonstrate this care in per
sonal engagement, are not bored, nor are they boring. Invisible reli
gion may, indeed, relieve boredom-for a while-but it is no
substitute for demonstrated love between nearby significant others.
And love cannot exist apart from deep continuing relationships marked
by give and take from the center of our very being itself, from the
heart. Love transforms superficiality and strengthens the authority of a
leader by authenticating that authority in the wisdom of his teaching
and the goodness of his example. In leadership love is best expressed,
even in the context of visibility and strength, by humility and servant
hood. By their fruits you shall know them.

C H A PT E R 7

The Problem of ' 'Homelessness ' '

and Its Solution

The aimlessness of everyday existence, the lack of universally accepted

standards and beliefs and the isolation and anxiety this engenders in
the individual, the superficiality of personal relationships, and the
questioning of leadership in modern Western society have resulted in
the rise of numerous and varied protest movements against modernity
-the root cause of the present dilemma. Much of this protest, more
over, is centered on the reassertion of traditional patterns of authority,
the once-dominant institutional "supports" that are seen by the protes
tors as giving a meaningful sense of structure and sure community for
their lives in an otherwise pluralistic and anonymous culture. Modern
Americans have lost their roots, their bearings, and their identities in
the course of the development of modernity, of secularization; but,
more important, they have also lost their "home, " the last haven of
unconditional acceptance, security, and care in an otherwise heartless
world. This is precisely the reason why so many contemporary move
ments of protest against the rational and instrumental shallowness of
modernity and its celebrity and pragmatic leaders focus on the "family"
--either in its nuclear form or its extended form in "community"-as
the real crux of the problem and as its solution.
In a technological society, where hitherto unquestioned institutions
and values are crumbling fast, people are looking for extraordinary
leaders and sure, rel iable authority to believe in. But what they are
really looking for runs much deeper than that: it is the loving give and
take that used to characterize (ideally, at least) the authority wielded in
the home and the family. In fact, there is good reason to believe that

The Problem of "Homelessness" a nd Its Solution

1 57

both the present crisis of authority and the superficiality of relation

sh ips in American society as a whole are the direct outgrowth of the
concurrent demise of the traditional family values and authority pat
terns currently championed by the "opponents" of modernity-from
the I oral Majority to the "cults. "
).lodern Americans suffer from a deepening condition Peter Berger
calls "homelessness. " The correlate of the "migratory" character of
their experience of society and self-of upward social mobility in the
context of pluralism and free choice-can be rightly termed a meta
physical loss of home. It goes without saying that this condition of the
"homeless mind" is psychologically and spiritually hard to bear, and it
has therefore engendered its own nostalgias-nostalgias, that is, for a
condition of "being at home" in society, with oneself, and, ultimately,
in the universe. 1 00 Thus we see a widespread interest in buying an
tiques and other "collectibles," which represent far more than a sound
investment in an inflationary economy. Add to this the current "return
to manners" exemplified in the "preppy look" with its "traditional" dress
and style of life. Even the new inter-class popularity of country music
and garb indicates a real desire among modern urban Americans to go
back to rural values. Home is where the heart is, and everyone needs a
home.
The crisis of authority, in the church and in the wider society, stems
from the general uncertainty brought about by the ever-widening plu
ralization and homelessness of everyday life. Americans are free to
come and go, to do as they please, which is precisely the problem.
The New Right

The "Moral Majority" is a movement of popular religion carried by

the mass media of TV, direct mail, "8oo" telephone numbers, bestsell
ing books, and newspaper ads, with a celebrity-pragmatic leader and
millions of fans. As such, of course, it has to give the masses what they
\\'ant. Thus the degree to which the Moral Majority is politically effec
tiYe is a function of the degree to which popular sentiment affirms its
objectives. No more, and no less.
Jerry Falwell is a fundamentalist, and fundamentalist Christians

Authority in Modern American Religion

make up the vast majority of Americans who identify with the Moral
Majority. Because of its mass media visibility and very impressive fi
nancial intake, the l\Ioral Majority-which is the preeminent symbol
of the "New Right" as a whcle-has probably been assumed to have
more political and social clout than it actually has . In a survey con
ducted by the Gallup organization late in 1 980, it was found that only
40 percent of all Americans polled had even read or heard about the
Moral Majority, while even fewer-only 26 percent-were familiar
with the objectives and goals of this organization. And among the latter
"informed" group, disapproval outweighed approval 1 3 to 8 percent,
with 5 percent undecided . 1 Dl
The prime backers of the "religious" expression of the New Right in
general and the M oral Maj ority in particular are rural-oriented hard
core fundamentalists and evangelicals and the less sophisticated popu
lar religionists, whose social location remains at some distance from
the urban-university forces of modernity that threaten them and their
values. But these protesting, discontented Americans are by no means
all country bumpkins. Even the heavily new class Village Voice de
scribes Falwell himself as "much more sophisticated about what is
basically a very crude theology" than the average fundamentalist lay
person or professional minister among his fans-and he is not anti
Catholic. 102 (By way of contrast, one Moral Majority-linked San Fran
cisco pastor suggested to the local media that in a "biblical government"
-the kind he advocated-homosexuals would be stoned to death. Such
a statement might conceivably have been okay in Omaha, but certainly
not in the secular city of San Francisco, where he was forced by vocal
disapproval to retract his statement almost immediately. ) Furthermore,
Falwell appeared recently on William F. Buckley's "Firing Line" TV
show, where this brilliant neoconservative journalist accused the elec
tronic church evangelist of not being conservative enough, of being too
"moderate" on some important issues.
Indeed , the New Right, broadly defined, does include highly sophis
ticated neoconservative theoreticians-who give it a measure of "re
spectability"-as well as a small number of political "leftists" who, like
the Moral Majority, happen to be "pro-family" and "anti-abortion" in
their values. Although the New Right represents the basic religious

The Problem of "Homelessness" and Its Solution

1 59

interests of popular fundamentalism and the economic interests of the

business class, it also ardently defends traditional "family values" that
appeal to a much wider segment of the contemporary American popu
lation . Included here are opposition to abortion on demand, pornogra
phy, the ordination of homosexuals; and affirmation of the sanctity of
marriage, and public education in which broadly religious and family
values are taught. Furthermore, the New Right wishes to see the resto
ration of traditionally male-dominant authority patterns, both in the
home and in the church.
As the most visible and widely popular organizational expression of
the New Right, the Moral Majority (like its kindred) operates no differ
ently-politically speaking-from its counterparts on the religious left
(such as the National Council of Churches). Both left and right reli
gion in America now do what, j ust a few years ago, only the left did.
Both conduct media campaigns about political issues and, in their own
particular ways, evaluate and "rate" the voting records of Senators and
members of the House of Representatives-and so advocate one "party
line. " Both register votes in population areas where the unregistered
would likely vote for the "right" (or "left") candidates. Both use adver
tising and direct phone call campaigns to make their point. Both hire
lobbyists-and lawyers-when the interests of their supporters (as dem
onstrated by tangible contributions of money) warrant it.
Technically, the Moral Majority is not a religious organization, but
,
a political one. Nevertheless, it does desire the rise of "biblical moral
ity" (as it interprets it) in government. Those who question this inte
gration of concerns as a violation of the separation of church and state
do not understand that this doctrine was formulated to keep govern
ment out of the life of the churches. It was not conceived to prevent
church and synagogue from reminding government of the moral and
broadly religious principles it often forgets; and it was not formulated
to outlaw prophecy, either on the left or on the right.
The New Right and its religious leaders believe that the solution to
the present crisis of authority-rooted in what they term "secular hu
manism"-lies in the restoration of strong, traditional patterns of au
thority in the home (headed by husband and father), in government
(headed by a conservative Republican administration), and in the

Authority in Modern American Religion

church (presided over by male ministers who stand on the absolute

authority of the Bible).
Traditional Catholicism

"Traditional Catholicism" refers here to a broad movement among

Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Eastern Orthodox-those reared in
the Catholic faith, as well as converts to it-who are seeking to reaf
firm traditional Catholic beliefs, values, and patterns of authority in
the church and in the home as a response to the degradation of knowl
edge and the superficiality of relationships inherent in modernity. But
it is also a specific reaction to the wholly pragmatic assertion of popular
religion that everything is understandable. Thus the movement puts
great emphasis on the "mystery" of the Christian faith as expressed in
classical religious art, architecture, and music, in "high church" sacra
mental celebration, and in the spiritual disciplines, including contem
plation.
Traditional Catholicism does include within its ranks those in the
Catholic "masses" who see "modernism" in the Vatican II decision
that allowed masses to be said in the vernacular (rather than Latin),
and who reject the church's academic elites' repudiation of traditional
popular Catholicism-the lighting of votive candles, the saying of the
rosary, Marian piety, and "plastic Jesus. " But its leading theoreticians
are, for the most part, highly educated intellectuals who reject the
whole Zeitgeist of modernity, which they feel is equal to outright
secularism in general and the "Protestantization" of Catholicism in
particular.
The media rallying point of the leaders of traditional Catholicism is
a thoughtful-and often cheeky-monthly magazine aimed at welding
Catholic tradition, Eastern Orthodox mystical spirituality, and evan
gelical zeal into a new Christian orthodoxy (doctrinal truth is of prime
importance here). Its name is the New Oxford Review. Appropriately,
the heroic leader of the New Oxford movement is Pope John Paul II,
whose values predominate in the magazine-a journal that speaks
"directly" to and for some twenty-five thousand disaffected Anglo
Catholics who split from the Episcopal Church over its recent decision

The Problem of "Homelessness" a nd Its Solution

to ordain women and self-professed, practicing homosexuals (if other

wise qualified), and to "modernize" by revision the Book of Common
Prayer. But it also voices the aspirations of evangelicals and ex-funda
mentalists turned Catholic-most of them college professors and stu
dents-who want more Tradition, ritual, and mystery than a bare,
methodically rational, born-again faith now provides. One Episcopal
leader of traditional Catholicism, Robert Webber of Wheaton College
in Illinois, makes the point well: "Episcopalianism is weary of its
blandness , " he declares, "and evangelicalism is weary of its superficial
ity. "
Throughout the pages of the New Oxford Review liberal Catholic
theologians like Hans Kung and Edward Schillebeeckx (among the
most distinctively "Protestant" theologians within Catholic Christen
dom) are assailed for teaching heresy, and liberal church leaders are
condemned for sanctioning abortion or pop liturgies. Often the au
thorities whom the magazine cites with approval are such pre-Vatican
II Roman Catholics as John Henry Newman (who founded the origi
nal Oxford Movement of high church Catholicism), G. K. Chester
ton, and Ronald Knox-all converts from the Church of England. But
the New Oxford Review's undoubted paragon is Pope John Paul II and
his current stress on traditional patterns of ecclesiastical and familial
authority, especially. In a symposium on the recent Hans Kung con
troversy (in which the Pope decided that Kung could no longer teach
as a "Catholic theologian"), editor Dale Vree endorsed the papal sanc
tions against the Swiss theologian and then added, "When the Holy
Father has routed the last heretic out of positions of responsibility in
the Roman Church-and may that day be hastened-his job will only
have begun. "
Traditional Catholicism, in all its particular and varied expressions,
emphasizes the reaffirmation of traditional family values, including the
primacy of husband and father in the family and of the male priest
("Father") in the "extended family" (the church) as the solution to the
present crisis of authority. This, then, is its fundamental rationale for
opposing homosexuality, abortion , and women priests-all of which
are seen to challenge and weaken the family values demanded of all
Christians, it feels, by God himself. 1 0 3

Authority in Modern American Religion

Sainthood: The Way of Renunciation

At the same time that modern Americans are seeking self-awareness

and self-actualization, in religion or elsewhere, they are also coming to
see that "looking out for # 1 " doesn't really bring about the self-fulfill
ment-the happiness-the advertising industry and the leaders of mass
culture still promise. It has brought with it only superficiality. Further
more, at the same time that truth, goodness, and beauty have lost their
"absolute" worth in the relativism of modernity, and their very sub
stance in the process of instrumentalization, people are once again
trying to recover the authentic essence of these values. At least they are
now looking, sometimes with great urgency (in the case of youth), for
the concrete evidence in life that such things still do exist as substan
tive qualities . In a word, modern Americans are seeking after saints
those who model in their everyday lives, with persistence, the way of
sanctity, of personal renunciation, marked preeminently by self-sacri
fice for others and for God himself. If, as Toynbee has suggested,
self-centeredness is the original sin-the fatal flaw in fallen human
nature-then self-sacrifice is its antidote.
Ours is a time when people in the West are increasingly preoccupied
with sanctity. The Watergate revelations, especially, revealed to a
shocked public that truth-and goodness-are important, even if they
appear to contradict or inhibit the now-dominant "pragmatic" ap
proach to morality. When lies were exposed in the White House itself,
the public knew it could no longer accept untruths in government,
even if they are functional . When the presidential press secretary said
that something proven a lie was simply "no longer operative, " he was
really only admitting it hadn't "worked. " That, and only that, was its
fault-reasoning quite consistent with our pragmatic sense of morality.
Yet Americans wanted the truth; for the first time in a long time they
demanded it.
In the culture of narcissism and hedonism, where self-seeking celeb
rities are "the beautiful people"-and entertainment does appeal to our
desire for beauty-it is no wonder that modern Americans are again
looking for the authentic beauty of self-sacrifice expressed in service for

The Problem of "Homelessness" and Its Solution

others. "Living saints" l ike Mother Teresa of Calcutta and the late
Dorothy Day are now sought after and needed, people who really are
doing "something beautiful for God . "
Because the road to sainthood i s hard, i t has never been popular.
Very simply, sainthood means personal renunciation for the sake of
the well-being and happiness of others. Saints are especially rare in the
present "me generation, " and nowhere are they rarer than among the
celebrity leaders of popular religion, whose visibility itself precludes the
demonstration of humility and servanthood inherent in sainthood.
U ntil recently, the "cult of saints" has been a largely Catholic phe
nomenon . In the popular Catholic mind, saints were usually members
of religious orders who submitted absolutely to the authority of their
superiors and to the service of God. For them, servanthood was
expressed in poverty, chastity, and obedience. But modern saints aren't
just clerics; they are, rather, the good people of our time, because real
goodness is rare today. And they too believe-and live their belief
that the solution to the present crisis of authority and superficiality still
lies in absolute submission to authority, godly authority, and in the
discipline and obligations of intensive community life, ordered by
those who wield that authority.
The meaning of saints today is no longer restricted to the lives of
martyrs and miracle workers alone, but the essence of sainthood
remains the same-mastery of self through arduous discipline (not just
an easy mental technique), the absorption of Christ into one's very
being (and all he stands for, literally), the recognition of the hidden
ness of sanctity (it isn't always "visible"), the importance of living ex
ample (authenticating in deeds the truth of what the saint says in
words), and, finally, the "mystery" of God's grace (everything is not
understandable). The saint is no less than a sign of the presence of God
in a world in which God is so often otherwise silent (because God's
method is people). Indeed, the saint makes it easier for others both to
believe in God and to live God. Modern saints, the heroic leaders of
our time, include poets, novelists, diarists, prisoners of conscience,
resistors, prophets, and "fools for Christ's sake. " And since saintliness
is never granted to human beings for their own salvation, but only to

Authority in Modern American Religion

aid others on that path, it stands squarely in opposition to the rampant

individualism and "me firstness" of modernity and all their kin in the
West. l 04
The eminent journalist Garry Wills sees sainthood as the necessary
focus of the modern search for effective leadership-in politics as well
as in religion-because the saint has vision, and where there is no
vision the people perish. "People who are really good at effecting
change," he says, "are the people who don't pay attention to the results
of their action . That's why people of faith can start things that no one
else can, because they are not making a calculus of the probability of
success; they are doing it because they are called. " 1 0 5 The leadership of
saints, heroic leadership, is a sign of hope in secular society.
"Cults"

We have said that submission to authority in modern America is a

function of class and age. "Impressionable youth, " on the one hand,
are the first to "rebel" against established patterns of authority (paren
tal, academic, governmental)--a s in the "generation gap" so noticea
ble in the sixties. On the other hand, the young are also the first to
submit to even strict authority (as in various "new religious move
ments"-"cults"-or in Marxism) if it provides the meaning in life
they are looking for. Using the word in its sociological sense, without
pejorative intent, we may suggest that cults persist as a major focus of
the media because they draw into their ranks a disproportionate num
ber of the relatively young. And the young, as a class, are themselves
something of an obsession with the media-both secular and religious.
Oxford sociologist Bryan Wilson states that, in a rapidly changing
society, youth is at a premium and age at a discount. In a society that
pins its faith to technology, education (of the young) is a paramount
concern . But experience, on the other hand, is probably a handicap
at least in the technical matters that are today socially evaluated as of
far more importance than moral matters or character-and hence age
is a disadvantage. The redistribution of income in Western societies
reflects the enhancement of the young, who constitute a class of con
suming nonproducers. A consuming class in a consumer society

The Problem of "Homelessness" and Its Solution

becomes a principal target for advertising; and the advertising industry

itself, seeking to market its products, espouses luxury and hedonism as
its values. These, of course, are the most widely canvassed values of
modern society, and they are directed vigorously at the young. The
news media themselves are powerfully influenced by advertising, and it
is not surprising that advertising values percolate through the media,
becoming the "common sense" of modernity. In a world of increased
and increasingly diverse leisure activities, youth stands more to profit
from and to become more involved in new leisure activities, from
hang-gliding to punk rock, from surfing to marijuana (now one of
California and Hawaii's biggest cash crops). When, on occasion, older
people take up such recreational pursuits, they often do so to persuade
themselves that they are still young, since it is in the youth culture that
life is being lived.
The news media, especially, Wilson goes on to say, follow their
instinct for whatever is new, and they recognize in the young their
obvious source of copy. Thus the news media provide the means for a
change in the society's generational center of gravity. In the light of
this change, we may propose that the things in religion that concern
the mass media are likely to be those things that involve the young.
(Even religious TV programs, watched almost exclusively by middle
aged and senior citizens, emphasize musical entertainment written and
performed by young celebrities. ) And since cult religion is youth reli
gion-from the Children of God to the Moonies, from the Hare Krish
nas to Transcendental Meditation and Scientology-the mass media
continue to be interested in it. 106
Among all age groups, youth are the most likely to have an idealistic
rather than purely pragmatic orientation to life, even everyday life; but
today most young people are moving in the same "conservative" direc
tion as their elders (witness the popularity among the young of the
"preppy look" and of country music, with all its "redneck" values). In
religious circles, the Christian music industry-the "youth sector" of
the electronic church-offers the same financial rewards and celebrity
status to its up-and-coming stars (as well as the same superficiality) as
does popular religion as a whole. The superstars of the Christian music
industry, like Debbie Boone, Andre Crouch, and Evie Tornquist-

Authority in tv1odern American Religion

Karlsson, are just as likely to wield influence over their fans as Jerry
Falwell and Jim Bakker do over theirs. Even at the traditionally "radi
cal" Berkeley campus of the University of California, the 1 98o--8 1
freshman class was considerably more conservative than i n past years
and strongly oriented toward academic and career success. Almost two
thirds of the Cal freshmen said it was highly important to be well off
financially; and nearly 90 percent said they planned to earn advanced
degrees (many of them in the "practical" fields of business, law, and
the health sciences). The students in this survey rated academic ability,
a drive to achieve, and intellectual self-confidence as their best-devel
oped traits. 10'7
Children, no less than adults, are attracted to mass media celebri
ties. And in recent decades they have increasingly identified with pop
ular entertainment figures in their own lifestyles and vocational
aspirations. 108 At the same time, and more importantly, parents have
declined in their impact on a teenager's values and behavior. In 1 960,
mother and father were the number one influence. But by 1 980, the ten
most important influences on the young in America were as follows: ( 1 )
friends, peers; ( 2 ) mother, father; ( 3 ) TV , radio, records, cinema
(jumped five places from 1 96o); (4) teachers (down two); ( 5) popular
heroes and idols in sports and music; (6) ministers, priests, rabbis; (7)
newspapers and magazines; (8) advertising; (9) youth club leaders, in
cluding coaches, counselors, and scoutmasters; and ( 1 o) grandparents,
uncles, and aunts. Given the increasing divorce rate in modern Amer
ica, and the fact that more mothers, married or not, are going to work,
youth are forced to interact primarily with their peers instead of their
parents. 1 09
A less stable home life, moreover, may well be the key reason why
young people join new religious movements today, since the cults pro
vide "instant love" and a caring community; but more than that, they
offer a new extended family-a home-for idealistic youth who may
never have had a "real" home. Psychology Today reports that, within
any period of several weeks, more than 2 5 percent of all American
adults feel painfully lonely. The incidence among adolescents and
post-adolescents, however, is considerably higher. (Surveys find, inter
estingly, that people in their sixties, seventies, and eighties are consis
tently less lonely than younger adults. ) 1 10 In our affluent and

The Problem of "Homelessness" and Its Solution

permissive society, the young are seeking some kind of meaning and
discipline for their lives, an ordering principle. But they are also looking
for a family-an "ideal family, " really-and a home in a culture where
homelessness is increasingly the norm . With the breakdown of parental
authority and guidance, especially, they are looking for a strong personal
authority to guide them, someone to love them like their parents should
have done-and for a community of "brothers and sisters" to support
them and be their friends. And so the cults.
Although new religious movements are themselves very different
from each other, both in terms of basic ideology (Christian versus
Eastern versus meta-scientific) and in terms of long-range goals (per
sonal fulfillment versus social transformation), most of them, as Bryan
Wilson points out, have certain features in common. Among these are
( 1 ) exotic origins; ( 2 ) new cultural lifestyles; (3) a level of engagement
markedly different from that of traditional Christianity; (4) "charis
matic" leadership; ( 5 ) a following predominantly young, and drawn in
disproportionate numbers from the better-educated and middle-class
strata of society; (6) high visibility (much of it in the critical mass
media); (7) international operation; and (8) emergence within the last
decade and a half (in their present manifestations, at least). 1 1 1
That the cults today should have a disproportionate appeal to the
young, Wilson goes on to say, appears to be a consequence of the
increasing diversity of life choices that now exist for young people and
the bewildering uncertainty of lifestyles and values, constituting a ple
thora of possibilities for living-with no center. Virtue has largely gone
out of nations-patriotism is no longer an automatic value-and, even
more dramatically, has gone out of those states, such as America,
which have never settled down long enough really to be "nations. "
Many of the new cults represent exotic, often non-Western (and there
fore controversial) values that stem from other seemingly unsullied,
cultures that retain some element of continuity and tradition-roots.
The aura of the mystery is still seen as "authentic, " because it is mys
tery untrammelled by the impediments and accretions that have grown
up around the central Western religious traditions. The young know so
much less of the corruptions and the levels of mendacity and duplicity
of other cultures than they know of their own . Exotic cults seem to
come from a "noble" and more comprehensive and integrated tradi-

1 68

Authority in Modern American Religion

tion. Even "meta-scientific" movements (like Scientology), which op

erate beyond the bounds of the scientific method with the offer of new
"beyond-the-establishment" techniques of therapy or emotional en
largement, are attractive to youthful religious seekers. l i Z
Of all the contemporary protests against modernity and its discon
tents, the cults are the most intense and the most "extreme" in at
tempting to counter modernity's shallowness and uncertainty by the
imposition on the young-the idealistic young, who are the most will
ing to accept it-of the strictest discipline and authority. (Where else,
after all-other than Marxism-can young idealists turn in a hedonis
tic and narcissistic culture like ours? Who else really wants them?)
And it is for this reason that parents, especially, are most often up in
'arms about their children's adoption of imported or otherwise "new"
cultic values . When parents who feel they have given their offspring
"everything" with which to make it hear that their own daughter has
joined a "new family, " they are understandably upset. It's a real put
down . What was wrong with our family, they ask? Similarly, when
other parents find out that their son, just out of Harvard, is selling
flowers on the street-eighteen hours a day, seven days a week-to
raise money for his "church, " they become infuriated. After all we did
for him , they say, look what he's done to us.
In the majority of new religious movements, the solution to the
present crisis of authority and superficiality-a manifestly Western cri
sis-is absolute submission to the authority of the leader and his or her
teaching, to a life of arduous discipline and self-sacrifice. And it is the
willingness of the idealistic young to be self-sacrificial for the sake of
others, for the community and the world, that seems to irritate parents
most-so much so that some of them will pay up to $4o,ooo to have
a grown child "deprogrammed , " to have his faith broken. (Self-sacri
fice, remember, no longer has divine significance in America. ) Clear
ly, when the young are motivated to join an "alternative family" with
counter-cultural and new values, their parents view it as a threat. But
if they were really honest, they'd see it for what it really might be-a
judgment on their own lack of love and purposeful direction, toward
each other, their children, and God himself. Those modern Ameri
cans who persecute the cults and their "authoritarian" ways are most

The Problem of "Homelessness" a nd Its Solution

often the very reason for the emergence and success of these move
ments. Love is where you find it when you find no love at home.
Religious Leadership and Authority in Perspective:
The Heroic Leader in the Context of Modernity

That there are manifest deficiencies in modern religion in America

-in its faith, conduct, and leadership-should be self-evident from
the foregoing discussion. But popular religion, including the electronic
church, is not all bad. Modern Americans, the "common people," do
have needs that popular religion seems to meet-needs of which the
"elitist" leaders of the institutional church, of traditional religion, are
sometimes not even aware. Often, moreover, they don't even care.
These needs are simple, and the very "success" of popular religion
testifies to their existence: the need to be recognized, to be needed, to
live in a world that can be understood, to be of worth, to be secure.
Such needs, of course, are not those of popular religionists alone; they
are needs shared by everyone. And the larger "issues" perplexing the
readers, listeners, and viewers of popular religion are also the very ones
of concern to all Americans, be they of the business class or the new
class. Included here are the issues of war and peace, the dehumaniza
tion of sex, the injustices of political and economic power, how to find
useful work and satisfying play, how to maintain a society open to
many points of view, how to keep personal relationships meaningful.
William F. Fore, secretary for communications of the National
Council of Churches, wrote a controversial article for TV Guide in
1 980, criticizing the electronic church (and, indirectly, all "invisible"
religion). In this essay he argues that real human contact, which televi
sion-no less than the other electronic and printed media-cannot
provide, is the essence of religion. "There is no such thing, " Fore
insists, "as a TV pastor. " 1 1 3 In response to that article he received more
than five hundred personal letters rebutting his own negative assessment,
two-thirds of which were for women, ranging in age from fifteen to
ninety, and almost all of which were from born-again Christians.
Fore had expected that his critics would represent in their letters the
social, political , and economic interests and values of what Berger calls

Authority in Modern American Religion

the business class, but he was not at all prepared for the "outpouring"
of criticism of the institutional church itself-congregations represent
ed within the National Council of Churches-by those who regularly
watch religious TV. "So many of the Starched Collar Ministers," re
sponded one letter, "don't bother to help others after they preach their
sermon and shake hands. It's a cold howdy-do and goodbye. " Another
person wrote, "When I needed Christ I got social and community
planning programs and softball, but no Jesus. People want truth and
salvation and assurance. " Replied yet another, "PTL is better than any
church I have ever attended, which is quite a few. " 1 1 4
If real human contact is the essence of religion, then why are so
many Americans seemingly more satisfied with popular religion and its
celebrity leaders than by the traditional religion of their own churches
and pastors? The answer is simple. Too many of the local churches
and their ministers across our nation don't really care. In particular,
they don't care about the very people-the elderly, the infirm, the
socially retarded, the "unappealing"-who most often have to turn to
media religion with their unfilled needs and unhealed hurts. If the TV
"image" of an Oral Roberts, a Jerry Falwell , or a Jim Bakker-and the
computer-generated correspondence and anonymous telephone calls
processed by their organizations--does not represent authentic, caring,
human encounter (and it doesn't), it is still better than no human
encounter at all . Today, as we have said, youth is at a premium and
age at a discount; thus, popular religion (especially appealing to the
elderly in our society) is often the closest to genuine love and care its
practitioners can get in their urban apartments, retirement "commu
nities," and convalescent "homes. " The breakdown of the family and
family values, and the homelessness it has brought with it, have been
a debilitating force on the young; but these realities have hurt the
elderly (and otherwise unattractive) citizens of our society just as
much. In the culture of narcissism, kids "get in the way" of my own
self-actual ization, but so do mom and dad, grandma and grandpa . The
electronic church is one of the best proofs of this fact in America
today.
Rooted squarely in the New England Puritan experience itself, faith

The Problem of "Homelessness" a nd Its Solution

has always been the hallmark of the American way. And the reality of
this "faith" constitutes a good explanation for the fact that so many
Americans, even "modern" Americans, still believe in God. Faith
however expressed-is the center of the technology of salvation in pop
ular religion. It is the key ingredient that makes the method work-a
process integrating a positive mental attitude with the experience of
being born again, of believing in Jesus. The new birth initiates a
believer into the process of self-actualizing the abundant life, which
itself can be viewed as the "new" course of what was once called sanc
tification. The faith of popular religion is described forcefully in
Robert H. Schuller's credo for possibility thinkers:
When faced with a mountain, I will not quit. I will keep on striving until
I climb over it, find a path through it, tunnel under it, or simply stay and
turn the mountain into a gold mine-with God's help.

Schuller's mental technique of self-determination is, indeed, consis

tent with the New Testament requirement of faith for salvation . And
faith, like hope and love, is a good thing; it is the means by which
consolation and encouragement are realized.
Carried and modeled by the technologically sophisticated mass
media, popular religion in America is itself a product of modernity and
its discontents. All "modern" religion, in order to be "relevant" in
meeting the needs caused by these discontents, must be established on
certain "doctrines" that have grown with modernity. Extremely impor
tant here, for example, is an understanding of the "immanence"
(rather than transcendence) of God in the daily life of secular society.
The God of classical Protestantism who was "out there" and "wholly
other" apparently died in the 1 96os, and he has been replaced in the
modern consciousness by a God so close to me-in Jesus-that he's
my friend. Friends are hard to come by in mass culture, but Jesus is
available to all who believe in him.
Thus modern religion asserts that "I" have value. I am of ultimate
importance and infinite worth, because the very image of God himself
is imprinted on the totality of my being-in my feeling of self-worth.
I am somebody. In an advanced technological society, where human

Authority in Modern American Religion

beings are less important and more anonymous than in the past, all
theology must be a theology of self-esteem. Americans today do need
to learn how to love themselves.
Finally, and this is important, modern religion in America has to
work, it has to bring results. And to make it work, at least in the
technical and functional sense of what that means, I have to under
stand it. Aided by technological advancement, pragmatism is so much
a part of the American way that we are simply not interested in any
thing that doesn't work. And to work, religion must meet my needs,
whatever those needs happen to be.
The rewards of faith promised by popular religion are attained
quickly and easily-at least this is what its celebrity and pragmatic
leaders would have us believe. But the abundant life, despite the desir
ability of its rewards, is also defective, because it does not adequately
deal with sin and fallen nature. As we have already said, popular reli
gion thinks and behaves as if the Fall, taken literally or figuratively,
never occurred . The fatal consequences of sin, however, cannot be
rectified merely by denying sin's existence.
In our critique of popular religion in America and its leadership, we
must be careful to avoid two errors in evaluation commonly made by
new class scholars and journalists. The first error is the assumption that
by changing the mass media offerings of religion for the "better" we
can change the attitudes and desires of the people who "consume"
these offerings. Change the media to change the people, the critics say.
But the reverse constitutes the real truth. The mass media merely give
viewers, listeners, and readers what they want. They have to in order to
survive. 1V offerings, for instance, are made possible by the sale of
advertising time or by the free-will "donations" of viewers. People pay
for what they want, and if they don't get what they want, they won't
pay. It's as simple as that. The electronic church is indeed popular and
influential among its viewers and listeners at this point in time, and it
is not likely to change in format or message or "go away" until the
same listeners and viewers themselves change-or otherwise lose inter
est in the products it markets to them. Only changed people will
change the mass media. As a specifically religious form of entertain
ment, consolation, and encouragement for "ordinary Christians" the

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1 73

electronic church is no more likely to go away than Monday night pro

football or afternoon soap operas or rock 'n' roll radio. But when fans
-as consumers-have different needs to be met, we can be certain
that the mass media will accommodate, and try to meet those new
needs as well .
The second error often made b y new class journalists and scholars in
assessing popular religion is their judgment that its celebrity and prag
matic leaders are really authoritarian "demagogues" who "rip off' a
gullible public in pursuit of their own selfish interests and "posh" life
styles. Such criticism, however, is more often than not a function of
their own personal and class interests. For example, if Jerry Falwell
and the Moral Majority (which its critics say is neither moral nor a
majority) were promoting the left-of-center interests of the new class
with the same degree of authority-we can be quite sure that these
critics would never designate them as "authoritarian" in their ap
proach. Furthermore, it is also the case that much of the critics' j udg
ment of popular religion is based, very simply, on their own jealousy of
its leaders-their financial "empires, " their mass "following, " and the
technical sophistication of their media offerings and their organiza
tions. If the bulk of what the purveyors of popular religion offer does
resemble what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace, " then much
of the criticism levied against them can rightly be termed "cheap judg
ment. "
The fundamental defect in modern American religion is self-cen
teredness. But it is a de facto rather than intentional self-centeredness,
focusing not just on me, but on my family, my friends, my fellow
believers, my values, and my cause as well. This de facto self-centered
ness, moreover, is hardly ever recognized as such by those targeted for
criticism, because it is not what they intend . Robert H . Schuller, Oral
Roberts, Jim Bakker, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell are offended
when their critics accuse them of self-centeredness in representing the
vested interests of the capitalistic business class. Likewise, the new class
"secular humanists" are offended when their business class critics ac
cuse them of pursuing their own selfish ends (as in their defense of
abortion on demand). In our critique of the defects in any and all
religion and its leadership-especially in the area of sinful behavior

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Authority in Modern American Religion

and its consequences-we have to remember that "they" are most of

ten no different from "us . " Our judgment here must not be cheap.
The degradation of knowledge and the superficiality of relationships
in popular religion are the direct consequence of the instrumentaliza
tion of faith. When the medium and the method are the message, the
very locus of "truth" itself, knowledge for its own sake is degraded in
favor of technical expertise and its pragmatic application . Likewise,
since love is the only authentic basis for deep human relationships,
and since love cannot be adequately rationalized and transmitted by
either the electronic or printed mass media without actual person-to
person encounter, "real" relationships simply don't exist in popular
religion. They are an illusion, an invisible fantasy of the mind, that
will ultimately be found out as such by its practitioners .
The assertion that the medium and the method are the message is
derived from logical positivism, the school of philosophy in which the
meaning of a proposition is the method of its verification . Here empiri
cal evidence is necessary in order to determine the meaning of a state
ment. Consequently, the precise nature of "ultimate reality" is not
even a legitimate topic for philosophical consideration, and any asser
tions about God , the soul, immortality, moral and aesthetic values,
and "universal substances" cannot be accepted as valid or invalid, true
or false. Thus the core values of popular religion-accommodation,
success, and immediate results-are really instrumental values (in
contrast to the more consummative classical values of truth, goodness,
and beauty). Accommodation-to what? Success-in what? Immedi
ate results-in what? And for what reason? These values lack substan
tive content in terms of "ultimate concern, " the very ground of
religious faith .
Because it h a s an inadequate understanding o f s i n and its conse
quences-of fallen nature-popular religion is itself illusory and highly
superficial . Suffering, poverty, and tragedy are real in the present order
of things . Possibility thinking alone is simply not enough to turn trage
dy into triumph, war into peace, poverty into plenty, racism into racial
harmony, crime into virtue. Who, . then, is to blame for the inadequa
cies of modern American religion? Some will answer this question by
saying that because popular religion only gives people what they want,
the people who consume it are themselves to blame if what they want

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1 75

is not really what they need. But we shall take another position; that its
leaders must take the blame-if they be leaders at all .
Celebrities have fans, not followers. Therefore whatever "leader
ship" they exercise is of the most superficial variety, at least when it
comes to the transformative character of religion-in discipline and
love. Entertainers cannot change people. And pragmatic church lead
ers who model their ministries after media celebrities and corporation
chairmen are also inadequate to the task of transformation-social or
personal. Schuller to the contrary, the retailing of religion through the
pragmatic methods of the marketplace and free exchange reduces
people to commodities to be bought and sold, and, in so doing, it
denies their uniqueness and infinite value as bearers of the very image
of God.
Religion should meet the deepest needs of people, and religious
leaders should be the ones to help meet those needs. But do they, in
fact? The popular TV evangelists often talk about meeting needs and
healing hurts, which they have identified with uncanny accuracy as
loneliness, alienation, and fear. But how they "meet" these needs and
"heal" these hurts is another matter altogether.
Fore enumerates the ways popular TV evangelists seek to meet the
needs-and heal the hurts-of their viewing fans. For example, one
favorite electronic church technique is "successful people. " Almost
every popular evangelical program includes an interview with a person
who has made it-a singer or well-known businessman , an actor or
beauty queen, who describes how "bad" things were until God was
brought into the picture, and how all is now wonderful. Praise the
Lord! The message is simple: Believe in Jesus, and all will be wonder
ful for you, too . But when hopeful believers begin to realize that they
are not becoming especially healthy or wealthy, are not really getting
what they want, they can't blame God; they blame themselves and sink
deeper into the spiral of self-doubt, because in popular religion faith in
God is actually faith in oneself. When God is no longer useful he
ceases to exist.
Another favorite technique, Fore goes on to say, is the "give-to-get''
ploy, one used by every major TV and radio evangelist. Again, the
message is simple: If you give-really give-to God (through that par
ticular evangelist), he will return the gift to you, and much more

Authority in Modern American Religion

besides. Oral Roberts calls it the "seed-faith" concept, and it is funda

mental to the spectacular financial success of his ministry. Give first
by faith-and "expect a miracle. " Bolstered by biblical proof texts, the
1V evangelists parade people across the screen who gave and then got
something even bigger in return . You haven't gotten something back
from God? You j ust haven't given enough! Although most viewers and
listeners do not give all that much money to the celebrity leaders of the
electronic church, this "heavenly lottery, " as Fore terms it, does attract
countless thousands who sometimes even have to borrow substantial
funds or mortgage their homes to support their favorite evangelist and
thus increase the chance of hitting it big, like the folks they see on 1V.
As in any other lottery, a few people do win; but the losers outnumber
the winners a thousand to one.
The fans of the leaders of popular religion in America seem to want
what these retailers offer them through mass suggestion (they do have
influence at this point). Permeating it all-the whole electronic
church structure-is what Fore calls the "Madison Avenue sell. "
Watching Jerry Falwell's "Old-Time Gospel Hour" one Sunday morn
ing, he lost track after twelve sales pitches, for everything from "Jesus
First" pins to a trip to Israel. In a free-enterprise economy, the basic
purpose of advertising is to get people to buy something they don't
really need. Do the retailers of religion-in the electronic church and
in the institutional church-think that the values of the gospel are so
obscure that only the hard sell can move them off the shelf? Catchy
slogans, pop songs, glad names, bad names, stacking the cards, band
wagon-every technique basic to the advertising industry, is part of the
stock-in-trade of the electronic church and its kin, which, Fore insists,
are selling something people don't need at all-a superficial, magical
God. 1 1 5
In the mass culture of affluent America today, where work is the
means and play the end, entertainment is a need, a big need, and it
should not be despised . Furthermore, the celebrity leaders of popular
religion, no less than the Hollywood stars they mimic, are doing a fine
job of meeting that need-for the born again, at least. But from the
biblical perspective, entertainment is hardly the most important func
tion of religion . The very fact that the anxiety-ridden practitioners of

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1 77

popular religion also feel a strong need for consolation and encourage
ment to "go on" rests on the fact that there is something very wrong
with the world as we know it, something that falls far short of what
God, in his parental love, originally intended for his children and for
all creation.
Understood biblically, the abundant life requires that the fatal flaws
inherent in fallen nature-suffering, tragedy, poverty, and the rest of
the wages of sin-be remedied, and be remedied not just for me and
my kind of people, but for all people. God is good, and Jesus is my
friend, yes. But God, as our divine parent, would in no wise be a
loving God if he did not judge and so remedy the consequences of the
works of sin and the self-centeredness of his children who still live in
sin . God is a God of rewards, but he is also a God of punishment, as
any good parent must be. This is precisely where the celebrity and
pragmatic leaders of popular religion have failed, both in their very
understanding of God himself and of what God would like and in the
essence of message they proclaim by word and deed. Sin is a spiritual
sickness, the symptoms of which these leaders treat without diagnosing
its cause, self-centeredness itself. Thus the treatment they give is super
ficial and ineffective at best, and conterproductive at worst.
Because the very foundations of American society, including the
family, are crumbling, we must seek and find strong leaders. But we
need a new kind of leader-beyond the celebrity, beyond the pragma
tist-to show us the way to the abundant life, the good life that God
originally intended for his children and still longs for us to have. De
spite his new class biases, Fore is completely right when he insists that
no medium or method of conveying the Christian gospel can meet
people's basic needs for recognition, involvement, worthiness, growth,
and, indeed, salvation itself, without the loving give and take of per
son-to-person interaction over a long period of time. This is what com
munity really means, and this is exactly where popular religion and its
leaders are not successful .
Biblically speaking, community is to be found in the church as the
extended family of God, a concept that the institutional church in
America has tried to model-without success-and one that any kind
of "invisible" religion, by its very nature, is incapable of modeling. In

Authority in Modern American Religion

secular society, in a world of increasing modernity, where homeless

ness is the norm, the only way religion can really be "successful" is to
provide a home for the homeless-a family that includes not just my
kind of people, but God's kind of people, who love him with every
thing they have, and who love their neighbor (rich or poor, left or
right, appealing or unattractive, sophisticated or ordinary) as much as
they love themselves. The church, therefore, does need to become
God's ideal family, both in word and in deed. And its leaders will have
to be heroic leaders who really live and exemplify the life they preach
and teach, whose authority is recognized in their nobility, in their
concrete modeling of the love of God, the only force that can save and
transform a world plagued with the consequences of sin.
If virtue has gone out of the American nation, it is because virtue
the practice of love-has gone out of our leaders, in religion no less
than in politics. Love is itself the capacity of the mature, productive
character, marked by the sense of responsibility, care, respect, and
knowledge of any other human being, the wish to further his life. The
social structure of Western civilization as a whole, and of America in
particular, and the spirit resulting from it, are simply not conducive to
the development of love. In our society, real love is a relatively rare
phenomenon. 1 1 6
As Christopher Lasch has shown so well, ours is a culture of narcis
sism in which people with narcissistic personalities, although not
necessarily more numerous than before, play an increasingly conspicu
ous part in contemporary life, often rising to positions of eminence.
They are our "leaders. " Thriving on the adulation of the masses, these
celebrities set the tone of public life and private life, since the machin
ery of celebrity-dam recognizes no boundaries between the public and
private realms. Modern American celebrities live out the fantasy of
narcissistic success, which consists of nothing more substantial than a
wish to be vastly admired, not for one's accomplishments, one's pro
ductivity, but simply for oneself, uncritically and without reserva
tion. 1 1 7
The main condition for the achievement of love, in leaders and
followers alike, is the overcoming of one's own narcissism . The narcis
sistic orientation is one in which we experience as real only that which

The Problem of "Homelessness" and Its Solution

1 79

exists in ourselves, while phenomena in the outside world have no

reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of
their being useful-or dangerous-to ourselves. Narcissists have no
feeling of self-worth apart from the adulation of the masses who tell
them they are valuable, who admire them. The culture of narcissism,
then, is structured without self-love, love for others, or love for God .
Goodness here is not the practice of love; rather, it is the cultivation of
the usefulness of an object to oneself and one's own self-interest. And
this is precisely the reason why so many celebrities are, at the very core
of their being, unhappy and unfulfilled.
In religion, as well as in our culture as a whole, the instrumentaliza
tion of faith-in God, in science, in America-is good evidence of this
lack of love. What we are witnessing, behind the mask of a religious
awakening, is really a regression to an idolatrous concept of God, and
a transformation of the love of God and of others into a relationship
fitting an alienated character structure. Instead of truly knowing God
as our divine parent and serving him by taking responsibility for each
other as brothers and sisters, we use God and others for our own pur
poses. Today people are ridden with anxiety and have no principles to
live by, and they find themselves without an aim in life, except one to
move ahead. This is sin; but the leaders of our culture, even the reli
gious leaders, tell us it is virtue. We may "love" those who serve the
purpose of helping us get ahead, but this is hardly authentic love, at
least not in the sense of agape. Only in the love of those who do not
serve a purpose does real love begin to unfold. 1 1 8
At this point, we can say that the crisis of authority in our culture is
ultimately a crisis caused by the lack of love, both on the part of leaders
themselves and on the part of their followers. The very battle against
"authoritarianism" itself in modern Western culture is the conse
quence of leadership without love.
From the perspective of biblical faith, and of agape, the order orig
inally intended for creation was unity. At the foundation of this unity
was to be the family, in which love is the unifying force, the power
that binds individuals together in a common purpose. The family,
then, was to have been the model by which society as a whole could be
organized on the basis of unconditional love and mutual caring for one

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Authority in Modern American Religion

another. But unity and modernity, in the family itself and in all social
relations, are at war with each other.
For all their nineteenth-century flavor, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx,
and Sigmund Freud still dominate American culture today. Their
thought and the reaction against it are pivotal to the contemporary
understanding of life, shaped by modernity in general and science in
particular. In common , they teach a doctrine of competition and hos
tility that defeats the very pursuit of unity-epitomized in the biblical
ideal of the family centered on God-that would save us. Darwin saw
humanity as the end of a ruthless "survival of the fittest" formula.
Marx saw society as iron-ribbed, bloody class warfare. Freud thought
that the strongest part of the mind was a seething cauldron of powerful
ly repressed hostility, terror, and aggression.
The theories of Darwin, Marx, and Freud are a judgment on the
failure of love in Christianity. Popular religion in America has mental
ized love. But love is really an activist principle, and service is the way
love is enacted, the concrete way it matures. The best evidence of the
lack of love in modern American society is the lack of service-real
service-among its citizens. The advertising industry itself is well
aware of the profound desire for service-joyful service-and it assures
the best of service in order to market its products successfully. We
service what we sell. Service with a smile. Thank you for letting us
serve you . Yet, in today's self-centered society, such slogans are more
often laughed at than really believed, because most Americans know
that service is increasingly hard to find and is available only at a very
high cost (as in "First Class" air travel or "luxury" hotel accommoda
tions), and even then only with resentment on the part of those who
must serve. If virtue has gone out of American leaders, it is because
"servanthood"-and the humility that goes with it-has gone out of
the very idea of leadership.
Modern heroic leaders of religion are "extraordinary" individuals
with bigness of spirit and a comprehensiveness of vision that does not
separate religion from the rest of life in a secular world. They know
that religion is irrelevant if it doesn't affect our work and our play and
our relations with others. Heroic religious leaders have courage, be-

The Problem of "Homelessness" and Its Solution

cause the forces of sin and the consequences of sin are not easy to
defeat. These forces fight hardest in the presence of those who really
have the power to conquer them. Heroic leaders are not narcissistic;
they have a high degree of self-esteem. They are open, honest, and
sensitive to others. They don't count the cost of goodness and are
willing to pay any price for its realization, whatever the odds. And
heroic leaders of religion are compassionate . In the words of poet
theologian Frederick Buechner,
Compassion i s the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it's l ike to live
inside somebody else's ski n .
I t i s the knowledge that there c a n never really b e a n y peace a n d j o y for me
until there is peace and joy finally for you too. l l 9

Like loving parents, heroic leaders will have no happiness or peace

until their followers, and the rest of humanity as well, also have the
same. Thus such leaders never rest in the face of suffering and tragedy.
When others suffer, they suffer. Heroic religious leaders have the gift
of power-"sacred" power-that can change the hearts of individuals
and nations. And they feel obliged to use that power for the sake of
their people, their people's needs, and the needs of the world as a
whole. In a word, the strongest heroic leaders are themselves servants,
nay, the very servants of the servants of God . It is in the nobility of this
strength-in servanthood-that their authority is both recognized and
authenticated. But more than that, the truth of their teaching and
example is borne out in their fruits, in the quality of the character of
their followers.
Heroic religious leaders, like all heroes, are as rare today as ever, but
they are needed more. The contemporary fascination with celebrities
in our culture is but a substitute for the heroes we long for in our
hearts, but cannot find. By their own teaching and example, heroic
leaders of religion motivate their followers to love unconditionally,
and to do so in concrete, demonstrative ways that literally transform
men and women and the social structures they establish together.
Erich Fromm tells us that authentic love is possible only if two
persons communicate with each other from the center of their being,

Authority in Modern American Religion

hence each one of them experiences himself from the center of his
existence. Only in this "central experience" is human reality, only
here is aliveness, only here is the true basis for love. Love, experienced
thus, is a constant challenge; it is never a resting place, but a moving,
growing, working together; even whether there is harmony or confl ict,
joy or sadness, is secondary to the fundamental fact that two people
experience themselves from the essence of their existence, that they are
one with each other by being one with themselves, rather than by
fleeing from themselves. There is only one proof for the presence of
love-the depth of the relationship, and the aliveness and strength in
each person concerned . This is the fruit by which love is recognized
and the evidence that the superficial "love" purveyed by the leaders of
popular religion in America isn't really love at all . When superficial
relationships are the norm, love is an illusion. 12
Love isn't love until you give it away. Authentic love is infectious; it
demands continuance; it is, ultimately, irresistible. Viktor Frankl de
scribes this infectious quality of love, and in so doing indicates exactly
how love is transmitted and how it can grow in community. We can
not become fully aware of the essence of other human beings unless
we love them, he insists. By the spiritual act of love one is enabled to
see the essential traits and features in the beloved; and even more, one
sees that which is potential in oneself, that which is not yet actualized
but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by one's love-in one's
giving to the beloved-the loving person enables the beloved to actual
ize these potentialities. 121 This is why authentic "dialogue" between
two opposing parties, motivated by love and concretized in service
despite wha tever the disagreement-leads, ultimately, to unity. When
I give you love from the center of my being, from my heart, and you
receive it, you'll want to return it. In the process of dialogue you
become more like me and I become more like you . The real evangel,
the good news of the gospel , is not a list of right doctrines or moral do's
and don'ts . It is the love of God conveyed by one person to another
unconditionally. This love transforms the receiver, and all the more so
when he doesn't expect it and feels unworthy of it. By loving people
unconditionally, we assure them that they have value, that they de
serve to be loved. The devil has no weapon against unconditional love.

The Problem of "Homelessness" and Its Solution

When leaders love and serve their followers in this way, the follow
ers themselves will be motivated to love others and to love the world .
This self-giving love is exactly what makes heroic leaders saints. Love
is the very content of their message. Furthermore, when love is the
motivation, the method of its actualization will in no wise contradict
the purpose behind it. Thus, when we say that in popular religion the
method itself is the message-and therefore defective-we are simply
declaring that the method alone, the technique of application, is emp
ty of content and void of meaning. In the religion of mass culture, the
technology of application functions mainly as a method of self-aggran
dizement for the rel igious "leaders" who employ it. There is nothing
inherently wrong with the modern technology utilized by religion.
What is wrong is the motivation behind it. In the words of Buckmin
ster Fuller, we have invented all the right technology for the wrong
reasons.
What America-and the rest of the world-needs, then, is godly
leaders who, by the discipline they impose on themselves and their
followers, produce saints. If Christianity wishes to have a positive and
transformative influence in America-to speak again with authority
its leaders will have to provide the one thing all modern Americans
need most of all: a loving family and a home. And to do this it will
have to have heroic leaders-strong saints-and a new medium to
bring the church home in a more substantial way than the electronic
church has done.
In thinking only about ourselves, we tend to forget God. Popular
religion has been so self-centered that it has literally forgotten about
what God wants. Its practitioners think only about what they want and
what God can do for them, not what they can do for God. When
children only take from their parents and give nothing in return,
neither the children nor their parents are happy. The harmony and
unity of the family is a function of the loving give and take between
parents and children; and, in the Christian family, between all of its
members and God. When we finally give up our antiquated notion of
God as a feudal lord who demands absolute obedience from his vassals,
but doesn't necessarily love them, we shall have to replace that idea
with the biblical understanding of God in which God is our divine

Authority in Modern American Religion

parent who gave us free will to either love him or reject him, and so
cause suffering through this alienation . Without free will there can be
no good or evil .
One o f the most heroic leaders o f Christianity i n our time-a true
saint-was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and pastor
who was incarcerated and executed for his resistance to the Nazis. In
his own suffering and in sharing the suffering of the others who also
were ultimately executed by Hitler, Bonhoeffer came to understand
that God is suffering, too. "It is a good thing to learn early , " he wrote
his sister Sabine in 1 94 2 , "that God and suffering are not opposites but
rather one and the same thing and necessarily so; for me the idea that
God Himself suffers is far and away the most convincing piece of
Christian doctrine. " Bonhoeffer came to believe that the accommodat
ing "popular rel igion" of his day in Germany was not authentic Chris
tianity. Rather, the true Christian learns
the reversal of what religious man expects from God . Man is sum moned to
share in God's sufferings at the hand of a godless world, without attempting
to gloss over or explain its ungodliness i n some religious way or other. He
m ust live a "secular" life and thereby share in God's suffering . . . . To be a
Christian does not mean to be rel igious in a particular way, to make some
thing of oneself . . . on the basis of some method or other, but to be a
man-not a type of man, but the man that Christ creates in us. It is not the
rel igious act that makes the Christian , but participation in the suffering of
God in the secular life. This is metanoia [i . e . , conversion] : not in the first
place thi nking about one's own needs, problems, sins, and fears, but allow
ing oneself to be caught up into the way of Jesus Christ, into the messianic
event, thus fulfilling Isaiah 5 3 .

. . . 122

Popular religion will never be able to transform modern American

society and the world as a whole into the family God originally intend
ed, because it is no less self-centered than the "rest" of secular culture.
Self-centeredness, the original sin, must first be done away with if that
family is ever to come to fruition in what Jesus called the Kingdom of
God. Again, the only antidote for self-centeredness is self-sacrifice.
Those who are centered on God sacrifice themselves for others; but
those who are not centered on God sacrifice others for themselves.
Individualists insist on their rights, but Christians-motivated by

The Problem of "Homelessness" and Its Solution

agape-are willing to give up their rights for the sake of others and for
God himself.
It is not the purpose of this discussion to debate whether God's
original purpose for creation can ever actually be realized in the world.
The realists of our generation deny that possibility, and they are the
vast majority. But the idealists live and work, however "unrealistical
ly, " for the day when their impossible dream will come to fruition .
They give us hope, and they alone can lead us on the path toward
transformation . William G. McLoughlin of Brown University, the
foremost authority on revivalism and religious awakenings in America,
is one of those idealists. In his recent book, Revivals, Awakenings, a nd
Reform, McLoughlin makes a prediction that his realistic colleagues in
the academy find ridiculous, however much they m i s;ht wish it were
true. But that prediction is a fitting conclusion to our discussion of
authority and leadership in modern American religion; and however
impossible it may seem, we should all hope, pray, and live as if he
were correct, because we are the ones who, in so doing, can make it
happen-for America, the world, and God himself:
At some point in the future, early in the 1 990s at best, a consensus will
emerge that will thrust into political leadership a president with a platform
committed to the kinds of fundamental restructuring that have followed our
previous awakenings . . . . Prior to this institutional restructu ring must come
a n ideological reorientation. Such a reorientation will most l ikely include a
new sense of the mystical unity of all mankind and of the vital power of
harmony between man and nature . The godhead will be defi ned in less
dualistic terms, and its power will be understood less in terms of an absol u
tist, sin -hating, death-dealing "Alm ighty Father in Heaven" and more in
terms of a life-supporting, nurturi ng, empathetic, easygoing, parental,
(Motherly as well as Fatherly) image. The nourishing spirit of mother earth,
not the wrath of an angry father above, will domi nate rel igious thought
(though different faiths and denominations will commun icate th is ideal in
different ways ). Sacrifice of self will replace self-aggrandizement as a defini
tion of virtue; helping others will replace competitiveness as a value; institu
tions will be organized for the fulfi llment of i ndividual needs by means of
cooperative communal efforts rather than through the isolated nuclear
family . . . .

1 86

Authority in Modern American Religion

The reason an awakening takes a generation or more to work itself out is

that it m ust grow with the young; it must escape the enculturation of the old
ways. It is not worthwhile to ask who the prophet of this awakening is or to
search for new ideological blueprints in the works of the learned . Revitaliza
tion i s growing up around us in our children, who are both more innocent
and more knowing than their parents or grandparents. It is their world that
has yet to be reborn . 1 2 3

Notes

I. Gallup Opinion Index, Religion in America 1 976, Report No. 1 30.

2. Ernest van den Haag, "Of Happiness and of Despair We Have No Measure," in

3.
4.

5.
6.

7.

8.

9.

1 0.
11.

12.
13.
14.
15.
16.

Mass Culture, ed. Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White (Glencoe, Il
l inois: The Free Press, 1 9 57), pp. 5 04- 5 3 6 .
Bernard Rosenberg, "Mass Culture in America , " in Rosenberg a n d White, Mass
Culture, pp. 3- 1 2.
See van den Haag, "Of Happiness and Despair"; see also Louis Schneider and
Sanford M. Dornbusch, Popular Religion: Inspirational Books in America (Chi
cago: The University of Chicago Press, 1 9 5 8), pp. 1 32- 1 3 3 .
See Schneider and Dornbusch, Popular Religion, p. 1 1 n, who offer this hypo
thetical profile of the typical reader of religious bestsellers.
Paul F . Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton, "Mass Communications, Popular Taste
and Organized Social Action , " in Rosenberg and White, Mass Culture, pp. 46 146 5 .
Skip Hollandsworth, "The Rites of Sports, " San Francisco Chronicle, November
5, 1 980, pp. 6 3 , 6 5 ; and "Why Religion Appeals to Athletes, " San Francisco
Chronicle, November 5 , 1 980, p. 6 5 .
Gary Diedrichs, " A Star i s Born-Again , " Los Angeles (September 1 980), pp. 1 741 78, 245-248; and Texie Runnels and Chuck Chagrin, " Hollywood's Religious
Revival , " Rona Barrett Looks at Hollywood Morality (December 1 98o-January
1 9 8 1 ) , pp. 1 6- 1 9 .
In Popular Religion, Schneider and Dornbusch analyze the contents o f religious
bestsellers published between 1 87 5 and 1 9 5 5 , and put forward a list of thirty-five
dominant themes espoused therein. Many of these are still apparent, even more
so, in 1 98 1 .
Schneider and Dornbusch, Popular Religion, pp. 1 3- 1 9, 2 5-63 , 87- 1 00, 1 04,
1 0 5 , 1 1 0, 1 42.
Robert S . M ichaelson, "The Protestant Ministry in America, " in The Ministry in
Historical Perspective, ed. H . Richard N iebuhr and Daniel Day Williams (New
York: Harper & Row, 1 9 56), p. 28 1 .
M ichaelson , "The Protestant Ministry, " pp. 28o-284.
Winthrop S. H udson, Religion in America, 2d ed . (New York: Scribners, 1 973),
pp. 1 34- 1 4 1 .
Hudson, Religion in America, pp. 1 4 1 - 1 44.
Hudson, Religion i n America, pp . 228-2 3 3 .
Hudson, Religion i n America, pp. 3 6 3-368; and Bernard A . Weisberger, They
Gathered at the River (Boston: Little, Brown, 1 9 58), pp. 243-26 5 .

By Wha t Authority
1 7. William G. McLoughlin, "Aimee Semple McPherson: 'Your Sister in the King's

Glad Service , ' " Journal of Popular Culture (Winter 1 967), pp. 1 9 3-2 17.
1 8. See Richard Quebedeaux, The N e w Charismatics: The Origins, Development, and
Significance of Neo-Pentecostalism (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1 976),

pp. 87-92 .
19. Hudson, Religion in America, pp. 384, 3 8 5 .
20. Weisberger, They Gathered at the River, p . 274.
2 1 . Christian Life (August 1 9 50), p. 4
22. Bill Bright, "The Truth about Hollywood , " Christian Life (July 1 9 50), pp. 1 o-1 2 ,

23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.

40, 4 2 ; Richard C . Halverson, "Any Good-from Hollywood?" Christianity To

day (December 2 3 , 1 9 57), pp. 8- w; and J. Edwin Orr, The Inside Story of the
Hollywood Christian Group (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1 9 5 5).
Norman Vincent Peale, Interview: "Jesus Can Help You Think Positively, " Christian Life (May 1980), p. 3 8 .
Quoted b y H udson, Religion i n America, p. 290.
Hudson, Religion in America, pp. 287-290.
Christian Life (May 1 980), p. 2 1 .
Quoted by Schneider and Dornbusch, Popular Religion, pp. 4 5 , 46 .
Quoted by Schneider and Dornbusch, Popular Religion, p 46n .
Hudson, Religion i n America, p. 3 87.
See Peale, "Jesus Can H el p You Think Positively, " pp. 20, 2 1 , 3&-38.
" Profitability of Religious Titles, " Publishers Weekly (July 5 , 1 976), pp. 47, 48.
Joel A . Carpenter, " Fundamentalist Institutions and the Rise of Evangelical Prot
estantism, 1 9 2 9- 1 942, " Church History (March 1 980), p. 62n.
Christian Life advertisement, Publishers Weekly (September 24, 1 979), p. 79
"Christian M usic Is Suddenly Big Business , " San Francisco Chronicle, January 2 ,
1 98 1 , p. 40.
Ben Armstrong, The Electric Church (Nashville: Nelson, 1 979), pp. 1 9-48 .
Armstrong, The Electric Church, pp. 8 1 , 82, 1 47.
J . Thomas Bisset, " Religious Broadcasting: Assessing the State of the Art, " Chris
tianity Today (December 1 2 , 1 980), p. 2 8 .
Martin E . Marty, 'Television is a New, Universal Religion , " Context (January 1 5 ,
1 9 8 1 ) p. 1 .
Martin E . Marty, "Interpreting American Pluralism , " i n Religion in America:
1 9 50 to the Present, ed . Jackson W. Carroll, Douglas W. Johnson, and Martin E .
Marty ( San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1 979), p. 8 3 ; a n d Martin E . Marty, "I
think-on the Electronic Church , " The Lutheran Standard (January 2 , 1 979), p.
11.
Armstrong, The Electric Church, pp. 1 1 5- 1 1 8 .
Jim Montgomery, "The Electric Church , " The Wall Street Journal, May 1 9,
1 978 , p. 1 5 .
Armstrong, The Electric Church, pp. 1 0 1 - 1 07; and Paul Hemphill, "Praise the
Lord-and Cue the Cameraman , " . TV Guide (August 1 2 , 1 978), pp. 4, 5
Armstrong, The Electric Church, pp. 1 08- 1 1 0 .
Armstrong, The Electric Church, p p . 8 2 , 8 3; "Schuller, Robert H(arold), " Current
Biography (June 1 979), pp. 3 3-3 5 ; and Personal Interview with Bain Fisher, Au
gust 1 979.
.

39.

40.
41.
42.
43.
44.

Notes
45. Bisset, " Religious Broadcasting, " p. 29.
46. Richard A. Blake, "Catholic, Protestant, Electric, " America (March 1 5 , 1 980), p.

2 1 2.
47. " 5o% Watched Religious TV Programs , " Emerging Trends (January 1 98 1 ), p. 4
48. Blake, "Catholic, Protestant, Electric, " p. 2 1 1 .
49. Personal interview with Mike Nason, executive assistant to Robert H . Schuller,

August 1 979.
50. " 5o% Watched Religious TV Programs , " p. 4
5 1 . Bisset, "Religious Broadcasting, " p. 28.
52. A fine analysis of the 1 979 Gallup survey on evangelicals in the United States is

53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.

62.
63.

64.
65.
66.
67.

found in the unpublished Ph . D. dissertation by James Davison Hunter, "Contem

porary American Evangelicalism: Conservative Religion and the Quandary of
Modernity, " Department of Sociology, Douglass College, Rutgers University,
1 980.
Franklin B . Krohn, "The Sixty-Minute Commercial: Marketing Salvation , " The
Humanist (November-December 1 980), pp. 26-3 1 , 6o.
Armstrong, The Electric Church, p. 1 6 5 .
Bryan R. Wilson, "Foreword , " i n The Social Impact of New Religious Movements,
ed. Bryan R. Wilson (New York: The Rose of Sharon Press, 1 98 1 ), pp. viii, ix.
Robert H . Schuller, Your Church Has Real Possibilities (Glendale, California:
G/L Publications, 1 974), pp. 1 <r-29.
Quoted by B lake, "Catholic, Protestant, Electric, " p. 2 1 3 .
Bryan R. Wilson, Religion in Secular Society (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1 966),
pp. 1 7, 5 8 .
Peale, "Jesus C a n Help You Think Positively , " p. 20 .
See Quebedeaux, The New Charismatics, pp. 1 6 1 - 1 74.
This social-scientific reassessment of the pentecostal experience is exemplified in
John P . Kildahl, The Psychology of Speaking in Tongues (New York: Harper &
Row, 1 972), a ten-year mental health study of Protestant charismatics or "neo
pentecostals . "
See James Davison H unter, "The New Class and The Young Evangelicals, "
Review of Religious Research (December 1 980), pp. 1 5 5- 1 68 .
O n the topic o f the accommodation o f modern evangelicals t o "mainstream liber
alism , " see Richard Quebedeaux, The Young Evangelicals (New York: Harper &
Row, 1 974); and Richard Quebedeaux, The Worldly Evangelicals ( San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1 978). On recent fundamentalist accommodation, see Jerry Fal
well, with Ed Dobson and Ed H indson, The Fundamentalist Phenomenon: The
Resurgence of Conservative Christianity (Garden City, New York: Doubleday,
1 98 1 ) .
Peale, "Jesus Can Help You Think Positively , " p. 2 1 .
Robert H . Schuller, Move Ahead with Possibility Thinking (Old Tappan, N . J . :
Spire Books, 1 967 ), p. 1 1 2.
Schuller, Move Ahead with Possibility Thinking, pp. 1 8o- 1 90.
Personal interview with Robert A. Schuller, August 1 979. On the history of the
positive thinking tradition in America , see Donald Meyer, The Positive Thinkers:
Religion as Pop Psychology from Mary Baker Eddy to Oral Roberts, rev. ed . (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1 980).

By What Authority

1 90

68. Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (New York: Warner Books, 1 979),

pp. 1 06- 1 07 .

69. Dennis a n d Rita Bennett, The Holy Spirit and You (Plainsfield, New Jersey: Logos

Books, 1 97 1 ), pp. 7 1-72. For a fuller discussion of this issue, see Quebedeaux,
The New Charismatics, pp. 1 2 8- 1 3 1 .

70. Wilson, Religion in Secular Society, pp. 68-7 1 .

7 1 . Michaelson, "The Protestant Ministry , " pp. 2 7 5-280.
72. Martin E . Marty, "The Career of Pluralism in America, " in Carroll, Johnson, and
Marty, Religion in America: 1 950 to the Present, pp. 5 1 , 5 2 .
7 3 . Marty, "Interpreting American Pluralism , " in Carroll , Johnson, and Marty, Reli
gion in America: 1 950 to the Present, p. 8 1 .
74. Bryan R . Wilson, The Noble Savages: The Primitive Origins of Charisma (Berke-

ley, California: University of California Press, 1 97 5 ), pp. 1 1 9, 1 20.

75. Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (New York: Bantam Books, 1 9 56), p. 1 09 .
7 6 . Wilson, The Noble Savages, p p . vii-xi.
77. See Quebedeaux, The Worldly Evangelicals, pp. 3- 5 .
78. I a m grateful for th is unpublished piece to Robert M . Price of Bloomfield, New

Jersey.
79. See Quebedeaux, The Worldly Evangelicals, pp. 8 3- 1 00.
80. Jerry Falwell , "Penthouse Interview: Reverend Jerry Falwel l , " Penthouse (March

1 98 1 ), pp. 1 50- 1 5 1 .
8 1 . See Fromm, The Art of Loving, pp. 6 5-68 .
82. Hunter, "Contemporary American Evangelical ism , " pp. 1 2 3- 1 2 5 .
8 3 . Michaelson, "The Protestant Ministry , " pp. 2 74, 2 7 5 .
84. Warren Hagstrom, "The Protestant Clergy as a Profession: Status and Prospects , "
Berkeley Journal of Sociology (Spring 1 9 5 7) , pp. 54-69.

85. "A Pallid but Personable Faith?" Time (Septemmber 29, 1 980), p. 8 5-a review of

David S. Schuller, Merton P. Strommen, and Milo L. Brekke, eds. , Ministry in

America (New York: Harper & Row, 1 98o).

86. Peter L. Berger, "The Class Struggle in American Religion , " The Christian Cen
tury (February 2 5 , 1 98 1 ), pp. 1 94- 1 99 .

8 7 . Hagstrom, "The Protestant Clergy , " p p . 56, 5 7 , 62 .

88. See Phillip E. Hammond, Luis Salinas, and Douglas Sloane, "Types of Clergy

Authority: Their Measurement, Location, and Effects, " Journal for the Scientific
Study of Religion ( September 1 978), pp. 241-2 5 3 .

89. Michael Walzer, Radical Principles (New York: Basic Books, 1 980), p. 1 0 .
9 0 . Peter Steinfels, The Neoconservatives (New York: Simon a n d Schuster, 1 979), pp.
5 3- 5 8 .
9 1 . Daniel Bell, Interview: "Liberalism Has Little Further Momentum, " U . S . News &
World Report (December 29, 1 98o/January 5, 1 98 1 ), p. 5 2 .
92. Peter Berger, Brigitte Berger, and Hansfried Kellner, The Homeless Mind: Modern
ization and Consciousness (New York: Vintage Books, 1 974), pp. 8 3-96.
93. Paul Goldberger, "Architecture: Johnson's Church , " The New York Times, Sep
tember 1 6, 1 980, Arts/Entertainment Section, p. 1 1 .
94. George Gallup, Jr. , "Afterword: A Coming Religious Revival , " in Carroll, John
son , and Marty, Religion in America: 1 9 50 to the Present, pp. 1 1 3- 1 1 5 ; and "State
of U . S . Religion , " The Christian Century (May 1 3 , 1 98 1 ), p. 5 3 5

Notes
9 5 . Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (New York: Basic Books, 1 98o), pp.

340-349
96. Schneider and Dornbusch, Popular Religion, pp. 70, 70n .
97. Quoted by Michaelson, "The Protestant Ministry , " p. 2 8 3 .
9 8 . From an excerpt o f the book in Psychology Today (April 1 9 8 1 ), p. 8 5 .
99. Richard J . Foster, Celebration o f Discipline (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1 978),

p. 1 .
100. Berger, Berger, and Kellner, The Homeless Mind, p . 8 2 .
1 0 1 . "Public's Views on the Moral Majority, " Emerging Trends (January 1 9 8 1 ), p . 1 .
1 02. Teresa Carpenter, "The Moral Maj ority Targets New York , " The Village Voice,

November 1 9- 2 5 , 1 980, p. 1 1 .
103. Kenneth L. Woodward, "Today's Oxford Movement, " Newsweek (January 1 2 ,

1 98 1 ), p. So.
1 04. Lawrence Cunningham, The Meaning of Saints ( San Francisco: Harper & Row,

1 980), pp. 5, 1 7 3
105. Garry Wills, Interview: "Of Saints and Senators , " Sojourners (February 1 98 1 ), p.

1 5
106. Bryan R. Wilson, "Time, Generations, and Sectarianism, " in Wilson, The Social
Impact of New Religious Movements, pp. 2 1 9, 2 20.

107. James Gray, "Freshmen Veering to Right, " (Berkeley) Independent and Gazette,

February 1 , 1 98 1 , p. 3
1 08. See Fred I Greenstein, "New Light o n Changing American Values: A Forgotten

Body of Survey Data , " Social Forces (May 1 964), pp. 44 1-4 50.
109. Knight-Ridder News Service, "Teen Poll : Friends, Peers Are Top Influences''

( 1 98 1 ).
l lO. Zick Rubin, " Seeking a Cure for Loneliness, " Psychology Today (October 1 979),

pp. 8 5 , 89.
1 1 1 . Wilson, "Foreword , " in Wilson, The Social Impact of New Religious Movements,

p. v.
1 1 2. Wilson, "Time, Generations, and Sectarians, " in Wilson, The Social Impact of
New Religious Movements, p. 2 20.

1 1 3. William F. Fore, "There Is No Such Thing as a TV Pastor, " TV Guide (July 19,

1 980), pp. 1 5 , 1 6, 1 8 .
1 14. William F. Fore, "Beyond the Electronic Church, " The Christian Century (Jan-

uary 7- 1 4 , 1 98 1 ), p. 29.
1 1 5 . Fore, "Beyond the Electronic Church , " p. 30.
1 1 6. Fromm, The Art of Loving, pp. 39, 70.
1 1 7. Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism, pp. 390, 39 1 .
1 1 8. Fromm, The Art of Loving, pp. 40, 87, 99
1 1 9. Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (New York: Harper &

Row, 1 9 7 3), p. 1 5 .
1 20. Fromm, The Art of Loving, pp. 86, 87.
121. Viktor E . Frankl , Man's Search for Meaning (New York: Pocket Books, 1 963), pp.

1 76, 1 77.
122. Quoted by Eberhard Bethge, Costly Grace: A n Illustrated Introduction t o Dietrich
Bonhoeffer (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1 979), pp. 1 64, 1 6 5 .
1 2 3 . William G . McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform (Chicago: The Uni

versity of Chicago Press, 1 978), pp. 2 1 4, 2 1 6 .

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Schuller, David S . , Strommen, Merton P . , a n d Brekke, M ilo L . , eds. Minis

try in America. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1 9 80.

" Schuller, Robert H(arold) . " Current Biography (June 1 979), pp. 3 3-3 5 .
Schuller, Robert H . Move Ahead with Possibility Thinking . Old Tappan, N .
J . : Spire Books, 1 96 7 .
---

You r Church Has Real Possibilities. Glendale, California: G/L Publi-

cations, 1 974

"State of U . S . Rel igion . " The Christian Century (May 1 3 , 1 98 1 ), p. 5 3 5

Steinfels, Peter. The Neoconservatives. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1 979.
Walzer, M ichael, Radical Principles. New York: Basic Books, 1 980.
Weisberger, Bernard A . They Ga thered a t the River. Boston: Little, Brown ,
1 958.
"Why Rel igion Appeals to Athletes. " S a n Francisco Chronicle (November 5 ,
1 980), p . 6 5 .
Wills, Garry . Interview: "Of Saints and Si nners . " Sojourners (February 1 98 1 ) ,
pp. 1 2- 1 5 .
Wilson, Bryan R . Religion i n Secular Society.

Baltimore: Penguin Books,

1 966.
---

The Noble Savages: The Primitive Origins of Charisma . Berkeley,

California: University of California Press, 1 97 5 .

---

, ed . The Social Impact of New Religious Movements. New York: The

Rose of Sharon Press, 1 98 1 .

Woodward, Kenneth L . "Today's Oxford Movement. " Newsweek (January 1 2 ,
1 98 1 ) , p. So.
Yankelovich, Daniel . " New Rules in American Life: Search ing for Self-Ful
fil lment i n a World Turned Upside Down . " Psychology Today (April
1 98 1 ), pp. 3 5-9 1 .

Index

Abortion, 1 6 1
Abu ndant Life, 49

Accommodation values, 8 z-88

Act of Marriage, The ( La Haye), 48
Action: and belief, 1 2 2-1 2 3; moral, and
belief, 1 46- 1 47
Advance team , in evangelistic
campaigns, 26
Advertising, and electronic church, 1 76
Afterlife, opinion on existence of, 2
Agape, 1 1 8 , 1 79
Allen, Russell , 70--7 1
American Baptist Church, 1 2 6
Anderson, John, 8 7 , 1 34
Angelus Temple, 3 1
Anti-Catholicism, rejected by Billy
Graham, 3 6
Anticommunism, 1 5 , 2 8 , 1 40
Anti-intellectualism, 3 5
Apocalyptic prophecy, 1 4; current trends
in, 9 5 ; in print media, 47
Art of Loving, The (Fromm), 1 5 5
Athletes i n Action, 8
Authority, biblical, 1 1 8- 1 24
Authority, religious: class and economic
issues in, 1 3 1 - 1 39; of cults, 1 64- 1 69:
decline of, 4 5-46, 1 0 3- 1 1 0, 1 5 6- 1 5 7 ;
determinants of, 1 1 o-- 1 1 2; and
educational achievement, 1 24- 1 2 5 ;
love-based, 1 77- 1 8 3 ; mass media and,
7-8, 1 2 , 48, 1 1 1 , 1 1 4; modern
perspective on, 1 69- 1 8 5 ; and
pluralism, 1 06- 1 1 1 , 1 56- 1 5 7;
pragmatic, 1 2 8- 1 3 1 , 1 42- 1 46 ,
1 62- 1 64; Protestant vs . Catholic
experience of, 1 1 2- 1 1 3 ; and quality of
religious life, 1 46- 1 4 7; of religious
hierarchies, 4 5-46, 1 0 3- 1 04;
resurgence of, 1 1 2- 1 1 8; and sainthood
concept, 1 62- 1 64, 1 8o-- 1 84; and
scien tific method, 1 0 3- 1 04;
suffering-based, 1 8 3- 1 84; of

theologians, 76; and theological

training, 1 04- 1 o6, 1 2 5- 1 3 1 ; and
traditional Catholicism, 1 1 2- 1 1 3 ,
1 6o-- 1 6 1 ; and voluntarv association,
.
1 08- 1 09; and youth, 1 36- 1 3 7 ,
1 64- 1 69 . See also Leadership
Authority, social: decline of, 1 3 8- 1 4 2 ,
1 5 6- 1 5 7 ; a n d honor concepts,
1 40-- 1 42; and knowledge vs.
technology, 1 48- 1 5 1 ; media
enforcement of, 6; and ,\1oral
Majority, 1 5 7- 1 60
Autry, Gene, 9
"Azusa Street revival , " 29
"Back to the Bible , " 5 2
Bacon , Francis, 1 20
Bakker, Jim, 5 8- 59 , 6 3 , 68, 8 3 , 1 44
Bakker, Tammy, 5 9
Baptist Church: education for ministry
in, 1 26; ministry in, 1 06; popular
requirements for clergy in, 1 3 1
Barnhouse, Donald Grey, 5 2
Baseball Chapel, Inc . , 8
Beecher, Henry Ward, 1 9
Belief, and action, 1 2 2- 1 24, 1 46- 1 47
Bell, Daniel, 1 3 8- 1 40
Bennett, Rita, 9 5
Bennett, Dennis, 8 5 , 9 5
Berger, Peter, 1 3 2- 1 34, q 8 , 1 40-- 1 4 1 ,
1 57

Bible, inerrancy of, 1 1 8- 1 24, q 6

Billy Graham Center, Wheaton College,
1 43

Billy Graham Evangelistic Organization,

111

Black, Karen, 1 0-- 1 1

Black Muslims, 1 08
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 1 7 3 , 1 8 3- 1 84
Boone, Debbie, 50
Boone, Pat, 9, 34, 47, 1 29
Born Again (Colson), 47

By What Au thority
Born again experience, 47-48;
popularization of, 8 5; and salvation,
1 2 3 . See also Spirit baptism
Bright, Bill, 8, 39-40, 1 2 3 , 1 44
Broadcasting, 5 7
Brooks, Phillips, 1 9-20
Brown, R. R. , 5 1
Buckley, William F . , 1 5 8
Buechner, Frederick, 1 8 1
Business class, 1 3 2- 1 34. See also " New
class"
Calvary Chapel, 70
Calvinism, 97; evangelism in, 66; vs .
New Thought, 42-4 3; preaching in,
1 9; on sin and social works, 96-97
Camp meeting, 2 2-2 3 . See also Revival
meeting
Canova, Diane, 1 0
Carter, Jimmy, 8 5
Carter, Lynda, 1 0
Cash, Johnny, 1 0 , 3 4
"Cathedral o f Tomorrow, " 5 9
Catholicism: authority i n , 1 1 2-1 1 3 , 1 1 9;
Spirit Baptism in, 84-8 5 ; traditional ,
1 6o- 1 6 1
Catholics: American, church attendance
by, 2; American, educational status of,
1 24; included in revival meetings, 36
Celebration of Discipline (Foster), 1 54
Celebrities: mass media and, 7-8; as new
focus in popular religion, 47-48; as
new focus in popular religious books.
See also Leadership, celebrity
Celebrity leadership. See Leadership,
celebritv
Charisma ta , 30
Charismatic leadership. See Leadership,
heroic
Chesterton, G . K. , 1 6 1
Children Are Wet Cement (Ortland), 48
Christian Booksellers Association, 48
Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN),
5 6-58
Christian Herald, 49
Christian Life, 40, 49, 89
Christian Mother Goose Book, The

(Decker), 48
Christian music industry, 49-50
Christian Science (Church of Christ,
Scientist), 4 1
Christianity Today, 40, 1 24

Church: as "shopping center, " 7 3-74; as

successful business enterprise, 7 3-7 5
Church growth movement, 70
Church growth strategies, 72-7 5
Church of Divine Unity, 4 1
City o f Faith, 3 5 , 1 4 3- 1 44
Cleaver, Eldridge, 48
Clergy, popular requirements for,
qo- 1 3 1 . See also Ministry
Cleveland, James, 5 0
Cole, Natalie, 1 0
Colson, Charles , 47-48, 8 5 , 1 29
Community, religious sense of, 1 77- 1 78
Conservatism, and American class
structure, 1 3 3- 1 34
Contemporary Christian Music, 50
Conversion, as focus of revivalism,
2 9-30, 40
Conwell, Russell, 19
Counterculture, and Christian music, 49
Cross and the Switchblade, The

(Wilkerson), 4 7
Crouch, Andre, 50
Crouch, Jan, 59
Crouch, Paul, 59
Cruz, Nicky, 47
Crystal Cathedral, 61, 7 1 , 1 1 6,
1 44- 1 46. See also Garden Grove
Community. Church
Cults: authori ty in, 1 1 2 ; and the problem
of homelessness, 1 64- 1 69; rise of, 1 36
Culture: "folk , " 4- 5 ; "high , " 4-5
Culture of Narcissism, The (Lasch), 1 39
Dallas Theological Seminary, 1 2 1
Darwin, Charles, 1 80
Davis, Sammy, Jr. , 9
Day, Dorothy, 1 6 3
I) e Haan, M . R. , 5 2
"Decision card , " z 6
Decision, 49
Decision-making, 1 3
Decker, Marjorie, 48
Dignity, modern concept of, 1 4 1- 1 42
Dispensationalism, 96-97
Dogma, 1 3
Dornbusch, Sanford M . , 1 50
Drama, condemned by fundamentalists,
37
Dresser, Horatio W. , 43
Dresser, Julius A. , 41
Drive-in church, 6o

Index
Durante, Jimmy, 34
Dylan, Bob, 9- 1 0 , 49
Eareckson, Joni, 48
Eddy, Mary Baker, 4 1
Edwards, Jonathan, 2 1
Electronic church, 6 , 5 3-69, 1 1 4- 1 1 5 ;
constituents and income of, 6 3-6 5 ;
criticisms of, 1 69- 1 70, 1 72- 1 7 3 ;
entertainment vs . content, 5 7- 5 8;
retailing and marketing techniques of,
66-69; shared membership with
institutional church, 70
Entertainment industrv: as arena for

evangelism, 37-40; as arena for

popular religion, 7- 1 1
Episcopal Church, dissenting trends in,
1 6o- 1 6 1
Epp, Theodore, 5 2
Evangelical Christianity, definition of,
66
Evangelicals: educational status of,
1 24- 1 2 5 ; "social location" of, 6 5-66
Evangelism, and mass communication,
66
Evangelism: ecumenical, 87; resurgence
of in 1 970s, 8 5
Evans, Dale, 9 , 34, 39
Evans, Warren Felt, 41
Faith: active versus passive, 6-7; decline
of, 1 50; instrumentalization of, 1 4- 1 5 ,
77, 1 74, 1 79; modern American
experience of, 1 70- 1 7 1 , 1 74
Falwell, Jerry, 6, 5 5- 56, 59, 6 3 , 69, 8 3 ,
8 8 , 1 2 2 , 1 44, 1 5 7- 1 5 8; organization
of, 1 1 1
Family, as foundation of relationship,
1 79
Family values: breakdown of, 1 70;
revival of, 1 56- 1 5 7, 1 59, 1 6 1 ; youth
and, 1 66- 1 67 . See also Homelessness
Fellowship Church, 70
Fellowship of Christian Athletes, 8
Fillmore, Charles, 4 1 -42
Fillmore, Myrtle, 4 1-42
Finney, Charles G . , 2 3-2 5
Fore, William F. , 1 69- 1 70, 1 7 5- 1 76
Forsyth, P. T. , 1 50- 1 5 1
Foster, Richard J . , 1 54
Fox, Emmet, 47
Frankl, Viktor, 1 8 2

1 99

Free will , 8 1 ; and New Thought,

42
Freedom, in electronic church, 68
Freud, Sigmund, 1 80
Fromm, Erich, 1 5 5 , 1 8 1- 1 8 2
Frontier, and evangelism, 2 1 -2 3
Fuller, Buckminster, 1 8 3
Fuller, Charles E . , 5 2
Fundamentalism: class origins of. 27;
conversion experience in, 2 9-30, 40;
education for ministry in, 1 26; and
modernism, 1 20- 1 2 3; and ne\v right,
1 5 7- 1 60
Fundamentalists, educational status of,
1 24- 1 2 5
Gallup poll: on b iblical inerrancy, 1 1 9;
on church attendance of television
viewers, 70; on education of religious
persons, 1 24- 1 2 5; on needs of
religious television audience , 62; on
religious attitudes, 1-3; and religious
superficiality, 1 46 - 1 47
Garden Grove Community Church,
6 1-6 2 , 73 See also Crystal Cathedral
Gay Christians, 1 08- 1 o9
Glass, Bill, 8
Glazer, Nathan, 1 3 8
God: emerging concepts of, 1 8 3- 1 8 5; as
enemy of sin, 28; immanence of, 1 7 1 ;
a s j udge, 1 3 ; opinion on existence of,
1-2; and self-centeredness, 1 5 2- 1 5 3;
and success ethic, 89
God's Answer t o Fat, Lose I t (Hunter),
48
Graham , Billy, 3 5-36, 38-39, 44,
47-48, 5 2 , 6 3 , 79, 8 2 , 87, l l l
Gray, James M . , 5 2
Great Awakenings, 2 1
Great Awakening, Second, 24
Green, AI, 49
Guideposts, 48
Guthrie, Arlo, 1 0
Haines, Connie, 3 8
Halverson, Richard, 39-4:'
Hamblen, Stuart, 39
Handbook of New Though , 4 3

"Haven o f Rest, " 5 2

Hawkins Family, 5 0
Heali ng, 3 3 - 3 5 ; "mental , " 40-42
Hearst, William Randolph, 36

2 00

Henry, Carl F. H . , 86-87

Heritage Schools, 59
Heroic leadership. See Leadership,
heroic
Hill, Calvin, 9
History of the Idea of Progress (Nisbet),
1 48
Hoffman, Oswald, 5 2
Hollandsworth, Skip, 8-9
Hollywood. See Entertainment industry;
Motion picture industry
Hollywood Christian Group , 3 7
Hollywood religious revival, 9- 1 1
Hollywood's First Presbyterian Church,
3 8-39
Homelessness, cults and, 1 64- 1 69;
modern condition of, 1 5 7 . See also
Family values
Homosexuality: and church authority,
1 08- 1 09; church issues concerning,
1 5 8- 1 59, 1 60- 1 6 1
Honor, demise of, 1 40- 1 42
"Hour of Decision , " 5 2
"Hour o f Power, " 6 2 , 7 1 -72
Human Potential m ovement, 1 5 3; and
New Thought, 89
Humanism, secular, 1 3 3- 1 34, 1 40, 1 59 .
See also N e w Thought
Humbard, Rex, 59, 62-6 3
Hunter, Frances, 48
Immediate results values, 94-98
Inductive method, 1 20- 1 2 1
Inspirational bestsellers, 5 , 46-48;
popular religious themes in, 1 2
lnstantism, 94-98
"Institute for Successful Church
Leadersh ip," 7 1
Instrumentalization of faith, 1 4- 1 5 , 77,
1 74, 1 79
Intelligentsia, influence upon
evangelism, 3 5
International Church of the Foursquare
Gospel, 3 1
"Invisible" religion, 5 5 , 70
James, William, 8 2 , 1 48
Jesus, as possibility thinker, 90-91
Jesus People, 46, 49, 5 8, 69, 87, 1 3 6
"Jesus rock, " 49- 5 0
Jews, American: educational status of,
1 24- 1 2 5 ; synagogue attendance by, 2

By What Au thority
John Paul II, Pope, 1 6o
Johnson, Philip, 6 1
Kaiser, Henry J . , 67
KDKA (Pittsburgh, Penn . ), 5 1
Kerr, Graham, 48
King, :Martin Luther, Jr. , 1 1 8
Knowledge, decline of in West,
1 24- 1 3 1 , 1 47- 1 5 2
Knox, Ronald, 1 6 1
Krohn, Franklin B . , 6 7 , 7 3
Ki.i ng, Hans, 1 6 1
L a Haye, Beverly, 48
Laity: in American Protestantism, 1 2 5;
and church leadership, 1 1 6- 1 1 7; as
servers of community, 74
Landry, Tom , 8-9
Landy, Eugene, 1 1
Lasch, Christopher, 1 3 8- 1 39, 1 78
Last Days doctrine, 9 5-96
Late Great Planet Earth, The (Lindsey),
47
Leadership, and mass culture, 5 See
also Authoritv
Leadership, cel brity, 1 1 3- 1 1 5 , 1 40; and
decl ine of authority, 46; historic
development of, 1 9-37; and invisible
religion, 5 6-6 3; limits of, 1 54- 1 5 5 ,
1 72- 1 76; of local pastors, 69-74; and
mass media, 7-8; organization and
monuments of, 142- 1 46; in popular
religion, 8- 1 1 , 1 5- 1 6
Leadership, charismatic. See Leadership,
heroic
Leadership, heroic, 1 1 7- 1 1 8; modern
need for, 1 77- 1 8 5; and sainthood,
1 6 3- 1 64, 1 80- 1 84
Leadership, pragmatic, 1 1 3 , 1 1 5-1 1 8;
limits of, 1 7 2- 1 76; organization and
monuments of, 1 4 3- 1 44. See also
Mentalism
Leadership, traditional, 1 0 3- 1 04; in
Catholicism, 1 1 2- 1 1 3 , 1 6o- 1 6 1 ; in
cults, 1 3 6; decline of, 1 04- 1 06; in
modern religion, 4 5-46; pluralism
and, 1 06- 1 1 0; and theological
training, 1 2 8- 1 29
Liberalism, and American class
structure, 1 3 3- 1 36
Liberty Baptist College, 1 44
Liebman, Joshua L. , 42, 47

Index
Lindsey, Hal, 47, 48
Lipset, Seymour Martin, 1 38
Liturgy, in revivalism, 20
Logical positivism, 1 74
"Lord of Life , " 7 1
Love, authenticity in, 1 78- 1 8 3
Luckmann, Thomas, 5 5
Lutheran Church, popular requirements
for clergy in, 1 3 1
"Lutheran Hour, The , " 5 2
Lutheranism: evangelism in, 66;
preaching in, 1 9
Magazines, a s popular religious medium,
48-49

Magruder, Jeb Stuart, 48

Maier, Walter A . , 5 2
Maranatha, 50
Marble Collegiate Church, 44, 8 1
Marty, Martin E . , 1 07
Marx, Karl , 1 2 3- 1 24, 1 80
Mass culture, 3-4, 7, 1 1 ; religion and,
76-77. See also Entertainment
industry; Print media; Radio;
Television
Mass media, 3-8, 1 1 - 1 2
Mass media: and celebrity leaders, 1 1 4;
as granters of status, 7-8; "narcotic"
function of, 6-7; and superficiality,
1 54- 1 5 5

McGavran, Donald, 7 2
McCready, James, 2 2
McLoughlin, William G . , 1 84- 1 8 5
McLuhan, Marshall, 5 3- 5 4
McPherson, Aimee Semple, 3o- 3 3 , 3 7 ,
96

McPherson, Harold S . , 3 0
McPherson, Rolf, 3 1
Meaning, as bestowed by popular
religion, 1 2- 1 3
Mears, Henrietta, 3 8- 3 9
Mentalism, 88-9 3 , 1 7 1 . S e e also
Positive thinking; Possibility thinking
Mentalization: of morality, 1 4- 1 5 , 77;. of
salvation, 44, So, 89-9 1
M esmer, Franz Anton, 40
Metanoia, 1 84
Methodism, 97-98; attitudes toward
poverty in, 96-97; education for
ministry in, 1 26 , 1 3 1 ; ministry in,
1 06 ; theology of, 8 1

Metropolitan Community Churches, 1 08

201

Military language, as metaphor in

evangelism, 3 5-36
Ministrv: education for, 1 2 1 , 1 2 5- 1 3 1 ;
statu of, 1 04- 1 06
Ministry in America, 1 30

Minorities, in ministry, 1 08- 1 09

Monuments, 1 4 3- 1 46
Moody, Dwight L. , 2 1 , 2 5-27, 5 6
Moody Bible Institute, 5 1 , 1 2 1
Moody Monthly, 49
Moral Maj ority, 6, 1 5 , 87;

accommodation values in, 83-84;

political effectiveness of, 1 5 7- 1 60
Morality, influence of, 1 46- 1 47;
"mentalization" of, 1 4. See also
Values
Motion picture industry, condemned by
revivalists, 37, 3 9-40
Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 1 3 8
Myers, Paul, 5 2
Narcissism, culture of, 1 78- 1 79
National Council of Churches, 1 59,
1 69- 1 70; organization of, 1 1 1
"New class , " 1 3 2- 1 34; and crisis of
authority, 1 39- 1 40; emergence of, 8 7
N e w Oxford Review, 1 6o- 1 6 1
New Right, 87, 1 5 7- 1 60. See also

Moral Maj ority

New Rules: . . . (Yankelovich), 1 5 3- 1 54
New Song, A (Boone), 47
New Thought, 4 1 -44; and popular

religion, 78, So-8 2 ; and success

values, 89-9 1
Newman, John Henry, 1 6 1
1 98os: Countdown to Armageddon, The
(Lindsey), 48
Nisbet, Robert, 1 3 8, 1 48- 1 49
Novak, Michael, 1 3 8- 1 39

"Old Fashioned Revival Hour , " 5 2

"Old-Time Gospel H our, " 5 5- 5 6
Oral Roberts University, 3 5 , 9 7 ,
1 4 3- 1 44

Original sin, self-centeredness as,

1 5 2- 1 5 3

Orr, J. Edwin , 39
Orthodoxy, versus orthopraxis, 1 24
Ortland, Anne, 48
Papal authority, contemporary challenges
to, 4 5-46

By What Authority

2 02

Parent Effectiveness Training, 1 50

Pastor, as celebrity, 69-7 5
Patriotism , equated with Christianity, 2 8
Peale, Norman Vincent, 4 0 , 42, 44, 47,
6o-6 2 , 8 1-8 2 , 1 50; positive th inking
process of, 89-9 3
Pelagianism, 44
Pentecostal experience, rise of, 84-8 5
Pentecostalism, 2 9- 3 0

Quimby, Phineas Parkhurst, 4o-4 1

Penthouse, 1 2 2

Record World, 50
Reed, U . S . , 9

Personality, new emphasis on, 1 4o- 1 42

Pluralism: and popular religion, 8 3 ; and
religious authority, 1 06- 1 1 0; in
nonevangelicals vs. evangelicals,
6 5-66

Popular culture . See Mass culture

Position, declining respect for, 1 4o- 1 42 .
See also Authority; Leadership,
traditional
Positive thinking, 14, 4o-44, 62, 8 1- 8 2 ,
89-9 3 ; superficiality of, 1 5 2- 1 5 3 . See
also Mentalism
Possibility thinking, 6 2 , 9o-9 3 , 1 7 1 ; and
church leadership, 1 1 5- 1 1 6 . See also
Mentalism
Poverty, attitudes toward, 1 4; and success
values, 88-- 8 9
Pragmatic leadership. See Leadership,
pragmatic
Pragmatism: and positive thinking,
9 1 -9 3 ; and theological education,
1 3o- 1 3 1

Preaching, popularization of, 1 9-2 1

Predestination, 8 1
Preston, B illv, 1 0
Prewitt, Ch;ryl, 1 29
Print media, 5, 46-49; as channel for
religious celebrities, 47-49. See also
Inspirational bestsellers; Magazines
Pro Athletes Outreach, 8
Protestant work ethic: mentalization of,
1 4, 94; transformation of, 94
Protestantism: American, authority in,
1 1 9; American, Spirit Baptism in,
84-8 5 ; American, status of ministers in,
1 04- 1 06 ; pl ural ism in, 1 07- 1 1 0. See
also Reformation, Protestant
Protestants, American: church attendance
by, 2; educational status of, 1 24- 1 2 5
Psychology Today, 1 66
"PTL Club , " 5 8-- 59

Publicity, 6-7. See also Mass media

Radio: and Christian music, 48--49; as

medium for evangelism, 3 1 , 5 o- 5 3
"Radio B ible Class , " 5 2
"Rapture , " 7 9 , 9 5 , 98
Rawls, Lou , 34
Reagan, Ronald, 1 34; as symbol of
celebrity leadership, 46

Reformation, Protestant: and mass

communication, 66; and
personality-centered religion, 1 9
Relationship needs: and love , 1 8 1 - 1 8 2 ;
a n d popular religion, 1 47 , 1 ; 1 - 1 5 5 ;
and religion, 1 70, 1 77- 1 78
Relationships, decline of, 1 5 4- 1 5 5
Religion, popular: criticism of, 1 72- 1 77;
marketing techniques of, 66-69,
7 2-7 5 ; and mass culture, 3- 1 6, 76-77;
pragmatism of, 76-77; and revivalism,
2 1 -37; rewards of, 1 3- 1 4; self
centeredness of, 1 84; superficiality in,
1 46- 1 5 5

Religious Census, 1 9 26, 1 2 5- 1 26

Religious services: attendance as
Christian responsibility, 69-70;
attendance patterns in U . S . , 2-3
Revival meeting, 2 1 - 3 7 , 3 3-34
Revivalism: celebrities in, 1 1 3 ; and
mainstream Christianity, 97-98;
modern, 8 5-88; and popular religion,
78-- S o, 8 2 ; and use of radio, 3 1 ,
5 o- 5 3

Revivalists, 2 1- 3 7
Revivals, Awakenings and Reform
(McLoughlin), 1 84- 1 8 5
Rivers, Johnny, 1 0
Roberts, Oral, 3 3- 3 5 , 49, 5 5 , 59,
62-64, 67, 9 5-98, 1 1 5 , 1 2 2 , 1 76
Robertson, Pat, 5 6- 59, 6.3, 76, 1 44
Robison, James, 59
Rodeheaver, Homer, 2 8-- 2 9
Rogers, Roy, 9 , 39
Run Baby Run (Cruz), 47
Russell, Jane, 39

Sainthood, 1 62- 1 64; and heroic

leadership, 1 8o- 1 84. See also
Leadership, heroic
Salvation: mentalization of, 44, So,

Index
89-9 1 ; and New Thought, 79-So;
technology of, 1 4 , 77, 9 5 ; thisworldly
vs . otherworldly, 4 3-44. See also

Mentalism
Sankey, Ira D. , 26
Satellite communications, and electronic
church, 5 7 , 59
Schillebeeckx, Edward, 1 6 1
Schneider, Louis, 1 50
Schuller, Robert H . , 6o, 67, 7 1-7 5 , 88,
1 1 5- 1 1 6, 1 1 8 , 1 2 2 , 1 4 3 - 1 46, 1 50 ,
1 7 1 ; success ethic of, 89-93

Scientific method, and religious

authority, 1 0 3- 1 04
Scientific natural ism, 1 20- 1 2 1
Scientology, Church of, 1 0- 1 1
Scofield Reference Bible, 96
"Seed faith" concept, 1 7 5- 1 76
Self-centeredness, 1 5 1- 1 5 3

Self-love, as method of New Thought,

43

Self-realization , and self-sacrifice, 9 1

Self-sacrifice, de-emphasized in New
Thought, 43
Self-sacrifice values. See Sainthood
Semple, Robert, 30
" 700 Club, " 56-59, 76
Sheen, Fulton J . , 4 2 , 47, 6o
Sin, modern concepts of, 1 5 2- 1 5 3 , 1 7 2;
traditional understanding of, 79
Smith, Chuck, 70
Social change: as factor promoting
"celebrity" leaders, 4 5 ; in popular
rel igion, 1 5
Social sciences, as basis for church
planning, 7 1- 7 2
Spencer, Tim, 3 9
Spirit baptism, 30, 7 9 , 84-8 5 ; i n
inspirational bestsellers, 4 7-48;
resurgence of, 84-8 5 . See also
Tongues, speaking in
Sports: as metaphor for religious striving,
28; as quasi-religious ritual , 8--9
Sports Ambassadors, 8
Sports community, 8--9
Starr, Kay, 34
Stookey, Paul, 49- 5 0
Streisand, Barbra, 1 0
Success values: a n d celebrity leadership,
1 1 4; and electronic church, 1 7 5 ; and
popular religion, 86, 8 8--9 3
Suffering, attitudes toward, 1 5

Summer, Donna, 1 0, 49
Sunday, Billy, 2 7-29, 3 7 , 1 1 3- 1 1 4
" Sunday Reveille Time," 7 1
Superficiality, reign of, 1 46- 1 5 5
Talmadge, T. DeWitt, 1 9
Technology o f salvation. See Salvation,
Technology of
Telephone, electronic, church fundraising
by, 58, 69
Telephone counseling, by electronic
church , 58, 69
Television, 5-7; as carrier of popular
religious culture, 5 3- 5 5 ; condemned
by fundamentalists, 3 7; cosmetic
demands of, 7 1 ; development and
expansion of, 5 3- 54; and electronic
church , 5 3-69; as medium for
revivals, 34; popular religious themes
in, 1 2
Teresa of Calcutta, Mother, 1 6 3
Theology: functionalization of, 8 9 ; and
science, 1 04
Thomas, B. J . , 1 0, 49
Thomas Road Baptist Church , 56
Timothy, Dwight, 2 1
Tongues, speaking in, 30, 84-8 5 , 9 5
Tornquist-Karlsson, Evie, 50
Townsend, Colleen, 3 8-- 39
Toynbee, Arnold, 1 5 2
Traditional leadership. See Leadership,
traditional
Travolta, John, 1 0
Trine, Ralph W. , 47
Trinity Broadcasting Network, 59-60
Tucker, William Jewett, 20
TV Guide, 1 69- 1 70
Uneasy Conscience of Modern
Fundamentalism, The ( Henry), 86-87

United Church of Christ, popular

requirements for clergy in, 1 3 1
United Methodist Church, 1 26 . See
Methodist Church
Unity School of Christianity, 4 1-42 , So
Upward mobility, and accommodation
values, 8 5
Values, i n modern religion, 82-98
van den Haag, Ernest, 4
Vatican II, 4 5-46, 1 1 2, 1 6o; and
attendance at Protestant services, 36

By What Authority
Vaughn, Sarah, 34
Village Voice, 1 5 8

Voluntary association: and authority

values, 1 08- 1 1 0; and religious values,
8 3-84

Vree, Dale, 1 6 1
Wall Street Journal, The, 5 6
Walzer, Michael, 1 3 8
Warwick, Dionne, 1 0
Watergate, 1 6 2
Webber, Robert, 1 6 1
Weber, Max, 1 1 7
Wesley, John, 8 1 . See also

Methodism
Whitefield, George, 2 1
Wilkerson, David, 47
Wills, Garry, 1 64

Wilson, Bryan, 1 64- 1 6 5 , 1 67

Wilson, James Q. , 1 3 8
WMBI, 5 1
Women: as evangelists, see McPherson,
Aimee Semple; in ministry, 1 08- 1 09;
in priesthood, 1 6o- 1 6 1 ; as purchasers
of religious books, 48; as speakers at
revival meeting, 24
WYAH, 5 7- 5 8
Yale University, 2 1 , 1 0 5
Y ankelovich , Daniel, 1 5 3- 1 5 4
Youth: and cults, 1 64- 1 69; and family
values, 1 66- 1 69; religious and social
ideals of, 1 36- 1 3 7
Zeol i, Billv,
' 8
Zimbalist, Efrem , Jr. , 1 0