A Short History of Televangelism

Transcribed is an Intelexual Media series that transcribes past Intelexual Media videos with poor audio. Check out the full series here.

The falls of Jim 1 and Jim 2 were brutal.

This video was originally posted on July 7th 2020.

Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Bakker, Peter Popoff, Robert Tilton. These are just some of the televangelists who raked in big bucks during televangelism's golden age. But the history of religious broadcasting, as well as it's present and future, includes more than them! In this video, I'll be discussing originators like Billy Sunday and Billy Graham, as well as the impact of televangelists like Pat Robertson and Paula White on politics! Scroll down for a History of Televangelism. But first, a commercial!

I grew up watching that local commercial in Charlotte, NC, and for a long time I had no clue that it was a parody of televangelism culture. Though religious broadcasting has been a key feature of the American landscape since the advent of radio, evangelical messages thrived from the 70s to 90s. Televangelists influenced politics and birthed new sects of Christianity, and often dabbled in a lot of hypocrisy and scandal. But how did televangelism culture rise and decline? And more importantly, how is it making a resurgence in modern-day America? 

The early 20th-century predecessor to the dramatic and showy preachers of 70s-90s television was Billy Sunday, a baseball player and traveling preacher who was known for his fiery sermons. Like a good fundamentalist evangelical or any early 20th-century protestant for that matter, he believed in a literal devil and hell and Mary’s virgin birth. He attracted huge crowds of people, and his popularity was significant because it was before the advent of radios. His popularity declined after World War I. Radio preachers like Charles E. Coughlin used the radio not only to spout Christian ideals, but also anti-Semitism and anti-government views. Though Coughlin was a catholic, he’s important to note because of his impact on religious broadcasting. His anti-Semitism and anti-government views made stations reluctant to air evangelical and other religious preachers, so in 1944 the National Religious Broadcasters emerged to advocate and protect interests. The next notable figures in the religious broadcasting genre were the catholic Fulton Sheen and evangelical Billy Graham, who in the early fifties began televising revival meetings. Billy Graham’s preachings that “anything less than complete repentance would result in America’s ruin” were perfect for the fear that accompanied the dawn of the nuclear age.

That same decade, a tent evangelist and faith healer named Oral Roberts hosted his own revivals on TV, and stressed the participation of people at home, encouraging them to pray and worship along. He blended fundamentalist evangelical beliefs with ideas from Vincent Norman Peale’s positive thinking movement, becoming one of the first major mouthpieces of the prosperity gospel. In 1987, Oral Roberts was called out for urging his followers to come up with $4.5 million in missionary work, claiming otherwise God would “call him home”. But back to the 60’s when leading evangelicals first saw a new potential in television.

The FCC stopped requiring radio and television stations to give away air time, and tv stations were allowed to broadcast religious programs while still receiving a tax credit for public interest broadcasting. This all meant that evangelicals could buy airtime now, and hosting shows to raise money to keep such shows on air became a key model. Back in 1958, preacher Rex Humbard had built a $4 million dollar church that was specifically designed for tv production. By the late 70s, his Cathedral of Tomorrow program had a global reach of 20 million viewers. In 1960, Christian Broadcasting Network was founded by Pat Robertson. You know, the guy who in 2001 blamed 9/11 on “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays, and the lesbians." But his rise to fame and power rested on his popular show, The 700 Club, which fused current events with Christian perspectives of armageddon and end-of-days doom.

Pat Robertson, creator of The 700 Club

The earliest fans of these kinds of evangelical broadcasts in the 60s were usually southerners and the elderly. 

But the early 70s saw the growth in a new kind of audience— one increasingly scared of secular culture and programming. Networks like Trinity Broadcasting popped up, as others, like Christian Broadcasting Network, continued to grow. Between 1970 and 1975, the combined American audiences of radio and tv evangelists doubled from 10 million to just under 21 million. By the mid 80s, the total audience was up to 25 million. But by the end of the next decade, televangelism’s viewership declined drastically, due to a huge chunk of scandals. Let’s talk about four key figures who emerged during the decade and shaped televangelism, and by extension, Christian ideology in popular culture. 

Jimmy Swaggart is a preacher from Louisiana who was established in his career by 1955. He was a prominent gospel singer during the 60s, and his musical background included being cousins with one of the first white rock and roll stars, Jerry Lee Lewis. By the late 60s he was producing an evangelical television show on several local tv stations around Louisiana. He also built a small radio empire, beginning with an AM radio station in Baton Rouge. By the mid-70s, Swaggart turned his attention predominantly on TV, and he had a weekly telecast that was an hour long by 1978. Swaggart’s audience grew so large that he began doing a daily show in 1980. Just three years later, over 250 television stations broadcast his programming. At his peak, he was earning $140-150 million in annual offerings. This afforded him luxuries like a California retreat, a private jet, and three homes. Swaggart was regularly anti-Semitic, anti-catholic, and homophobic. He was known for making comments like “We’ve gotta get those limp-wristed preachers out of the pulpits.” His criticisms and attacks on fellow televangelist preachers made him a prime target for being exposed, as he was in 1987 for visiting sex workers and being extremely cheap. Despite numerous charges of fraud in the 1980s, it was these accusations of patronizing sex workers that led the most to his downfall.

Assemblies of God church elders suspended him for three months. The suspension was extended for two years before Swaggart was allowed to return. Three years later when there was another sex scandal, Swaggart did a 180 in defending himself against accusations, claiming that “The lord told me its flat none of your business.” Numerous televisions stations canceled their contracts with him, and he was forced out of his leadership position. 

Peter Popoff is a German immigrant and self-styled faith healer. He claimed to be able to cure people of their illesses, telling people to “break free of the devil” and throw their prescription medicine on stage. He also commanded actors in wheelchairs to miraculously walk, to the astonishment of his audiences. With a devoted flock sending him frequent donations, Popoff was earning around 550K a month at his peak, and his antics were broadcast on over ninety tv and radio stations. Popoff loved big shows of generosity, like when he devised a plan to float bibles on balloons into the soviet union with donated funds from his congregation. After much skepticism, he staged a break-in at his headquarters, and begged for more donations. By the mid 1980s, Popoff was announcing personal details of his audience members under the guise of divine revelation and God given ability.

Peter Popoff

The Committee For Skeptical Inquiry accused Popoff of faking such divine revelations with electronic devices, and even proved it. His wife was even caught calling an audience member a nigger during the investigation. The revelations about his faked abilities, along with his list of over 790 unpaid creditors, led Popoff to declare bankruptcy in 1987. Because he no longer had credibility among white audiences, he shifted his attention to black ones, and began being up airtime on BET. By 2003, his industry was back to earning $9 million a year. He opened a tax exempt religious non profit and began selling healing water that was actually just Poland Spring. 

Robert Tilton is a Texan who began broadcasting a show called Daystar in the mid-70s. After some modest success, in 1981 he secured a $1.3 million dollar loan from a local banker and turned Daystar in to an hour long religious infomercial re-dubbed Success-N-Life. Tilton didn’t claim to cure his followers like Popoff. Instead, he preached the prosperity gospel, and emphasized that poverty, like all of life’s hardships, were the result of sin. It’s key to see this doctrine in context of the early 80s, the dawn of the Reagan Era and popularized notions of greed being “good”. You know, wallstreet tycoons, yuppies, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, Dynasty, all that jazz. Tilton would tell his followers to make vows of commitment to his ministry with donations, and made sure to stress that he wanted at least $1000. People also sent prayer requests with donations attached, with Tilton claiming that each letter would be prayed over.

Robert Tilton

Success-N-Life ran testimonials from people who had supposedly given to Tilton’s ministry and been blessed with miracles in return. These prayer requests earned Tilton’s ministry roughly $80 million a year, no doubt furnishing Tilton’s lavish lifestyle. In 1991, an ABC investigation found that Tilton’s ministry threw away thousands of unread prayer requests, only keeping the money and jewelry sent along with them. After numerous financial scandals throughout the 90s, Tilton’s credibility, like Popoff’s, fell among white audiences. So, like Popoff, Tilton revitalized his ministry by airing a new version of Success-N-Life on independent tv stations and you guessed it, BET in 1998. The show was usually broadcast right after BET Uncut. 

The last of the infamous televangelists we’ll speak of today is the big dog. When my nana and papa first moved to Charlotte, NC in the mid-70s, they couldn’t stop hearing about the powerful and pious local celeb couple. “God sent them here!” A Belk cashier told my nana. Im of course talking about Jim Bakker and his wife Tammy Faye.

The Michigan-born preacher began his televangelism career in the early 60s. He began his wildly popular Praise The Lord, or PTL show, in 1974, and it would run for 13 years, based out of my hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina. At his peak, Jim was earning $129 million a year. Well, not just Jim. His wife Tammy Faye Bakker was his PTL co-star, and was known for her singing, intense makeup, and her taboo-at-the-time acceptance for the LGBT community. My nana saw her a lot at a local Chinese restaurant in South Charlotte, with her trademark heavy makeup. Tammy was also known to show compassion for drug abusers and those afflicted with HIV. But at the same time, Ms Tammy Bakker, like her husband, had a love affair with the finer things in life. According to historian Frances Fitzgerald, “They… had luxurious houses in three resorts and a fleet of automobiles, including two matching antique Rolls-Royces. Both Bakkers had so many clothes that once the ministry hired a private jet to fly the clothes from North Carolina to California. Tammy, who explained she had a ‘shopping demon’, often gave away boxes of dresses with the price tags still on them. She had an air conditioned doghouse, and once she held a wedding ceremony for a poodle and Yorkshire terrier, complete with bridal gown and tuxedo.” Tammy also developed a habit of popping pills.

The Bakkers were adamant preachers of the prosperity gospel, and encouraged believers to donate to God’s work like PTL ministries so they could be blessed in return. PTL got so much money that they built a huge theme park called Heritage USA. Time Magazine reported in 1987 that the park was the third most popular in the country after Disneyworld and Disneyland drawing over 6 million people a year. The park was built with money earmarked for other ventures, like $350,000 that was raised for overseas missionary expenses. A 1985 investigation by the IRS found that the Bakkers used over $1.3 million in ministry funds on their own lavish lifestyles. They solicited donations and membership fees from congregants that they claimed would be used on PLT timeshares that were never built. In 1987, a former PTL employee named Jessica Hahn claimed that Jim Bakker and another preacher raped her, and that he paid her off $279,000 in hush money. This revelation coincided with increasing coverage of PTL’s finances, as the Charlotte Observer alone had published over 600 stories on misused church funds in 1987.

While PTL began to irreversibly crumble, Bakker was indicted for several counts of fraud in 1988 and was found guilty on all 24 counts in 1989.

Bakker was sentenced to 45 years, though he was released in 1994. Tammy Faye divorced him while he was in prison. Jerry Falwell, assemblyman of the Moral Majority during the late 70s, took over briefly until the IRS revoked the ministry’s non-profit status and declared it owed 55 million in back taxes. Jim Bakker didn’t fully read the Bible until he was in prison, where he claimed in a post-prison Washington Post article to have realized the prosperity gospel was false. That same article reported that he was “focusing almost exclusively on black America.” Bakker spent the late 90s touring the country at various black churches, who welcomed him with open arms. The Washington Post quoted him as saying, ”I found healing in the ghetto. Those people love me so much." Or as his wife puts it: "This is probably not PC. But out of all the races – white, Hispanic, Afro-American – the people of black race have been by far the kindest to Jim.” With the support from the black community, Bakker bounced back to prominence and netted a TV comeback from a rich Missouri man in 2003, where he could go to mainstream audiences and leave the negros behind. Though Bakker claimed to have moved on from greed, that didn’t stop him from trying to market a bullshit COVID-19 cure just this year.

Its important to note that three of these four fraudulent charlatans found renewed purpose among black congregants, and that two out of four of them re-built their empire by broadcasting their shows on BET. BET, short on cash and non-discriminate in who they chose to air, sold blocks of television time to Rosenheim Associates, an independent contractor that bought TV time for religious shows and “infomercials."In 1998, some black religious leaders and scholars began criticizing BET for allowing such fraudsters to broadcast. An informal survey reported on in the Washington Post found many of the most devoted followers of the televangelists were elderly black women, too infirm to go out, the "sick and shut in,"who preferred to get their gospel from white ministers. Their brand of prosperity gospel appealed to black viewers who wanted to think that a quick prayer and/or monetary donation would improve their lives. Of course, white preachers on BET weren’t the only ones spewing such nonsense.

Throughout the 2000s, black Americans could watch programs like New Birth Church’s Taking Authority Broadcast, starring the homophobic and allegedly abusive Eddie Long. In addition to taking part in gay conversion programs, he was accused of domestic violence of his ex-wife in the 80s and in the late 2000s was accused of sexually abusing fatherless boys in the church. A strong believer in the prosperity gospel, Eddie Long also was under investigation for misusing funds from his non-profit charity. A three year investigation did not definitively clear or convict him. The more prominent black televangelist is Creflo Dollar, who began his ministry in 1986. He and his wife live lavishly, and the most recent reports put his church’s annual earnings in the 70-100 million range. Creflo Dollar notoriously asked his congregation in 2015 to donate $300 apiece so he could buy a fancy private jet. Along with six other televangelists, including Eddie Long, Dollar was investigated by the Senate Finance Committee to see if he profited from financial donations made to his ministries. He refused to cooperate and the investigation ended without any charges being levied in 2011, though a few concerned senators called for further review of tax exemption laws for religious groups. 

So now that we’ve reached the present day, I want to mention that televangelism is nowhere near as popular as it was in the 70s and 80s. And for most modern televangelists, ostentatious displays of wealth are less common than they once were. However, it’s important to note the role of Christian media and modern televangelists in politics. Even televangelists of the past didn’t steer 100% clear of politics. For instance, Regan was routinely called “God’s agent on earth” by tv preachers. When singer and homophobia crusader Anita Bryant wanted a national platform in the late 70s to fight a pro-LGBT bill in Miami, she appeared on PTL Club and Pat Robertson’s 700 Club. Speaking of the 700 Club, Pat Robertson even invited politicians onto his show and endorsed candidates. But it was this mix of religion and politics, along with the oversaturation of the field and all the scandals, that may have led to televangelism’s decline. Between 1985 and 1988, Pat Robertson lost 52% of his audience, during the same time he was gearing up to challenge George Bush for the republican nomination. 

Today, however, televangelists are creeping back into politics— and there seems to be more potential rewards than consequences. In the aftermath of 9/11, televangelists like Robert Jeffress of Dallas’s First Baptist Church fanned the flames of Islamopobia. In the modern day, Donald Trump’s key constituency are evangelicals. Roughly 46% of his voters in the 2016 election were evangelicals, and even disgraced televangelists like Jim Bakker endorse him. Prosperity preachers and televangelists like Mark Burns, Jerry Falwell Jr, and Joel Osteen, the most popular mega-church televangelist in the country, have all endorsed Trump. Their beliefs in bootstrapping and praying your way out of poverty mixes perfectly with republican conservatism, and Trump’s entire brand. After all, as many Trump supporters will tell you, his financial success is a clear indicator that he’s not only fit to lead, but touched by God himself. The initial rise of televangelism in the early 70s occurred during a period where religious Americans grew increasingly concerned with secular culture and a shift in American ideals about everything from racism to gender to sexuality— which might reflect why a surge in televangelism could happen now. Though its worth noting that evangelical broadcasting makes use of more than just to TV, thanks to new advances in technology. Now, ministries can be virtually present through social media, blogs, and podcasts. Some experts have dubbed this wave “intervangelism.” This could play out in politics.

As the culture wars of the late 2010s/early 2020s continues to flourish along the backdrop of an America increasingly distrustful of both government and media outlets, I don’t think its far fetched to see entities like the Christian Broadcast Network grow in power or even be joined by more outlets. This wouldn’t be that big of a problem for me if all they were doing was preaching the Bible, but they aren’t. Back in college I remember being shocked while getting a pedicure at a campus nail shop that broadcasted CBN all the time. CBN promoted fake stories about aborted fetuses, Planned Parenthood, the persecution of Christians, and other conspiracies. CBN and its most popular show, the 700 Club, has entered the realm of social media, hosting programs on various platforms that appeal to the youth. Its a good time to remind folks that CBN’s founder, Pat Robertson, has blamed tornadoes in the midwest on lack of prayer and even passed along a conspiracy theory that gay people were wearing sharp rings to infect people with AIDS. His latest parlor tricks involve being a go-to supporter for Trump. Another one of Trump’s prominent televangelical supporters is the train wreck Paula White. Through her church and ministry, she has broadcasted on numerous tv channels including BET, and has netted millions of dollars.  You may remember her as the first woman to deliver an invocation for a presidential inauguration back in 2017, or more likely, as the loon who claimed that opponents of Donald Trump are sorcerers and witches.  She also has said that “Any persons [or] entities that are aligned against the president will be exposed and dealt with and overturned by the superior blood of Jesus.” As a staunch opponent of immigration, when faced with the trivia that Jesus migrated to live in Egypt, she said "it was not illegal. If he had broken the law, then he would have been sinful and he would not have been our Messiah. Of course, Trump saw it fit to appoint this woman as special advisor to the Faith and Opportunity Initiative, an office of the White House that jumps through hoops to dole out tax-exempt funds to religious organizations for philanthropy. 

Trump’s direct connections to charlatans like Paula White and racists like Jerry Falwell Jr., have caused divisions in the evangelical community because their prejudices and heresies are now highly visible in the light. What makes things more alarming in my opinion is that these personalities and their empires flourished because of Americans gullible belief in the prosperity gospel and tax-exempt policies for places of worship. When will something be done? Why are we waiting for the next scandal or acting oblivious to religious groups benefiting from tax-exempt status and using such benefits to propagandize American media, influence politics, and further exacerbate wealth inequality? Looking at the rise and fall of televangelism, along with what seems to be a resurgence in recent years, reminds those of us with sense that the American government is not secular, and honestly never has been. 

Watch the video of this essay here:

Get sources and further reading for this video here.