Word: evangelists
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Religious evangelists pose a peculiar problem for radio and television stations. Many are enormously popular, and some bring religion to the bedridden, the busy, or the lazy. The problem arises because of a built-in difficulty: the TV evangelist cannot pass the plate. If he needs money, he must ask for it. But solicitation over the air is a privilege which can easily be abused. Most stations disapprove of it and some...
Where solicitation is prohibited, some evangelists get around the ban by making a pitch for money indirectly ("We invite your prayerful support. Won't you write us and tell us you are listening?") Where it is not, solicitation may be direct ("You are invited to send your free-will gifts and offerings for the support of this worldwide faith ministry to . . ."). Others use the hard-sell technique ("Mail those contributions now, because we have to pay up our back bill to wonderful KGER. I wish more of you would pledge a dime...
...friendly ("Just call me Frank"), a corn-shucking orator whose words cascade like bursts of fireworks, he adds a rich helping of religion to every speech ("If a man's religion and politics don't mix, there is something wrong with his politics"). Close friend of Evangelist Billy Graham, likes to preach sermons in churches as well as halls. For the Eisenhower Administration his lines are something less than religious. e.g., the Administration is "a fantastic political Disneyland . . . half-informed, with a half-thought-out program, half-carried-out, half in the hands of a halftime, half-hearted...
...Negative. An articulate anti-Grahamite is Union Theological Seminary's Reinhold Niebuhr, who has done more than any man in the U.S. to hose away the froth of religious liberalism with the cold high-pressure stream of neo-orthodox polemic. The orthodoxy of Evangelist Graham, Niebuhr complains, is too naively orthodox. Liberal theology had one enormous asset: "The absolute honesty with which it encouraged the church to examine the scriptural foundations of its faith ... It is this distinct gain of liberal Christianity which is now imperiled, with the general loss of the prestige of liberalism and the general enhancement...
...personal achievements of Graham as a Christian and as evangelist should be duly appreciated. But they do not materially alter the fact that an individualistic approach to faith and commitment, inevitable as it may be, is in danger both of obscuring the highly complex tasks of justice in the community and of making too sharp distinctions between the 'saved' and the 'unsaved...