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Introduction: Jeffrey K. Hadden and Anson Shupe's Televangelism
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14585 |
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BOOK WORLD
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5 / 1988 |
341 Words |
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"Evangelical Christians have developed the most sophisticated communications system on the planet. They did so in full view of the American public, but nobody was paying attention"--until now, say sociologists Jeffrey Hadden and Anson Shupe.
That is, until the candidacy of Pat Robertson, media pundits and politicos were apt to brush off any suggestion of rising political power among conservative Protestants and Catholics as the deceptively loud clamor of a small minority on the far Right. Over the past year the public embarrassments of several television preachers have prompted many a talking head to speculate gravely about the imminent demise of the large religious broadcasting empires and their ephemeral roles in American cultures.
All of which misses the point entirely say Hadden and Shupe in Televangelism: Power and Politics on God's Frontier. Media observers have consistently miscast and misunderstood the televangelists, who, as a group, are far more in touch with the values and sensibilities of the American mainstream than are the media. What is really happening is that the American religious tradition of revivalism--far older and more widespread than the media seem to recognize--has been transformed by the revolution in electronic communications, and American religion in turn is using this same electronic communications technology to reshape the country.
To explore and evaluate these claims, THE WORLD & I asked two longtime observers of the evangelical scene to respond to the book (excerpted on p. 347; see "The Ascending Base of the New Christian Right"). First, evangelical theologian Carl F.H. argues that religious and political
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