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The influence of Televangelists on American political and social life

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An inter-demonational movement within Protestant Christianity which emphasizes the concept of “born again”(having one’s sprit rejuvenated)

Most televangelists in America have evangelicals as their target audience and design their messaging in such a way

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An influential televangelist who founded CBN (Christian Broadcasting Network), a major source of evangelical power in media and politics

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Evangelical Americans consist a large percentage of the active voting block in the republican party and play a key role in the policies politicians in congress enact

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A concept used by many televangelists which claims that people can fight diseases with faith and religion

Commonly used in the HIV/AIDS epidemic and more recently, Covid-19 >> Often misleads people and has harmful effects

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Impact on politics, directly or indirectly (i.e. donations, lobbying, influencing views of voters) 

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Impact on politics, directly or indirectly (i.e. donations, lobbying, influencing views of voters) 

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Analyzing the influence of televangelists and evangelical organizations on politics through donations and lobbying presence in congress

Analyzing influence of the groups on voters and their perspectives + beliefs

How televangelists impact important aspects of life (i.e. public health, foreign policy)

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Potential consequences and effect of televangelists in future events 

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Potential consequences and effect of televangelists in future events 

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How televangelists are actively future policies (i.e. abortion, LGBT rights, public health, etc)

The dangers of having an extremely powerful religious minority yield a large percentage of political power

Measures to improve the education of Americans to prevent people falling prey to misinformation and anti-scientific ideologies and/or idea

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 Background >> Covers background on prominent televangelists and evangelical media sources 

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 Background >> Covers background on prominent televangelists and evangelical media sources 

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Important people like Pat Robertson, and organizations like CBN

The history of how Televangelists rose to such a high position in American society

Relations between the Evangelical church and Televangelists

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How TV Preachers Misuse Donations and are given Tax Loopholes by the Government

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How TV Preachers Misuse Donations and are given Tax Loopholes by the Government

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In 1964, media theorist and philosopher Marshall McLuhan published Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man , a book which argues that the most important thing about a piece of information is not the information itself, but rather how it's presented to an audience; in other words, "the medium is the message."

McLuhan's book was released during a time when television was becoming an increasingly important part of daily life. By 1955, over half of American households had a TV, and shows like and had entered popular culture. The development of the television had even begun to go beyond the entertainment industry and encapsulate politics, with Richard Nixon and JFK appearing on air in the first-ever televised presidential debate.

But while watching TV was helping shape how people spent their free time, and even how they voted, it was also changing the way they engaged with another cornerstone of American life: religion. In addition to traditional religious activities like attending church on Sundays, many American families also began tuning into sermons given on TV by America's first televangelists.

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen is widely considered to be the world's first televangelist, and his radio show The Catholic Hour ran for 20 years on NBC. In 1952, Sheen transitioned to television, hosting the extremely popular Life is Worth Living , and eventually, The Fulton Sheen Program , for which he won two Emmy awards for Outstanding Television Personality.

Each episode of Life is Worth Living consisted of Sheen speaking directly to a live audience, delivering a sermon about a different one-word subject each night (the first episode's subject is 'Patriotism'). His sermons touched on everything from family life to politics, and the charismatic Archbishop always ended his speech with an impassioned call to action and a cheerful "God love you!"

Other televangelists at the time replicated Sheen's model to broadcast their own sermons to millions of people. One notable example was Evangelist minister Billy Graham, who went on over 400 televised "crusades" preaching to live audiences of thousands upon thousands of people. Graham was so successful that he was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and had become friends with every U.S. president since Harry Truman.

Graham and Sheen were the two of the most influential preachers of the 1950s and '60s, and the DNA of their sermons is still present in the work of modern televangelists. Graham was especially skilled at blurring the line between religious figure and traditional celebrity, becoming the first public religious figure to amass a large personal fortune off of his preaching.

In the wake of Graham and Sheen's success, a far more entrepreneurial generation of televangelists evolved the practice into an industry. Preachers like Pat Robertson took broadcasting sermons on mainstream television channels one step further, founding his own channel, the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) in 1960.

Initially, the channel was small, and Robertson's flagship show The 700 Club , was named after the number of viewers he needed to donate 10 dollars a month to keep him on the air. By the 1970s, however, Robertson was able to expand the network to include right-leaning news programming, eventually leading to an almost 2 billion dollar acquisition by Disney and a rebranding of CBN as Freeform. The 700 Club and other CBN programming can still be viewed online for free.

Robertson made a fortune off of CBN, and is widely regarded as a pioneer of modern televangelism. Donations from viewers almost completely funded CBN for three decades, and donations are still accepted on their website.

Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker were other televangelists who co-founded their own TV station after a brief stint at CBN, and the proceeds from their talk show, The Praise the Lord Club, were used to fund a Christian theme park called Heritage USA.

The shows run on televangelism networks had more varied formats than the uncut sermons of the 1950s, often incorporating snappy editing and special guests to make the program feel more like a traditional variety show with a religious twist. Televangelists funded the higher production value of some of these shows by preaching the "prosperity gospel" to their audiences. The prosperity gospel states that wealth is a sign of God's favor, and

encouraging people to donate money to already wealthy televangelists will increase your chances of getting rich yourself.

Not only did televangelists of the '70s and '80s make more money than those of the past, they were also embroiled in far more personal scandals. Pat Robertson and other high-profile televangelists were criticized for claiming a practice called "faith healing" to be successful in curing people of disease through prayer. During the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, Robertson claimed falsely that people had been cured of the disease after listening to his sermons. More recently, televangelist Kenneth Copeland claimed to be able to cure COVID-19 by "blowing the wind of God" at the virus.

Jim Bakker resigned from the Praise the Lord club after hush-money payments to a secretary came to light. Bakker was later found guilty of fraud and imprisoned for five years before being paroled in 1994.

Despite these scandals, most of the televangelists who were around in the 1970s are still in business today. After leaving prison, Jim Bakker brought back the Praise the Lord Club and continues to run it to this day. CBN is still operational, and Pat Robertson only just resigned in 2021. Kenneth Copeland and his wife Gloria continue to preach the prosperity gospel, and the televangelism industry continues to thrive financially thanks to the internet.

Mass media outlets like the internet and TV have made religion more profitable and exploitative than ever, and the business models of televangelists overlap considerably with those of motivational speakers like Tony Robbins and Gary Vaynerchuck, and Multi-Level Marketing businesses (or pyramid schemes) like Herbalife and Mary Kay. Televangelists are salespeople and performers, presenting a product to their audience and convincing them to pay for it.

If televangelists have done anything, it is that they have proved that Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard was right when he said, "If you want to get rich, you start a religion."

If televangelists have done anything, it is that they have proved that Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard was right when he said, "If you want to get rich, you start a religion."

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In 1964, media theorist and philosopher Marshall McLuhan published Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, a book which argues that the most important thing about a piece of information is not the information itself, but rather how it's presented to an audience; in other words, "the medium is the message."

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White evangelicals have succeeded in becoming the most powerful voting bloc in America, one church mailing list at a time. But is the cost of victory too high?

Listen and subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts

These days, everyone assumes that this is just a fact of life: Evangelicals are Republicans, and Republicans are evangelicals. The powerful alliance culminated in the 2016 election of Donald Trump, tying the reputation of Christianity in America to the Trump brand-maybe permanently.

It wasn't always like this. One man-a political operative from Georgia named Ralph Reed-devised a plan to harness the energy of young Christians and turn them into America's most powerful voting bloc, one church mailing list at a time. Decades later, when Donald Trump came on the political scene, Reed knew he would be big-and convinced his fellow evangelicals that they should give him a shot.

Trump's election was everything Reed spent his entire career fighting for: a president who was anti-abortion rights, listened to evangelical leaders, and advocated for Christians who felt pushed out of the public square. But Reed's victory had a cost. Many, many Christians have come to feel that their church cares more about politics than Jesus. They have spoken out. They have grieved. And some of them have left.

This week on The Experiment, we have the first episode in a two-part series: Meet the man who turned a disparate group of evangelicals into America's most powerful voting bloc and invented the evangelical political brand. Then join us next week for Part 2, when we'll look at the human cost of political victory-a cost that might ultimately be very high.
Further reading: "A Christian Insurrection"
Be part of The Experiment. Use the hashtag #TheExperimentPodcast, or write to us at theexperiment@theatlantic.com.

This episode was produced by Katherine Wells and Alvin Melathe, with reporting by Emma Green. Editing by Julia Longoria, Tracie Hunte, and Emily Botein. Fact-check by William Brennan. Sound design by David Herman.
A transcript of this episode is presented below:
Music by Parish Council (" Looking for Tom Putt," " Leaving the TV on at Night," " Mopping"), Ob (" Ere"), Keyboard (" Staying In"), R McCarthy (" Big Game"), H Hunt (" Journeys"), and Infinite Bisous (" Brain"); provided by Tasty Morsels. Additional music by Lorne David Roderick Balfe ("Petrify (b)"). Additional audio from Warner Bros. Pictures, Access Hollywood, C-SPAN, UCLA's communications-studies department, and The 700 Club.

( A soft indicator sound, like the "Fasten seat belt" notification on an airplane, intones one note over the quiet hum of recycled air.)

Emma Green: I've been thinking a lot about the way that little actions by a single character really do have the power to change history. And I think that's this story.

Julia Longoria: Emma Green is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Green: I write about religion and politics mostly. All the uncomfortable stuff.

Longoria: She recently told me a story about a moment I'd never heard of-but one that turned out to have huge consequences for the country.

Green: Okay. Hear me out. Hear me out. I get that it sounds implausible, and other people might tell this story differently, but I think that there is a strong argument to be made that one of the biggest things that's happened in the last half decade-which is that Trump got elected-that that happened, that was finalized, that was cinched, in the middle of this Tom Hanks movie.

Longoria: ( Chuckles lightly.) Okay, tell me what happened.

( Sparse percussive music enters and slowly builds in the background.)

Green: So it happened in October of 2016. The 2016 election was really neck and neck. People weren't sure what was gonna happen. Trump had kinda come out of left field.

Green: It has to do with this guy named Ralph Reed. He's a political operative, and has kind of become this spokesperson for the Christian right. You could maybe think of him kind of like "Mr. Evangelical." And he had just finished a long day at work.

So I went to a movie theater, and I was watching the film Sully, with Tom Hanks ...

Green: So finally he pulls out his phone, probably starting to annoy his neighbors in the theater.

(Over the sound of an iPhone unlocking.) And I crouched down in my seat, and I started scanning through my text messages, and it was The Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Religious News Service [Laughs.] wanting a comment on this video.

( Indistinct audio from the movie plays for a moment.)

Green: He's like, Okay. What could this video be?

: So I-I hit the video on the Washington Post website, and I leaned in real close so I could hear the audio.

Donald Trump: (From the Access Hollywood tapes, over the sounds of camera shutters.) I gotta use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her ...

Green: Where Donald Trump made lewd comments about grabbing women by the-I don't know if I can say that on the radio.

Longoria: Let's skip it. ( Laughs awkwardly.)

( Light, atmospheric electronic music plays.)

Green: He had this decision to make. He hadn't talked to anybody. He was literally in a black box. He had to decide what evangelicals were going to do now that they'd heard this tape of their presidential candidate-their preferred candidate-saying some really offensive stuff.

Green: In that moment, Reed was being asked what evangelicals thought-but he was also telling them what to think. When they opened up their newspaper the next morning and saw that quote from Reed, it would be a signal.

Green: What he wrote in that statement? That's what this story is about.

( The music shifts to introduce a mechanical-sounding melodic line from a piano.)

Green: There are so many things we believe we know about religion and politics-that white evangelicals have always been Republicans, or that Republicans have always been pro-life. We think we know, we think it's obvious, why evangelicals supported Trump and what the consequences have been.

But actually, this is a story that could have gone a lot of different ways. And I think the reason why Ralph Reed is so interesting is that he was the guy behind the scenes who directed the course of history in a big way.

( The sound of an airplane flying overhead overwhelms the music, bringing silence in its wake. Then bouncy, clanky percussion sets up a slow harmony over jungle ambience.)

Longoria: Over the next two weeks, Emma Green brings us the story of a behind-the-scenes project. It's the story of how one man took a disparate, disorganized group of believers and turned them into one of our country's most formidable political machines-and the story of what was sacrificed along the way.

I'm Julia Longoria. This is The Experiment, a show about our unfinished country.

( A moment of music, then quiet.)

Green: The story of Ralph Reed's political career starts back in the early 1980s, when the religious right as we know it today was still in its infancy.

Green: He was 22, working as the executive director of the College Republicans, organizing for Ronald Reagan. He was already a rising star in conservative politics. But the Republican party hadn't yet become synonymous with the religious right.

Green: In fact, the guy who first got everyone talking about evangelicals in politics around this time was a Democrat.

Green: Jimmy Carter was very publicly born-again. He was an evangelical. At this time, evangelicals had a different image than what most people might think of today. It was a little bit hippie-dippie. It was people out there on buses trying to win over hearts for Jesus. It was this countercultural movement that a lot of elites in Washington didn't take seriously.

Green: But as Reed was going around trying to organize the "Reagan Revolution," he started to feel like something was missing in his life.

Green: The answer to his emptiness came to him one night in September of 1983, when Reed was out at a bar with some of his colleagues.

( Soft electric-guitar music gives a kind of solemnly mystical energy to the moment.)

Green: When he got there, he ran his finger down the page of a phone book.
He said, "I don't know who you are. I don't know how you got here today. But I want you to understand, whoever you are and however you got here, that this is not an invitation; this is a command."
I went to Churches, and then I went to Evangelical, and I found a church just outside Washington, and I went there the next morning and sat in the service. And at the end of the service, the preacher did an altar call.

Green: This is what it means to be born again. There are tons and tons of different kinds of evangelical churches, and they don't all have the same theology or even sound and look the same. But generally, evangelicals all share the kind of experience Reed had-a moment of conversion where they become a Christian. There's this idea of being a fool for Christ, standing unashamed of your faith, even when other people question you. Not long after his conversion, Reed was back in the office with the Reagan Revolution crew, and he faced the first test of his new faith.

Green: Ralph Reed's conversion was happening at roughly the same moment that the Republican party was going through a conversion of its own.

Green: A group of religious leaders began to talk about how the country had drifted away from God. They saw a nation overtaken by secularism, abandoning the Bible's teachings. And they started to strategize about harnessing the power of conservative Christians in politics.

The public faces of this movement were men like Jerry Falwell, who founded Liberty University, which trained up young warriors for Christ.

Green: And Pat Robertson, the godfather of televangelism, whose image was beamed to Christians across America on The 700 Club.

Green: Most of these men were white and had deep roots in the South. They wanted to build influence for people like them: largely white Christians from very conservative Protestant churches who felt like they were getting pushed out of public life.

They focused on a list of issues, like bringing prayer back to public schools and stopping the spread of pornography. They were angry about what they saw as government overreach, including regulations that denied tax-exempt status to racially segregated private schools.

This was Reed's training ground, both as a political operative and as a young Christian coming up in the religious right. And in 1989, he went to a conference filled with the heavy hitters of the conservative movement.

Green: After the dinner, Pat pulled him aside.

Green: Robertson explained that he was going to start a new organization that was going to carry the torch of the religious right. He asked Reed if he wanted in. And eventually, Reed said, "Yeah!" Robertson laid out his vision for what he wanted Reed to do.
And I'm sitting here [Laughs.]-I'm sitting here taking notes, and I'm about to pass out.
( Gentle piano music plays.)

Well, you know, Pat had a sign in his dressing room, in the studio where he did The 700 Club, and it said Attempt something so big that, unless God intervenes, it's destined to fail.

( The music plays one final note.)

Green: In 1989, the idea of organizing Christian voters into a political force wasn't exactly new. The Black church was hugely influential in the '50s and '60s in securing the wins of the civil-rights movement. And before that, churches were central in things like the temperance movement, women's suffrage, and even the abolition of slavery.

Green: Reed's mission was to tap this untapped resource. And so he built a political platform that would appeal to those groups. It was pro-life, focused on traditional family and bold expressions of faith in public life. Reed packaged this as the "pro-family agenda." Then he went out to recruit believers.

( Persistent, up-tempo synthesizer music begins to play.)

Green: But to get those people organized, Reed had to start from scratch. He began by gathering up church directories with lists of names and phone numbers.

( Music becomes clearer, less distorted, and louder.)
Green: We taught people how to build a precinct organization; how to do a voter registration drive in your church; how to make sure you were educating voters in a way that didn't violate the tax-exempt status of the church; how to do a get-out-the-vote effort; how to write a news release. I mean, this sounds very basic, but for evangelical Christians who had never done anything politically in decades other than go to a rally at a church, this was all new.
Green: He didn't just want a list of names, though. He wanted to build a group of people who knew how to do politics.

Green: Many of the people Reed was targeting were allergic to the idea that God and politics had anything to do with each other. And so his pitch went something like this:

( Music fades out.)

Green: All of the work that Ralph Reed did? It worked. In 2000, George W. Bush was elected to office with the support of evangelicals who he reached with his notion of a compassionate conservatism-this idea that promoting small government and helping people were not incompatible values. Bush was one of their own.

Green: Reed started running through the names of the people who would have been around Bush in this huge historical moment. The president's head of speechwriting was an evangelical. The attorney general was an evangelical.

( A persistent beat enters, layered with sporadic electric strings.)

Green: The Bush years were a sign of Reed's triumph. He had left the Christian Coalition and started his own political consultancy. But all those old allies of his from the Christian right? They were now some of the most powerful people in the government. This included a guy named Jack Abramoff, who Reed knew from his College Republican days. Abramoff was one of the most powerful lobbyists in all of Washington-he even worked on the Bush transition. Abramoff brought Reed in on some of his projects, which got Reed into some trouble.

The most significant of these scandals had to do with casinos. Abramoff represented a number of tribes who ran gambling outfits. Those tribes faced competition from other casinos and other kinds of gaming in the area. So Abramoff asked Reed to create problems for the tribe's competitors. Reed's job was to build opposition on the grounds that gambling is un-Christian, meaning that Reed was rallying religious opposition to gambling while being paid indirectly by tribes who ran casinos.

Later, Reed said that he didn't know his payments were coming out of casino profits. Here's what he said at the time: "Had I known then what I know now, I would not have undertaken that work."

Reed never got charged with any crimes, but his name got dragged through the mud at some high-profile congressional hearings. When Reed ran for lieutenant governor in Georgia a few years later, he tanked-probably because of his association with Abramoff. It was a low point in Reed's career.

By the time Obama got elected, Reed and the mostly white evangelicals he represented were back out in the cold again. They saw the president as hostile to their beliefs and their way of life.

But then, after all those years of scandals and political exile, when it seemed like Ralph Reed's chapter in American history was over, he met a man who he thought just might put evangelicals-and his career-back in the game.

( A moment of stillness in the music-a tension.)
And this reporter said, "What do you think of that?" And I said, "Well, if he runs as pro-life-which is my understanding of what he plans to do-given the power of his celebrity, his money, his ability to finance his own campaign, and his name ID, which most candidates spend tens of millions of dollars buying, and he will have on day one, I think he will get a fair hearing from evangelical voters. And I think he could surprise a lot of people." And the guy said, "Do you mind if I quote you?" and I said, "No, I don't mind." And about two hours later, my phone rang. And it was Donald Trump. And, I mean, I couldn't believe it, but apparently the guy gets Google alerts anytime his name is mentioned in the media-or at least he did then. And he was like, "Ralph," he goes, "I just called to say thank you for what you said."
Green: That's after the break.
And if I was right, then this was gonna happen, whether people wanted it to happen or not. If he had a chance of being president, it was very important-in my view-for him to have a good and mutually productive and beneficial relationship with the faith community based on trust. And it was equally important for the evangelicals to have a relationship with him.
Green: Ralph Reed spent the Obama years in political exile. But one day in 2011, he met someone who he thought could potentially be a ticket back to the White House.

My thinking at the time-honestly, just boiling it down to honest, brass-tacks politics-I thought, In my career, there's never been anybody like this guy. I mean, he's got the money to run for president and write a check and pay for the whole thing. He's one of the most famous people not only in the United States but in the world. He's a natural and gifted performer. And I thought that if he got into this thing, it wasn't going to be a big fish in a small pond. This was going to be a whale jumping in a bathtub.

Green: To Reed, it was obvious that evangelicals should take Trump seriously. But to other evangelicals, well, not so much.

Green: If Reed was going to get anyone even remotely sympathetic to his goals elected to office, he had to bring conservative Christians along. Roughly a quarter of the country identifies as evangelical, and, at least among those who are white, they're a bloc. They vote, and they vote Republican.
One was the Scalia vacancy. There was a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, and either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump was going to fill it. You had to figure you had a 50-50 chance of getting it right with Trump. And you had to figure you had a zero percent chance of getting somebody who was pro-life with Hillary. So that was a critical inflection point. I think the second was when he selected Mike Pence.
Reed needed to convince evangelicals that Trump could be their guy-that sometimes it's worth setting aside your moral sensibilities if you can guarantee that someone will represent you well in Washington. Reed needed them to get on board with the idea that your political candidate doesn't need to be your Sunday-school teacher.
She said, "They are irredeemable." And I think, at that point, I think a lot of even the last remaining evangelical Christians who had a lot of reticence and resistance to Trump went, "Well, gosh. I mean, if that's where she's coming from, I'm gonna vote for Trump."
: I said, "Look. You've got to think the way the Black community thinks, and you've got to think the way the Jewish community and the pro-Israel community thinks. They don't think, How do we make sure our guy wins? They think more wisely and strategically: How do we make sure that there's somebody within our community, close to every one of these candidates, so that when one of them wins, one of our people is in the room? "

And then I think the third moment was Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" comment, which was the line that really, really resonated in the evangelical world-which was "irredeemable."

( Softly flowing sound washes over synthesizers and all, before ducking under the narration.)
But I have to tell you, that weekend, all indications were that his candidacy was over.
Green: Which brings us back to the Access Hollywood tape. Reed had convinced people to get on board. He had sold them on the idea that Trump was the best hope they had. But that video! Wow. It just highlighted all of the things about Trump that a lot of Christians might have felt uncomfortable with.

Reed had to decide what to do. He hadn't talked to anyone. But he made the political calculation in his head-fast.

( The music fades out.)

Green: And so Reed intervened. Again.
And for me, I speak only for myself. I don't claim to speak for every evangelical. I wouldn't be that, um, presumptuous. But for me, the fact that Donald Trump was imperfect-the fact that he had led a less-than-perfect life-was something that I already knew. But when it came to the issues that I believe were moral issues-religious freedom, the right to life, the protection of innocent human life in the womb, the appointment of judges that would respect that life, the defense of the state of Israel and the Jewish state against its many enemies that seek to wipe it off the face of the earth-these are not just policy issues to me. These are issues of right and wrong. On every one of those issues, he pledged to, and kept his word to, advance every one of those moral goods, and Hillary would have done the opposite. And that was why I supported him, and I think it's why the overwhelming majority of evangelicals supported him.
( Heavy, somber music starts to play.)

Green: Many remember this moment as hypocrisy. But this moment was actually a culmination of a movement that had been building for decades. Reed and others in the Christian right had spent years convincing evangelicals to participate in the political process despite their misgivings-teaching them to calculate trade-offs, making them comfortable with the idea that to get what you want, you sometimes have to play a dirty game.
So if you want to be involved in politics without ever having to compromise, then you want something that has never existed and never will.
Green: Arguably, Trump kept his promises to the evangelicals. He nominated three pro-life Supreme Court justices, and dozens more on the lower courts. He showed up at the March for Life. He moved the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem-something presidents had long said they'd do, but never actually did.

But, ultimately, the Trump presidency was defined in the minds of many Americans, including a lot of Christians, by his cruelties: separating families at the border, turning away thousands of refugees, constantly trashing his enemies on Twitter.

( Soft, smooth, and sad, a bed of strings begins to play.)

Green: But in every compromise, there's a cost. And in this case, the cost might have been really, really high-a loss that could undermine the entire project Ralph Reed helped to build.

Green: That's Part 2 of this story, next week.

( The music picks up, incorporating a driving guitar line over keyboard.)

Tracie Hunte: This episode was produced by Katherine Wells and Alvin Melathe, with reporting by Emma Green. Editing by Julia Longoria, Tracie Hunte, and Emily Botein. Fact-check by William Brennan. Sound design by David Herman. Music by Tasty Morsels.

Our team also includes Natalia Ramirez and Gabrielle Berbey.

If you enjoyed this week's episode, please be sure to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listened to this episode.

The Experiment is a co-production of The Atlantic and WNYC Studios. Thanks for listening.

( The music, and the episode, ends.)

Copyright © 2021 The Atlantic and New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

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defensive action.president george w. bush

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Podcast: 'Evangelical' Is Not a Religious Identity. It's a Political One.

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White evangelicals have succeeded in becoming the most powerful voting bloc in America, one church mailing list at a time. But is the cost of victory too high?

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The central organizational pattern of most modern religions in the U.S. is group worship, which has temporarily for the most part been mandated out of existence. The most dramatic result has been the exceedingly quick shift of religious services from in-person to virtual, online worship.

The abrupt cessation of in-person worship in churches, synagogues and mosques around the country is one of the most significant sudden disruptions in the practice of religion in U.S. history. But "virtual" worship is certainly not a new concept in this country. For almost a century, religious entities have been using "new" methods of communication to reach vast audiences -- first radio, then television; and, in recent years, well before the current COVID-19 virus crisis, online technologies.

Evangelists, preachers, priests and other religious leaders have been broadcasting on radio since the 1920s, and many began adding television to their broadcast repertoire when this new medium became available (giving rise to the term "televangelists").

The late, famed evangelist Billy Graham held religious rallies in venues around the world during his more than half-century career, but he also continually broadcast his services and programming on both radio and television. And to this day, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association continues that legacy, adding in online broadcasts. Many pastors of Christian megachurches are as renowned for their television ministries as for their in-person worship services.

Individual churches also began broadcasting their services on radio -- and then television -- many years ago, and now whole radio stations, TV channels, cable and satellite networks are devoted solely to religious programming, including the Roman Catholic Church's CatholicTV. Many of these same religious groups have embraced the new technology of online broadcasting, and individual pastors and churches have been using the internet as a way of reaching an audience for years.

So the current transition to "virtual worship," while abrupt and forced on churches by the virus situation, is in many ways an extension of existing practices and not a brand-new frontier (similar to the way in which working remotely is not new, but an extension of what many were doing already). What is new is that almost all services -- particularly for smaller, local community churches -- can no longer be held in person, and many churches have moved to holding them virtually.

The long-term question is what impact all of this will have when social distancing mandates are removed. This parallels the long-term impact of moving many workers out of their offices and into remote work. I'm not aware of systematic studies assessing whether the fact that many church services and religious programs have been available on radio and on television for decades (and more recently online) has affected in-person church attendance. (Most religious leaders would no doubt say that virtual worship is a complement to, not a replacement for, in-person worship.)

Data from Pew Research give us a preliminary look at what's going on in the current situation. Pew went back and interviewed respondents in their panel group who last year said they attended church at least once or twice a month. Slightly fewer than six in 10 in this group said they were attending religious services in person less often than they had in the past. About the same percentage in response to a separate question said they were watching services online or on TV instead of attending in person.

Not all of those who said they were attending less often in person said they were watching virtually (or on TV), and not all of those who were watching virtually (or on TV) said they were attending in person less often. All in all, Pew calculates that about four in 10 who reported attending church last year fit the profile of now attending less often in person and watching online or on TV as a replacement.

A Time Magazine report has noted that some churches are meeting in drive-in theaters to provide a semblance of community worship while maintaining social distancing (a practice, Time noted, that began in the 1950s when the Rev. Robert Schuller began drive-in worship in Orange County, California, although not then for social distancing reasons).

We also have some evidence from the impact of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on long-term changes in church attendance. At the time, there was speculation that the attacks would spark a significant and sustained increase in churchgoing. However, follow-up analyses generally suggested that this did not occur. I was involved in analysis of Gallup data after 9/11, and by December 2001 we reported: "Church attendance is one of the putative changes in religion [as a result of 9/11] that has received the most discussion. There was a great deal of anecdotal evidence that the pews in churches, synagogues and other houses of worship were filled to capacity in the week or two immediately after the terrorist attacks. But the answers to our classic Gallup question, 'Did you yourself happen to attend church or synagogue in the last seven days, or not?' show no lasting change. ... Church attendance as measured by this question has settled right back down to where it was."

Other studies showed similar results. A Pew Research report analyzing data from November 2001 found "little evidence that many Americans who were not actively religious prior to the attacks have turned to religion in the wake of the crisis. Attendance at religious services is comparable to March [2001] levels."

Bottom line: The long-term impact of the coronavirus crisis on in-person church attendance is critically important, and it will take months or years to arrive at an overall estimate of the effect (if any).

Could the Virus Situation Have a Long-Term Impact on Personal Religiosity?

Personal religiousness is not directly affected by government social distancing mandates, but, of course, it may well be affected by the COVID-19 crisis per se.

As was the case after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, some observers have hypothesized that the American public will become more religious as they confront the situation and become more cognizant of their mortality and life's fragile essence. ("There are no atheists in foxholes.")

As op-ed contributor Robert Nicolson said in a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece, "Could a rogue virus lead to a grand creative moment in America's history? Will Americans, shaken by the reality of a risky universe, rediscover the God who proclaimed himself sovereign over every catastrophe?"

We have some preliminary evidence from recent Gallup polling. Gallup is asking Americans in its panel study about the impact of the virus on several aspects of their lives, including the amount of exercise they get, their diet, their personal relationships, their mental health -- and their faith or spirituality.

About half or more of Americans, interestingly, say the virus situation has not affected any of these five aspects of their life in either a positive or negative direction. In other words, Americans' mental and physical states of life appear hard to change. But, out of the five aspects tested, the net "gotten better" versus "gotten worse" gap is the most positive for the faith or spirituality dimension. Overall, 19% of Americans interviewed between March 28 and April 1 said their faith or spirituality has gotten better as a result of the crisis, while 3% say it has gotten worse, for a net of +16 percentage points. The only other of the five aspects tested that has a net positive is "personal relationships," at +5. More Americans, by contrast, say their mental health, diet and exercise have gotten worse than say they have gotten better.

The wording of this question may not pick up all of the impact of the virus situation on religion, because some Americans could say that their preexisting faith has deepened or become more important, but not really gotten better. But the fact that almost one in five Americans report that their faith or spirituality has gotten better as a result of the virus situation suggests the possibility of some sort of religious renaissance.

The Potentially Positive Impact of Religion and Religious People

One of the traditional roles of religious individuals and religious entities has been to serve a positive, integrative, pro-social, charitable function in crisis situations. As Baylor University professors Byron Johnson and Thomas Kidd point out, "When it comes to confronting contemporary social turmoil, communities of faith have always played an important role in working toward solutions."

We don't have quantitative evidence on the degree to which religious individuals and religious organizations are working to help others in their communities affected by the virus, although there is anecdotal evidence suggesting this is the case.

Religious Americans could also affect the current virus situation in less directly tangible ways, through prayer. President Donald Trump established March 15, 2020, as a National Day of Prayer "for all Americans affected by the coronavirus pandemic and for our national response efforts." Trump said: "I urge Americans of all faiths and religious traditions and backgrounds to offer prayers for all those affected, including people who have suffered harm or lost loved ones."

Pew Research recently asked Americans (March 19-24) about their prayer behavior in this situation, and found that over half of all Americans, 55%, say they have prayed for an end to the spread of the coronavirus situation, and among some groups that percentage is significantly higher. This includes about eight in 10 evangelical Protestants and black Protestants, and about two-thirds of Catholics.

Sociologists consider religion to be a major social institution that can serve a significant integrative function in and for society, providing society with a major stabilizing force. A great deal of research, including analyses of Gallup data conducted by myself and my colleagues, has established the positive correlation between personal religiosity and wellbeing. Research using Gallup data conducted by researchers at MIT, Baylor and Duke Universities shows that religious Americans were better able than those who were less religious to weather the economic storm of the 2008 recession, at least in terms of wellbeing. Thus, how religious Americans cope with today's unprecedented disruption to the normal practice of their faith could have larger implications for the overall wellbeing of society.

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Religion and the COVID-19 Virus in the U.S.

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The COVID-19 virus has disrupted traditional religious practices in the U.S. and may deepen spirituality among Americans as they confront the crisis.

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What methods do Televangelists use in order to get donations and financial support?

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Why are many people attracted to the messaging given by televangelists?

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How much presence do televangelists have in the current media space?

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The act of preaching