King Jesus Saves Radio: A Case Study of New Technology in Early Christian Fundamentalism

ABSTRACT

Scholars have argued that history provides ample evidence of the eager embrace of new communication technologies by Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals in the United States. However, closer examination of the first Christian fundamentalist venture into the technology of radio in the US reveals the ambivalence and anxieties of key leaders as they considered and adopted use of the new medium. This study, based on careful analysis of archival and press materials from the 1920s, reveals a “restless” adoption of radio that articulated the “menace” as well as the promise of the technology. While wondering aloud about radio’s shortcomings and dangers, faith leaders justified their uncertain investment in the new medium by employing discourses of conversion alongside an evangelistic entrepreneurism connected to the growing consumerism of the time.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ This study is based on an examination of archival materials housed in the library of Biola University, other historical Bible Institute of Los Angeles publications and contemporary press coverage. These primary materials are given valuable context by the excellent scholarship on historical evangelicalism and fundamentalism (and some of their leading personalities) in the United States offered by Dochuk (2019) and Gloege (2015), as well as religious radio scholars Schultze (1988), Schultze (1990), 2003) and Ward (2017, 2014).

Fundamentalism, evangelicalism, and Pentecostalism have been frequently conflated in contemporary American discourse and scholarship. For this study, I rely on Sutton’s well contextualized definition of fundamentalism: “Evangelicals are Christians situated broadly in the Reformed and Wesleyan traditions that focus on conversion experiences, the individual’s relationship with God, and missions. Fundamentalists are evangelicals who, during the progressive era, began militantly challenging new trends in American Protestantism. They fought evolution, higher criticism of the Scriptures, and changing standards of morality characteristic of the era. Pentecostals are one of the various groups that constituted fundamentalism” (Sutton, 2003, p. 159).

² In its early frequency sharing years, KJS often shared or traded allocated evening time slots with KHJ – the radio station owned by the Los Angeles Times. By the early months of 1923, the U.S. Department of Commerce reported that a total of 12 stations in the nation were owned by churches and YMCAs (Sterling & Kittross, 2002, p. 70). In 1925 KJS radio was reassigned the call letters KTBI, with the initials representing “The Bible Institute.”

³ Stewart had waived his claims to all dividends on his Union Oil Company stock, which were placed in Bible Institute Trust agreements.

⁴ Gray’s early reservations about radio catering to “entertainments that appeal to the flesh” illustrates Susan Douglas’s (1987) observation that much of the discussion concerning early radio broadcast content carried class-bound assumptions “about who should be allowed to exert cultural authority in the ether,” assumptions that were in tension with early broadcasts of jazz and popular “worldly” music (p. 313). Also see, Hilmes (1997) discussion in Radio Voices (pp. 46–54).

⁵ When Torrey’s primary benefactor, Lyman Stewart, found that Torrey was not consistently filling the 4,000 seats of the grand auditorium that Torrey had demanded in his negotiations with Biola, it created one of the few documented points of friction in the relationship between the two leaders (Stewart, 1920).

⁶ These evangelistic ministries included ones dedicated to women, “Mexicans”, and “harbor workers.” The Institute kept business-like records, enumerating, among other things, “professed conversions” and “backsliders restored,” for further institutional analysis.

An auditory-centered medium such as radio was envisioned as a powerful tool to dispense propositional arguments – biblical truths not rooted in subjective aesthetic experience (as might be prompted by the seductions of film and jazz), but in linear, rational arguments articulated by the preacher. Hangen’s (2002) research suggests that part of the appeal of radio for religious institutions was its auditory nature – which suited practices based in sermonizing and oral teaching particularly well. This new medium was also imagined as aligned with what has been termed the “transcriptionist paradigm of sound” in contrast with a “signification” paradigm (which emphasizes creative manipulation and expression). Christian fundamentalist concerns in these early encounters with a new technology were centered on the distribution of accurate content rather than the technical capacities of radio as a medium (Feller, 2015, p. 329).

⁷ Frustrated with the decision to sell, Charles Fuller, chairman of the Biola Board of Directors, eventually launched his own CBS network radio program that enjoyed nationwide popularity as the “Old Fashioned Revival Hour.” The radio initiative of the institution was thus, fittingly, carried forward by an evangelist’s individualistic, rather than a corporate, effort.