In our continuing series on the dominionist "parallel economy" and in particular the "parallel media" run by dominionist groups, we focused yesterday on dominionist television and satellite networks as an increasing method of promotion of dominionist ideology.
Today, we focus on the other end of the broadcast media--specifically, the world of dominionist talk radio. In some ways it's not terribly different from the days of Aimee Semple McPherson--but in some ways it is far, far more sophisticated, and it is increasingly becoming not only a major influence in dominionist circles but a threat to legitimate public broadcasting in the US.
More after the cut...
The major modern players
I have noted several of the big players so far--TBN is probably the biggest player in dominionist television broadcasting today (CBN being a shell of its former self and PTL having entirely folded). Major radio players already mentioned include Educational Media Foundation (the home of the Way-FM and K-Love networks and linked with Salem Communications below) and Calvary Chapel/CSN. In addition, the rise of dominionist-owned radio and television stations (especially in the nonprofit station bands in the UHF TV and FM bands) is a substantial part of the rise of dominionist media nowadays.
There are also a few major players I've not gone into detail about, though.
I've touched on Focus on the Family's programming to kids in the section on dominionist corporate sponsors; as it turns out, Focus on the Family is a signifigant player in dominionist radio syndication in partnership with Salem Communications.
Salem Communications deserves its own special mention. Salem is quite possibly best described as the "Clear Channel" of dominionist media; not only does it operate radio stations and dominionist radio networks, it also operates dominionist programming on XM Radio, and co-owns gospelcom.net (along with the DeVos owned and operated Gospel Communications) which is a major dominionist web portal. Not only are Salem Communications' owners very good friends with the DeVos family, the owners are also members of the Coalition for National Policy--a secretive group of neoconservative and dominionist leaders whose yearly meetings are essentially five-year planning committees for the dominionist and neoconservative movements.
Salem is also one of the dominionist groups that is engaging in an increasingly popular--and increasingly distressing--method of expansion...namely, the steeplejacking of FM nonprofit channels in almost the identical manner that the shortwave bands were completely taken over by dominionists:
Quickly and quietly, a desperate city university in Washington, D.C., decided to sell small jazz station WDCU June 17 [1997] to the highest bidder--a religious broadcasting chain--for $13 million.
The Washington, D.C., financial control board, which oversees the city budget, appeared unmoved by a June 23 appeal by NPR President Delano Lewis to save WDCU. Lewis wrote to the chair of the congressionally appointed control board, arguing that the station sale will weaken the public radio system and sacrifice the public's interest.
[The Corporation for Public Broadcasting also opposed the sale, sending the city control board a letter July 2 demanding reimbursement of about $1 million in CPB grants given to the station since 1991, according to the Washington Post. A similar CPB tactic did not stop the New York City municipal government's sale of WNYC-TV several years ago.]
The unprecedented price for a reserved noncommercial station may signal new heights in the potential market value of public stations generally. The sale raises concerns that religious broadcasters will approach university licensees--who are often cash-strapped and ambivalent about being in the public radio business--with offers more tempting than they've seen before.
"This is a genuine change in our situation," says Craig Curtis, program director of WETA, Washington. "And it can happen anywhere, to any kind of licensee.... The same scenario can be played out in television."
If WDCU is worth more than $10 million, he asks, what's nearby WAMU worth? What's joint licensee WETA worth?
While a reserved frequency can't be sold for commercial purposes, it can go to a religious broadcaster who can turn a profit by selling an unreserved station and transferring its donation-based operation to the noncommercial station.
When the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) said in late 1996 that it might sell WDCU, city and university officials were talking prices between $1 million and $5 million. By June 17, [1997], when the UDC board of trustees voted 9-1 to sell, the asking price was $10 million.
The winning bid, $13 million, came from Community Resource Educational Association, Inc., a nonprofit with ties to the country's largest religious broadcaster, the for-profit Salem Communications, which already owns WAVA-FM in the Washington area. The nonprofit "has some common directors with Salem Communications," said James Blackburn, the university's station broker. Salem, based in California, owns about 40 stations, most of them commercial. It also has a production and distribution arm that handles Oliver North's talk show, a network news operation based in D.C., and music programming.
Salem and its WAVA-FM did not return Current's phone calls.
It's worth a look at WAVA's sister station WABS' programming schedule to see why this is a Very Bad Thing Indeed.
Included are programs produced by Focus on the Family, John Hagee (the subject of a tremendously damning video by Max Blumenthal in regards to his promotion of the "Joel's Army" version of armageddonist "rapture theology" at a recent Christians United for Israel meeting), Derek Prince (one of the "Fort Lauderdale Five" connected with the development of highly abuse "discipling and shepherding" techniques used in dominionist "cell churches"), and other dominionist broadcasters; their list of program creators also includes Crown Financial Ministries (a dominionist "Christian Investment" group we'll detail more about in a future post in this series), Sword of the Spirit Ministries (a "Joel's Army" group), a dominionist baseball program (!), a plethora of dominionist "name it and claim it" preachers, and talk shows hosted by townhall.com (a discussion site that is right of World News Daily in the level of pro-dominionist political conversation).
Such programming is, alas, typical of Salem Communications fare. WAVA-FM itself has several more dominionists on its radio schedule including the ACLJ's Jay Sekulow, Dr. James Kennedy (leader of Coral Ridge Ministries and the now-defunct Center for Reclaiming America, both major-league promoters of Christian Reconstructionism), a group promoting dominionist mortgage schemes (yes, the dominionist "parallel economy" reaches into the financial world), and more "name it and claim it" promoters; Salem's XM channel FamilyTalk also includes programs from SBC steeplejacker and dominionist Al Mohler, Steve Peroutka (head of the dominionist National Pro-Life Action Center and brother to Constitution Party candidate Michael Peroutka), neopentecostal "therapist" Joyce Meyer (who is a "Joel's Army preacher into "deliverance ministry", including claims that all illness is the result of not "naming and claiming" and "binding the devil" enough; her only degrees are from known diploma mills (including an "honorary degree" from a former SBC college that went bankrupt in a real estate Ponzi scheme and was promptly steeplejacked by an Assemblies pastor) and she has extensive links with particularly virulent dominionist groups) and still more dominionist preachers and talkshow hosts (including Janet Parshall, who largely tries to out-Anne Coulter Anne Coulter with a decidedly neopente flair; among other things, she's stated that Matthew Shephard wouldn't have been the victim of a vicious hate murder if he'd only tried not to be gay, promoted a fake bulletin from a fictitious church purporting that Hillary Clinton had become a neopentecostal, promoted Middle East turmoil as a sign that the Rapture and Apocalypse were nigh, promoted a member of a neo-Confederate racist group as an expert on US History (League of the South, which has many connections to "Christian Patriot" dominionists and Christian Reconstructionists), and literally promoted the idea that if African-Americans are not thankful for slavery then they are being "disobedient to God" (it is, sadly, a common belief in dominionist circles that slavery was a good thing because "it allowed us to convert the slaves to Christianity").)
Mother Jones Magazine has written a particularly good article on the subject of Salem Communications as a major force in dominionist radio:
IT'S A SUNNY MORNING IN SOUTHERN California, but inside the gleaming Glendale studios of KKLA, nationally syndicated radio personality Dennis Prager has spotted a dark cloud on the horizon, namely the "soullessness" of Europe. The white-haired host with a deep baritone and, this morning, a purple tie has fresh evidence of the Continent’s decline: a recent study linking depression in France to the nation’s loss of religious faith. "The breakdown in Christianity has led to a profound crisis," he says, his meaty hands cutting the air for emphasis. "What will people believe in? It leads to communism and fascism. It’s one of the reasons I so worry about secularism in our society. I don’t want that breakdown here."
You’ll hear that message a lot on stations owned by Salem Communications, a little-known for-profit Christian radio empire that has ridden the evangelical movement to the big leagues and is quietly becoming a force in national politics. Before it was purchased by Salem, KKLA was owned by a cigar-chomping preacher whose promises of redemption raked in millions to help finance a lavish Pasadena estate, replete with a Rembrandt, a Monet, and show ponies. But Salem’s founders, Stuart Epperson and Edward Atsinger III, have a far grander goal: spreading the word of the Lord and offering an alternative to the creeping secularism that they see as responsible for America’s moral decay. "When you secularize a culture," says Epperson, "you lose your moral compass." A mission statement in Salem’s 2003 annual report reads: "One mended marriage. One regained childhood. One restored faith. One broadcast at a time."
Atsinger and Epperson started their company 30 years ago as young, idealistic evangelicals. Today Salem is the second-fastest-growing radio chain in the nation. The left—which for years dismissed evangelical activists as out-of-touch zealots—has nothing on the radio dial even close to Salem’s reach and influence.
. . .
According to University of Akron political science professor John C. Green, conservative Christians listen to Salem’s stations "the same way sports fans listen to sports radio shows," keeping abreast of the latest developments regarding abortion, gay marriage, Iraq. In many ways, Green says, the chain typifies "the congealing of the religious communities into a potent political force. When traditional issues become important in campaigns—as they did in the last campaign—they can have a huge impact." Programming such as Salem’s "challenges people to accept their obligation as Christian citizens," says Frank Wright, president of National Religious Broadcasters. (Epperson currently serves on NRB’s board.) "Our faith in Jesus Christ has eternal spiritual dimensions, but it has a temporal practical obligation to live out your faith in the world around you. That means being involved in the world around you, whether it be the law or medicine—certainly government and politics."
Salem’s stations allow the religious right to share information, mobilize allies, and galvanize public opinion. During the Terri Schiavo battle, Dobson took to Salem’s airwaves and told listeners: "A woman’s life hangs in the balance. We really have to defend this woman, because if she dies, the lives of thousands of people around the country can be killed, too. There’s a principle here: It’s a paradigm of death versus a paradigm of life." Dobson’s cohost then reeled off the phone numbers of Florida legislators. Salem’s founders are as politically skilled as their hosts. Time magazine recently named Epperson—who’s twice run for Congress as a Republican—as one of "the 25 most influential evangelicals in America" in a cover-story package that asked "What Does Bush Owe Them?" Atsinger is a Bush Pioneer, meaning he gave $100,000 to the president’s reelection campaign. In the 1990s, he helped revolutionize California politics, first by running Christians for local school boards and then backing candidates who took over the legislature. In 2000, the two men, along with a close political ally, funneled $780,000 into a California state ballot initiative to ban gay marriages. Both have served on the board of the Council for National Policy, a secretive and exclusive network of conservative activists and moneymen.
In 2004, Atsinger cochaired Americans of Faith, a massive, church-based, get-out-the-vote campaign, and Salem ran hundreds of radio spots urging Christians to vote. A Salem affiliate in Pennsylvania sponsored an Operation Vote caravan that registered voters, offering them prizes of cars and cash. Epperson and Atsinger were "spark plugs to take voter registration to the next level," says NRB’s Wright. They also contributed $15,000 to John Thune’s campaign to defeat Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, and Salem host Kevin McCullough solicited funds for Thune on his Salem-sponsored blog.
. . .
Carol Pierson, president and CEO of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, says the growth of religious broadcasting behemoths has come at the expense of locally produced public-interest and independent radio stations. In some areas, stations that once played jazz or broadcast NPR now feature religious programming. "Several religious networks own a huge number of licenses," Pierson says. The nonprofit Educational Media Foundation is gobbling up parts of the spectrum reserved for educational programs and broadcasting religious programming. In the for-profit market, cash-rich companies like Salem are "pricing everybody out of the market," Pierson says. "I think this is a major issue, and its impact on democracy is incredible."
More than 100 million Americans now listen to Christian stations at least once a month, 43 percent more than five years ago, and, according to NRB president Frank Wright, Salem has spearheaded the trend. "Salem is far and away the fastest-growing Christian radio chain. Their growth has been meteoric," says Wright. "I think these two guys are visionary."
Salem also began a massive lobbying effort on its own, and is still one of the largest dominionist companies directly lobbying Congress:
Salem remains focused on deregulation. Between 1998 and 2004, Salem Communications and its executives contributed $423,000 to federal candidates—making it the sixth-largest industry donor today—96 percent of which went to Republicans. Salem also has a PAC, which contributes only to Republicans—about $54,000 to Republican congressional candidates in the last election cycle.
And because he’s been a reliable ally on deregulation as well as social issues, Salem’s leaders have maintained a close relationship with embattled former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. For the past six years, Salem Communications has paid about $26,000 a year to the Alexander Group, a Washington, D.C., lobbying group run by DeLay’s former chief of staff that had DeLay’s wife on its payroll. In 2000 and 2002, Atsinger was among the top contributors ($28,311) to the Republican Majority Issues Committee, a 527 advocacy group closely affiliated with DeLay that is now under fire for paying DeLay’s daughter a large salary; Epperson kicked in another $5,000. Atsinger is also one of only a handful of private citizens to contribute (thus far, $6,000) to DeLay’s legal expense trust fund. Salem’s support for DeLay should come as no surprise, says John Dunbar of the Center for Public Integrity: "Any radio company that wants to get bigger is obviously going to spend a ton of money lobbying because the issue of deregulation is very much in play."
Salem has another reason to cultivate allies in Congress: hate crime legislation. "Historic Judeo-Christian teachings have always held that homosexual conduct is a mortal sin," says NRB’s Wright. "We are fearful that criminal penalties for so-called hate crimes might impinge on Christian broadcasters." In a recent op-ed about indecency laws pushed by some Christians, Epperson worried that such laws could be twisted by liberal opponents to muzzle Christians. "Sure right now an FCC dominated by reasonable people wouldn’t do anything drastic," Epperson wrote. "But let us suppose that with this bill on the books the nation has elected Hillary Rodham Clinton as President." Then, he says, Salem’s support of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage would open it up to attacks. "The homosexual lobby would organize itself to insure that there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of complaints against stations that took that point of view. Armed with that sort of ammunition, the FCC would have no problem finding the excuse for shutting down those voices that broadcast what they would call homophobic views."
The disturbing thing is that Salem Communications is actually on the moderate end of dominionist radio broadcasting.
Not to be outdone, the Southern Baptist Convention--the largest dominionist denomination in the US after its unfortunate steeplejacking--has also set up a dominionist broadcast empire. It operates FamilyNet Radio and FamilyNet TV--two explicitly dominionist radio and TV networks that provide much the same programming as Salem Communications. Much like Salem, it operates its own satellite radio channel (on Sirius); the two networks largely share programming (including Janet Parshall's and Jay Sekulow's programs), but also carries a fair amount of more explicitly dominionist programming; programs include material from what remains of CBN (primarily dominionist news broadcasting--a format CBN originated in its heyday--and radio relays of the 700 Club), Gary DeMar (head of American Vision, a dominionist group so virulently anti-LGBT (they have literally advocated genocide) that the Southern Poverty Law Center considers it a hate group on par with neo-Nazi or KKK groups), and even explicitly dominionist car repair programs (!).
Their television fare isn't much better--it's reminiscent of the old CBN, largely dominated by dominionist television shows with the occasional old token secular program. TV shows carried include Focus on the Family fare, 700 Club, CBN-produced dominionist news programs, programming from Ron Luce's "Acquire the Fire Ministries" (this gives an indication on how thoroughly the SBC has been steeplejacked by Assemblies-linked groups; Ron Luce is a longtime Joel's Army promoter whose antics have included publication of religious harassment manuals and slickly produced dominionist youth rallies, and Luce has extensive links with the Assemblies of God including explicit partnerships with Assemblies leaders).
CBN is, as noted, mostly a dominionist news player nowadays; I will focus more extensively on them tomorrow, but their dominionist propoganda empire is still among the largest in the US.
American Family Radio (the radio wing of the American Family Association) has already been mentioned as a major player in the Great Translator Invasion; in addition, AFR is a big player in dominionist "full power" stations, and has engaged (much like Salem Communications) in a rather deliberate attempt to run non-dominionist public broadcasting off the air by steeplejacking their frequencies:
The Rev. Don Wildmon, founding chairman of a mushrooming network of Christian radio stations, does not like National Public Radio.
"He detests the news that the public gets through NPR and believes it is slanted from a distinctly liberal and secular perspective," said Patrick Vaughn, general counsel for Wildmon's network, American Family Radio.
In Lake Charles, American Family Radio has silenced what its boss detests. The network knocked two NPR affiliate stations off the local airwaves last year, transforming this southwest Louisiana community of about 95,000 into the most populous place in the United States where "All Things Considered" cannot be heard.
In place of that program — and "Morning Edition," "Car Talk" and a local Cajun program called "Bonjour Louisiana" — listeners now find "Home School Heartbeat," "The Phyllis Schlafly Report" and the conservative evangelical musings of Wildmon, whose network broadcasts from Tupelo, Miss.
The Christian stations routed NPR in Lake Charles under a federal law that allows noncommercial broadcasters with licenses for full-power stations to push out those with weaker signals — the equivalent of the varsity team kicking the freshmen out of the gym.
The losers are so-called translator stations, low-budget operations that retransmit signals of bigger, distant stations. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) considers them squatters on the far left side of the FM dial, and anyone with a full-power license legally can run them out of town.
Religious broadcasters have done this to public-radio stations in Oregon and Indiana, too, and many large-market public-radio stations, such as WBEZ in Chicago, complain that new noncommercial stations, most of them religious, are stepping on the signal at the edge of their transmission areas.
In fact, American Family Radio is probably one of the most aggressive targeters of channel space for nonprofit FM radio stations--in a deliberate attempt to push out and lock out everyone else.
American Family Radio actually operates three separate networks (similar to Educational Media Foundation's Way-FM and K-Love, or the multiple networks operated by Calvary Chapel); the vast majority of dominionist talk programming seems to be on the "AFR Inspirational net. In an interesting example of the extent to which dominionist programmers overlap and collude, Focus on the Family programming is carried as well as AFA's own; the networks also carry talk shows by Chuck Colson (dominionist, Watergate felon and neopente "faith-based coercion" promoter), Answers in Genesis (a young-earth creationist group that runs a "Creation Museum" in Covington, KY), programming from HSLDA (a dominionist correspondence-school lobbying group that has promoted pro-dominionist stances on issues not related to home education (including illegally lobbying for the nomination of John Ashcroft for US Attorney-General), that does not support inclusive homeschool groups, and has even explicitly tried to make all forms of home education aside from dominionist correspondence-schooling illegal by locking out state recognition of inclusive homeschool groups), Family Research Council (a dominionist group originally founded as a lobbying arm of FotF), an explicitly "Joel's Army" group calling itself "Daughter of Promise", Crown Financial Ministries (the dominionist investment scheme), Probe Ministries (a group that promotes young-earth creationism, is explicitly dominionist (and in fact "Joel's Army" dominionist) and which has issued literal defenses of slavery in its radio programs), D. James Kennedy, a dominionist group called the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (which is in fact a frontgroup of the SBC), a plethora of dominionist "name it and claim it" preachers, and a dominionist "Christian Contemporary" artist-cum-"Christian Counselor" (of the sort I wrote about a few days back--in fact, a substantial portion of AFR's programming consists of these "Christian Counselors").
American Family Radio's fare, alas, is more typical of dominionist talk radio. In fact, the fare of practically all of the National Religious Broadcasters is very, very similar; separate reports from Harper's Chris Hughes and Max Blumenthalof NRB conferences show the organisation is a tight-knit community of hardline dominionist broadcasters and that dominionist broadcast radio in particular is the modern master of the "two minute hate". As we'll learn tomorrow, however, this is by no means restricted to just the radio.
Calvary Satellite Network--in keeping with its origins as essentially the radio wing of an Assemblies granddaughter church--largely promotes neopente "name it and claim it" alongside the obligatory ACLJ fare; one of the groups it promotes (Morningstar Christian Chapel) may have connections to the highly abusive Maranantha. In addition, they promote the Great-Granddaddy of All Apocalyptic "Rapture Is At Hand" Preachers--namely Hal Lindsey, who originally popularised Assemblies-style "end of the world" theology and conspiracy theories in the book "The Late, Great Planet Earth" (which will be covered in a section on dominionist literature).
A lesser-known player is Bott Radio Network: its programming includes the practically obligatory Focus on the Family fare as well as radio shows from a plethora of "Joel's Army" promoters and Phyllis Schlafly (yes, of the Eagle Forum). In addition, George W. Bush's weekly presidential addresses are listed as a "ministry"--which is more than a little scary, considering that a non-negligible percentage of the "26 percent" hardcore Bush supporters feel he is literally "God's appointed president".
Bible Broadcasting Network is a major player in international dominionist radio (albeit through FM radio stations in countries that allow televangelism); along with the obligatory FotF material (seriously, pretty much every single dominionist radio station in the US has FotF syndicated material), the vast majority of its programming is "fundamentalist Baptist" style hellfire and brimstone preaching; among other things, BBN has sent letters to churches claiming that "Christian rock" and "Christian contemporary" music in general are "satanic" and has issued statements against worship music in services in general. MinistryWatch has given BBN an F for funding transparency.
Moody Broadcasting Network--a branch of the dominionist Moody Bible Institute--is quite possibly the only dominionist radio network that does not relay FotF programming directly (its stations do broadcast it, however, as network affiliates). MBN does produce plenty of dominionist broadcasting on its own (including some programming carried on FotF radio affiliates).
The combined might of dominionist radio broadcasters and the full-out raid of nonprofit spectrum space by dominionist groups is nothing to underestimate. An example is given with the list of affiliates for the Alliance Defense Fund's radio program; many dominionist legal groups, including the Alliance Defense Fund and Jay Sekulow's American Center for Law and Justice, have radio programs on the dominionist satcasting networks.
We continue next post with a continued look at dominionist print media--everything from dominionist bookstore chains to the initial promoters of dominionist armageddon theory--to the strange world of dominionist fanfiction involving "deliverance ministry" and the end of the world.