On the Air and In the Movies:
A 20th Century History of Presbyterians in Broadcasting and Communication
Front Page Text
From the earliest “telephone sermons” in 1910, to the first religious radio station broadcast in 1922;
from silent movie heart-throb Fred Thomson to children’s television icon “Mister (Fred) Rogers,”
Presbyterians recognized the potential mass media had for reaching and influencing people. Not at all
intimidated by innovation, Presbyterians were early adopters of the new technologies. They saw, first
and foremost, that each advance in the mass media industry offered new and better ways of broadening
the reach of the church. The early inventions of Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell and others gave
Presbyterians marvelous new tools that, for the first time ever, enabled them to really “Go into all the
world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.” (Mark 16:15, NRSV)
However, as Americans were falling in love with their new radios, TV sets and movie theatres, the
church’s on-going challenge would be to maintain a healthy balance between the pleasure of
entertainment and the more serious work of spreading the Gospel. Over the course of the 20th century,
as mass media came into its own, Presbyterians shared the country’s new-found passion for the
industry; they also found their own unique places both on the air and in the movies.
Text for following pages
Sermons by Telephone
By the mid-1870s, Bell had done for the telephone what Henry Ford did for the automobile. He and the
companies founded in his name were the first to develop commercially practical telephones around
which a successful business could be built and grow.
“Telephone sermons,” introduced in the spring of 1910, put the invention to good use by linking an
actual church service up with those who were unable to attend on Sunday morning – the sick, the
elderly, those too far away to make the trip into town, those experiencing inclement weather.
Transmitters cleverly and inconspicuously incorporated into the pulpit (one church actually built a
transmitter and microphone into a box that looked like a Bible!) successfully carried the message to
subscribers, who listened to the live service with a specially designed ear piece.
Even after radio broadcasts had overtaken sermons by telephone, the telephone, itself, remained an
important link connecting the growing networks of radio stations across the country.
The Radio Boom
In a Chicago Tribune article from 1910, a visionary journalist writing an article about “telephone
(electrophone) sermons,” wonders what will happen next. “Will the preacher of the future sit in his
study and ‘preach’ his sermon before an electrophone while his congregation sit at home in easy chairs,
with telephone receivers to their ears? Or,” he ponders, taking the thought a step further, “will we have
canned religion, as we have canned music, sent out from a central station every Sunday morning and
evening?”
It appeared that, soon after its first commercial broadcast in 1922, radio would do just that. Again,
Presbyterians were quick to take up the latest mass media technology. Hard on the heels of Calvary
Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh, PA, which aired the very first regular religious broadcast out of station
KDKA on January 2, 1921, the Church of the Covenant (predecessor of the National Presbyterian Church)
in Washington, DC, took to the airwaves a year later on January 1, 1922, from station WDM.
The “radio boom” in America gathered speed. By 1930, there was an estimated listening audience of
over 50 million people, and mainline denominations were eager to capitalize on the medium’s
popularity. Ecumenical broadcasting organizations such as the Protestant Radio Center (1945,) home of
“The Protestant Hour” radio program, and the Protestant Radio Commission (1949), sprang up. The
Presbyterian Church, having established its own Special Committee on Religious Radio at the General
Assembly (PCUSA) of 1942, set an on-going precedent for providing significant leadership, cooperation
and financial support to mainline interdenominational radio programming.
The Protestant Hour
At its zenith, the weekly “Protestant Hour” radio program was carried by over 800 radio stations as well
as the Armed Forces Overseas Radio Network, and estimated listenership was in the millions.
Launched collaboratively on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, by four denominations – Presbyterian,
Lutheran, Methodist and Baptist – “The Protestant Hour” was aired on just eleven stations. The
broadcast was live (prerecorded transmissions were not used to distribute the program until 1948), and
the inaugural sermon, “Immortality, What It Should Mean to Us,” was preached by Presbyterian pastor
Dr. W. T. Thompson.
The program was produced by The Protestant Radio Center, chartered in 1949 by representatives of
Agnes Scott College, Candler School of Theology, Columbia Theological Seminary, Emory University, the
Presbyterian Church (US and PCUSA), the Methodist Church, the Protestant Episcopal Church, the
United Lutheran Church, and the National Council of Churches’ southeastern office. Ground was broken
for the organization’s headquarters in Atlanta, GA, in 1953.
By the close of the century, “The Protestant Hour” had been renamed “Day1” and continued to be a
major voice for mainline Protestant churches, presenting outstanding preachers from the Presbyterian
Church, the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the United Methodist Church , the
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the United Church of Christ and more.
The Advent of Television
The Chicago Tribune journalist continued his 1910 musing on mass media and religion, addressing
concerns that sermons by telephone and “canned” religious radio would be too impersonal: “The
objection that all this neglects the ‘personal equation’ will vanish,” he predicted, “when television
becomes an accomplished fact and one may sit at home and see as well as hear all that goes on in the
church, blocks or miles away.”
By 1931, there were nearly 40,000 television sets in the U.S. The telecast of Sunday morning church
services was a natural outgrowth of the medium’s popularity.
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood
It was not, however, just from the church pulpit, but from a very special “neighborhood” that television
programming became a subtle but powerful vehicle for ministry. On a visit home from college in 1951,
Fred McFeely Rogers watched television for the first time in his parents’ living room, and although he
immediately recognized fantastic possibilities for the new medium, he was also troubled by the
shallowness of the programming. It was a pivotal moment for Fred Rogers, who postponed seminary
and began a lifelong career in television. He would eventually continue on his path to become an
ordained Presbyterian minister, but he would accomplish much of his most meaningful pastoring as
“Mister Rogers,” host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and one of the most beloved and influential
personalities in the history of the television industry.
"I'm not that interested in 'mass' communication,” Fred once stated. “I'm much more interested in
what happens between this person and the one person watching. The space between the television set
and that person who's watching is very holy ground."
Movies and Mission
The spread of radio in the early 1920s made it a much more affordable medium for preaching to the
masses than film. It took a generous (and probably strategic) gift from the Eastman Kodak Company in
1923 to get Presbyterians really excited about making movies. Just as 16mm film went on the market,
Eastman Kodak donated over two thousand film projectors to the denomination, and the gift was
immediately put to use by the church’s Board of National Missions and Board of Foreign Missions.
Mission films proliferated. Missionaries from the Appalachians to the Near East now had a priceless tool
for illustrating and promoting their work. Conversely, church-made films helped foreign viewers
distinguish between real American life and Hollywood’s portrayals in the movies.
Hollywood and Morality
As America’s infatuation with the movies and its stars grew in the mid-1900s, mainline Protestants were
uncertain how to respond to an industry that loved its big budget Biblical epics, but insisted on lacing
them liberally with suggestive scenes that were upsetting to conservative church-goers. The result was
a strident Protestant outcry for government censorship. In 1922, the film industry, in self-defense, hired
the most influential and respectable Washington insider they could find – Presbyterian elder, former
Postmaster General and Republican National Committee leader Will Hays – to head up the Motion
Picture Producers & Distributors of America (MPPDA) and fend off the Protestant reformers. Hays
personally preferred self-censorship to government interference and initially attempted a relatively
delicate list of “Don’t and Be Carefuls” for movie makers – to the satisfaction of virtually no one on
either side of the dispute. He then, in collaboration with the Catholic Church that had joined the fray,
developed a much stricter code, eventually known as the Hays Code that was forced on the film industry
under threat of a nationwide movie boycott by Catholics. The boycott was averted, but renegade film
makers continued to push the boundaries of propriety.
Presbyterians in the Movies
While some Presbyterians fought the battle of decency, there were those who, as Presbyterians, tried to
hold fast to their faith and standards while contributing to the industry.
Silent movie cowboy Fred Thomson was an ordained Presbyterian pastor who at one time rivaled 1920s
heroes Tom Mix and Hoot Gibson in popularity. His untimely death in 1928 at the age of thirty-eight
tragically ended his rise to stardom and silenced what could have been an important voice for
filmmaking and its role as a positive influence on young people.
Other Presbyterians in the movies include John Wayne, Dick Van Dyke, Jimmy Stewart, Shirley Temple
and Debbie Reynolds, to name only a few. Actor and 40th President of the United States Ronald Reagan
was a Presbyterian. Ralph Winter, a movie producer whose credits include blockbuster movies such as
X-Men, Fantastic Four and the Star Trek series as well as I, Robot and the first remake of Planet of the
Apes, once considered going to seminary and becoming a pastor; he was and continues to be a devout
and influential Presbyterian in the film industry.
Presbyterian Churches in the Movies
Silent movie fans have seen Presbyterian churches in some of their favorites, including New York City’s
Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in The Cameraman (1928) starring Buster Keaton; and Immanuel
Presbyterian Church, Los Angeles, CA, in City Lights (1931) with Charlie Chaplin. Silent star Tom Mix
filmed in Newhall, CA, in the late 1910s and early 1920s, and used some shots featuring the exterior of
the Presbyterian Church of Newhall.
Later films include Forest Gump (1994) when the white feather floats past the tall steeple of the
Independent Presbyterian Church, Savannah, GA; and the interior of Chicago’s Fourth Presbyterian
Church for the wedding scene in My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997).
Into the Twenty-First Century
Today’s audiences, Christian and non-Christian alike, are smart, impatient and curious. Furthermore,
they have a wealth of incredible media resources and mind-boggling communications artistry literally at
their fingertips. The Presbyterian Church, like other mainline Protestant denominations, knows it must
tap into those resources and that artistry with the God-given mandate to educate, inspire, convert,
promote, reach and entertain as many people as possible. Just as “telephone sermons” caught the
church’s attention in the early 1900s and quickly evolved into radio broadcasts, television shows,
mission films and movies over the course of the 20th century, today’s blogs, tweets, and posts are going
to evolve. Something new is always just around the corner, and in the 21st century, Presbyterians will
still be “going into all the world, proclaiming the good news” but in ways not even imagined yet.