Most approaches in Internet evangelism tend to be non-denominational,
and draw heavily on the shared roots of Christian faith. Presenting a united
front of Christian belief is deemed necessary to convince a sceptical audience
of the fundamental truths of Christianity. This unity is particularly vital in
the context of the Internet, where a variety of viewpoints thrive side by side,
and solidarity of opinion can create a dominant presence in a confusing and
rapidly changing environment. Cross-denominational unity is also a way of
distancing contemporary evangelism from the personality-based evangelical
ministries that dominated the 1980’s. By looking critically at the past
perceptions and effects of evangelistic media, web evangelists have been able
to choose an approach that works to greatest effect on the largest scale in the
new medium. Media formats have traditionally promoted a splintered view of
Christian faith, or an image of Christianity as something apart from secular
daily life, but online evangelists are attempting to use new media to
consolidate the faith and present an approachable, ecumenical face to seekers.
In order to create the impression that the viewpoint represented is truly
ecumenical, most online line evangelists self-consciously describe themselves
as “Bible-based”, rather than doctrinal. Present-day Christian evangelists
trace their calling back to Christ’s dictate as found in the Book of Matthew.
Matthew 28:18-20 is known as ‘the Great Commission’ and reads: “Then Jesus came
to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey
everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very
end of the age.’”[1] The text is
constantly referred to in evangelical missions projects, as it is the bedrock
of divine authority on which all evangelistic undertakings rest.
But it was not until the invention of the first form of mass media –
print – that the Great Commission was thought to have significant application
to the Christian laity. With the arrival of a widespread communications method,
new and sometimes divisive approaches toward Christianity and evangelism found
expression. Anderson (1983) associates the arrival of print media with the
dissolution of a monolithic sacred community, and a fragmentation and
secularisation of religious sentiment. The disintegration that resulted from
this process was perhaps inevitable. Communicating belief and winning converts
during the infancy of print media usually meant preaching to the converted –
attempting to sway people from one form of Christian belief or practice to
another form. Later forms of media evangelism that addressed the producers’ own
communities went on to face the same problem, as they tried to spread an
individually crafted evangelistic message to a community that was already
largely Christian.
According to Andrew Careaga, web evangelist and author of E-Vangelism: Sharing the gospel in cyberspace (1999), there have been four communication revolutions which have changed the way that evangelism is practiced: the print revolution in the Middle Ages, and the radio, television and digital ‘revolutions’ in the twentieth century. Although these divisions may represent an oversimplification, the four ‘revolutions’ that Careaga describes provide an excellent point of reference when discussing evangelistic trends in mass communication. Tracing the adaptations to each new medium allows a quasi-sequential pattern of use to develop around new forms of evangelistic expression. The pattern that emerges upon examination of evangelical forays into print, radio and television generally consists of: many simultaneous initial attempts to share a view of Christianity that is specific to the individual evangelist (factionalism); a more formalized attempt to convey mainstreamed Christian beliefs (integration); and the establishment of a status quo within the medium (or and ‘industry), with observed boundaries (standardization). In the standardization stage, as the medium becomes more rigidly associated with particular formats, there is greater latitude in terms of the content of the evangelical message than there is in the integrative stage. The evangelical message itself may become more liberal and inclusive of general social attitudes, or it can become more dogmatic and specialized in favour of sectarian beliefs, depending on the intended target audience.
Consider the course of early religious print media as described by Anderson (1983). There was an initial conflict of factions, as the doctrine of the undivided was Church contested by Reformation theologians. Widely-distributed printed works made debate more possible, and fragmentation of Christian belief continued as the dogmas of each sect could be held up to close scrutiny and accepted or rejected by other Christians. Closely following this factionalism came the use of religious texts as the basis for a shared Christian community across denominational belief and geographical region. Using Anderson’s analysis, an argument can be made for the evangelical text as a tool for creating an ‘imagined’ global community of evangelical Christians, in a process similar to that which marked the early development of printed religious texts. The evangelical (Gospel-spreading) movement[2] among Christians in its current form first became established in the 18th and 19th centuries in Britain and the US. John Wesley (1703 - 1791), the founder of the Methodist Church published monographs which were used to draw followers to a new evangelical cause, simultaneously splintering existing Christian groups and adding to the global community of Christians. Although he began his career as a noted preacher, Wesley became an author with a popular following, publishing sermons in tract form, such as “Methodism and Politics” (1776), “Thoughts Upon Slavery” (1774), and “An Estimate of the Manners of the Present Times” (1782) (Maddox 1998). The very existence of such texts assumed that a large-scale inclusive community of readers was possible, and that this community could be added to by exposure to the text. Jonathan Edwards, an American contemporary of Wesley’s, used a similar approach toward the dissemination of his views. Evangelism in the 19th century saw a slightly different form of the printed word being put to use, as newspapers all over America published Billy Sunday’s sermons, to more fully express their support or disapproval of his large-scale revivals. Dwight Moody, working in America at the same time, continued to use published volumes such as his To All People (1877) to spread his evangelistic beliefs. Over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, evangelical and religious written works were increasingly standardized by the developing publishing industry into a variety of print formats. The formats set by the industry could be pushed or restructured by individual evangelistic efforts, but the intelligibility of their message depended on publishing their viewpoints in a way that was understandable by the consumer group at large. Adaptation to the norms of the medium brought the benefit of the largest possible consumer audience.
Print media continues to be a primary vehicle for the expression of evangelistic Christianity, and printed material with an evangelistic agenda fills a variety of niches within the publishing industry. As evangelicals have become more business-savvy, it is natural that the most popular forms of mass communication should be adapted to carry the message of evangelical Christianity. Taking evangelical initiative in print media to the largest scale in modern publishing are popular Christian writers like Norman Vincent Peale (in the 1940s and 50s), and Billy Graham. Both incorporate a Christian message into guides for living with and thinking about modern dilemmas; their books can best be likened to self-help guides with a focus on spiritual fulfilment. Much of contemporary Christian publishing has adapted to the popular niches of the publishing industry. The self-help genre has recently been explored by Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend in their guide, Boundaries: When to Say Yes, When to Say No to Take Control of Your Life (1992). Although not generally as successful, publishing genres other than self-help have also been used to spread an evangelical message. Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ currently serialized Left Behind science fiction/fantasy series chronicles the adventures of a population left behind after the Rapture[3], and is the most popular attempt to fictionalise the Books of Revelation for a non-Christian readership since Pat Robertson’s The End of the Age (1996). Romance novels with a Christian theme, like Mary Davis’ Newlywed Games (2000), have recently become ubiquitous in American bookshops. There are also Christian finance guides, children’s books and popular histories, all of which incorporate a Christian – and therefore potentially evangelistic – message. There are Christian magazines and newspapers, ranging from the Christian Times to the Christian Science Monitor, with varying amounts of evangelical content. On the small scale of contemporary print evangelism is the ubiquitous religious tract, a familiar feature of contemporary urban life. Often more dogmatic and sect-representative, tracts like those by Chick Publications or Jews for Jesus tend to use attention-grabbing ploys, extremely simple language and cartoon-like graphics in an effort to engage the reader. There are also a number of publishing companies that deal exclusively with evangelistic material in both print and electronic media, like SOON Gospel Literature, the Evangelical Press and Campus Crusade for Christ.
Although it may be argued that all Christian print (and other) media is potentially evangelistic, there are discernable differences in the print material published for Christians and non-Christians. However, as Christians increasingly invest themselves in the reproduction of aspects of popular culture, it is becoming more and more difficult to differentiate between what is meant to be evangelistic media and what is constitutes ‘Christianisation’ of popular media. This developing fluidity of categorizations has been extremely influential in the creation of the adaptive approach taken by Internet evangelists.
The history of evangelical Christian radio and television broadcasting
in the US follows a similar pattern of factionalism, integration and
standardization. And, because of their relative novelty, the history of both
mediums may be explored in some detail. Moore (1996) traces the first radio
church broadcasts to KDKA in Pittsburgh from Calvary Episcopal Church on
January 2, 1921. At that time, the primary influences on radio evangelists were
popular evangelical revivalists, like Billy Sunday and Dwight L. Moody.
Charismatic and powerful orators were deemed the best suited to the new medium.
By 1927, there were an estimated 60 religious groups operating their own radio
stations around the United States and hundreds of other secular broadcasting
services. The chaos that resulted from unregulated forays into broadcasting
mandated the creation of the Federal Radio Commission. Regulation of
broadcasting procedures coincided with the emergence of two national radio
networks – CBS and NBC. A few years later a third national network, MBS, was
formed. The emergence of these nationally-broadcast radio networks meant that
preachers could purchase airtime rather than own and operate their own
stations. This made the prospect of starting a radio ministry more widely
appealing, as there was considerably less cost involved in buying airtime than
in operating an entire radio station, and for a brief time radio ministries
became even more numerous. The issue of cost became problematic again, however,
when the Radio Commission – known from 1934 as the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) – decreed that radio stations must donate a portion of their airtime
to public service programs. Religious broadcasting fell under this category,
and as such, certain religious leaders were given access to airtime free of
charge. The theologically and socially liberal Council of Churches, as the
representative body of American Protestantism, determined which ministries were
worthy recipients of the free time allotments on behalf of the networks and
discouraged the selling of airtime to religious groups which were not
Council-approved.
The Council was wary of the unethical practices associated with early
radio evangelists such as Aimee Semple McPherson[4],
and barred evangelicals from using the free time allotted to the Council by CBS
and NBC. MBS, as a younger and less financially secure station, chose not to
bar unsanctioned ministries from purchasing airtime, providing an outlet for
evangelicals like Charles Fuller and his “Old Fashioned Revival Hour”. The
success of Fuller and the media dominance of preachers like Dr. Ernest M.
Stires, who was supported by the Council of Churches, set the formatting
precedents for successful radio evangelism: essentially a round of song, praise
and sermons These precedents had an impact on all radio preachers, even those
operating outside of the national stations advised by the Council. In the early
1940’s MBS was financially stable enough to end the practice of selling time
for religious programs. Faced with complete exclusion from the national
networks, and increasingly distanced from the radical fundamentalist movement
in the US, the National Association of Evangelicals was formed in 1942.The NAE
has a developed social reform agenda that included putting an end to the
restriction of evangelistic free speech that the network ban engendered
(Harding 2000: xvi). By 1949, after a pledge of self-regulation on the part of
the Evangelicals (by then known as National Religious Broadcasters, or NRB),
network bans on selling time to religious broadcasters was being lifted, and
many of the strategies that have become staples of radio evangelism had been
established. In that year, while working on behalf of KTIS-AM in Minneapolis,
Billy Graham established an technique that was later to become synonymous with
media evangelism for much of the public: the “share-a-thon”, through which
listeners could show their support of the station’s religious programming by
sending in money with which to finance it. Graham launched his radio career in
1950 with pre-recorded tapes featuring highlights from his latest revival tour
or ‘crusade’. Graham proved to be an innovative force in the practice of
electronically mediated evangelism. From the same initial crusade series he
filmed tapes and telecasts that were aired in theatres and on television
between 1950 and 1954. Three years later he became the first evangelical radio
broadcaster to successfully transition between radio and television with his
first nationally televised crusade (Moore 1996 and Ward 1999).
After Graham’s precedent-setting fundraising drive, new possibilities
were seen for the funding of evangelical radio. It was realized that listeners
could be encouraged to financially support religious radio stations, not just
programs, and the Christian stations could be made into commercial enterprises.
Syndication of radio programs made it possible to spread individual ministries
far beyond the limitations of local radio stations’ signals. Today, radio
continues to act as a flagship medium for the evangelical movement, and has
continued impact on other electronically mediated ministries (Ward 1999). It
has enjoyed a renewed popularity in the last decade as the low cost and
potentially vast audience-base has been rediscovered by evangelicals around the
world.
The development of television evangelism in the 1950s ushered in a new
era in evangelicalism – that of the self-proclaimed ‘electronic church’ (Boyd
1957). Hadden (1980) defines the electronic church as “all electronic
communication that is generally perceived by senders and receivers alike as
religious in intent and content”. This somewhat broad definition can be applied
to a religious message conveyed through any modern form of communication, but
it is usually used to describe radio and television ministries. Unlike its
electronic predecessor, television proved slightly more difficult for untrained
evangelicals to break into, as costs were prohibitively high and the
ministerial styles of many radio evangelists did not transfer well into the new
medium. It has been frequently noted that the oratorical styles of television
and radio preachers share common roots in the methods of late
nineteenth-century revivalists like Billy Sunday and D.L. Moody (Abraham, 1989,
Frankl 1989, Moore 1996), but only a few of the most successful examples from
each electronic medium could be said to be true adherents to the dynamic styles
of revivalist evangelism. As mentioned above, Billy Graham, already a renowned
public speaker and radio preacher, was one of the few to make a successful
transition to television. Graham had given himself a head start in telecasting when
he filmed the events of an early crusade (the same crusade that helped to
launch his radio career) and had them released as motion pictures and telecasts
between 1950 and 1954 (Ward 1999). His first nationally-televised crusade
generated 1.5 million letters to the broadcasting station, proving the
effectiveness of the medium. Graham was joined in the new medium by a new
generation of preachers – Rex Humbard, Jerry Falwell and Oral Roberts. The new
televangelists were, like their radio predecessors, excellent speakers. But
successful televangelists needed to be more than good orators; they were
charismatic individuals whose ministries sometimes became cults of personality.
In general, their sermons caught the viewer’s attention through slick
presentational style rather than sound theology (Abraham 1989).
A brief struggle over the right of religious groups to purchase airtime
was once again made an issue by the National Council of Churches, who continued
to advocate for the donation, rather than sale, of airtime to religious groups.
But in 1960 the FCC ruled that television stations did have the right to sell
time, ensuring the continued success of the early televangelists. Despite this
brief intrusion on the practice of selling airtime, there was no period of
fragmentation in the early days of evangelical television; the early industry
was too expensive and the means of production were too heavily regulated from
the outset to allow any real plurality of evangelical expression. Rather, it
began with a long period of integrated standardization, and only later, with
the arrival of cable and satellite television, did religious broadcasting
become slightly more egalitarian in terms of who could broadcast a message.
The new medium was greeted by the community of evangelicals as a gift
from God, divinely intended to help them spread Christianity to the largest
possible audience. Malcolm Boyd, an evangelical preacher and former employee of
NBC, swiftly published a guide for aspiring television evangelists entitled Crisis
in Communication (1957). Boyd took the position that Christians are,
by nature and divine order, communicators. In order to best fulfil their roles
as communicators they needed to use every tool of mass communication that was
at their disposal – be it television, film, radio or newspapers (1957: 21).
Boyd offered suggestion on how to have impact as an evangelical using mass
media without being “obvious”. In practical application for televangelists,
that meant paring down the overtly Christian language and physical accessories
of the preacher – set designs that resembled variety-show backgrounds more than
altars, tailored suits instead of preachers’ collars. Despite the distinctive
flavour of the revivalist preaching style, television evangelists succeeded in
packaging their message for the widest possible audience, drawing ‘unchurched’
and ‘churched’ viewers from different congregations and denominations alike.
This widespread, or as some called it, indiscriminate appeal lead to
allegations from other religious leaders that television evangelism was a
disruptive influence, a false church that built up its membership at the
expense of local churches. Most vehement was the allegation lodged by Father
Richard McBrien that the electronic church was not really a church at all ,
because the congregations’ profession of faith could not be ratified through
shared sacramental sharing as in baptism or confession (Frankl 1987: 8). This
opinion was later challenged by an Annenberg School of Communication study,
which found no evidence that media ministries altered the church attendance
habits of their viewers or listeners, but media evangelists were still
considered suspect by many of their congregational counterparts (Ward 1999).
The internal criticism from the Christian community did nothing to
hinder the growth of televangelism. By the late 1970s television had become a
powerful means of expression for the evangelical community, and the source of a
great deal of political power for evangelicals in the US. Jerry Falwell had the
widest syndication of any television program, religious or secular, on network
television. Rex Humbard had collected the largest independent network of
stations in the world. Oral Roberts had the highest-rated religious hour on
television. Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) became the
first Christian-owned satellite operator. Satellite and cable television
operations provided more numerous and cheaper broadcasting opportunities to
aspiring television evangelists, and the plurality that was lacking in the
early days of televangelism was suddenly and strikingly present. This next wave
of televangelists created a new sense of market competition among the already
entrenched media ministries, and to compete more effectively popular televangelists
like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker began to
diversify their interests. Television evangelism was recognized as a tool with
serious money making potential, and the viewer support given to television
ministries was used to finance the building of entertainment conglomerates like
Robertson’s CBN and the Bakker’s Praise the Lord (PTL) Club. Small-scale
television ministries remained, but were constantly overshadowed and informed
by their more successful and market-savvy antecedents.
Political power accompanied the economic and popular success of these
electronic ministries, and the media-based evangelical movement transformed
itself one of the most influential political interest groups in the United
States during the 1980s. The decade represented the apex of media evangelists’
influence in the US, as their own popularity allied itself with and bolstered
the political popularity of the Republican administration headed by President Ronald
Regan. This popularity began to wane in 1988 and 1989 when several influential
televangelists were involved in a series of scandals. Jim Bakker’s extramarital
affairs and financial indiscretions ended in his eventual incarceration for
fraud. Another popular televangelist, Jimmy Swaggart, was defrocked after it
was disclosed that he had hired prostitutes for pornographic purposes.
Evangelical media magnate Pat Robertson made an unsuccessful bid for the
American presidency in 1988. After a press investigation of his past following
the announcement, Robertson was forced to admit that he had falsified his
marriage certificate in order to hide the pre-marital conception of his first
child; he was also accused of using political influences to avoid active duty
during the Korean War. Oral Roberts came under investigation for unethical
fundraising practices. These incidents lead to a public disillusionment with
media evangelists, and engendered a widespread distrust of their motives and
methods (Davis & Smith 1992). The very success of television evangelism
eventually worked against it, as more preachers attempted to enter the medium,
increasing demand for airtime and increasing costs, while creating more
competition for viewers.
Following the disintegration of large-scale network teleministries,
media evangelism underwent a period of what Ward describes as “self
correction”. In 1988, the National Religious Broadcasters formed an Ethics and
Financial Integrity Commission, which applies objective standards of compliance
to all members. Evangelical syndicates have moved from network television to
satellite and cable networks, or even back to the cheaper alternative of radio.
Corporate structures have gradually replaced the individual personality as the
basis for a media ministry. In addition to televised ministries, the spirit of
evangelism in increasingly finding expression on television through the
development of Christian entertainment programming. Television shows like
‘Christie’, ‘Seventh Heaven’ and ‘Touched By an Angel’ have achieved popular
success in the US while strategically applying Christian morality to television
melodrama. These shows can be thought of as fictionalised ‘testimonials’, at
once meeting the requirements of evangelism while circumventing the negative
public image that witnessing has acquired.
Other forms of ‘electronic evangelism’ – music, film, video and the
telephone
Print, radio and television are not the only forms of mass media that
the evangelical movement has attempted to use to convey the Christian Gospel.
Over time, enterprising individuals in the movement have probably tried to
integrate the evangelical message into nearly every conceivable communications
format. Each new generation of evangelicals attempts to update their approach,
leading to a staggering variety of evangelical media. I would like to mention
just a few of these other approaches briefly, as they also inform the
development and expression of Internet evangelism.
As two of the top forms of exportable popular culture, music and movies
have long been considered ideal vessels for evangelistic messages. In recent
years, Christian music, pop music specifically, has become a remarkably
thriving subdivision of the music industry, often with groups or individuals
like Jars of Clay, Sixpence None the Richer and Amy Grant making it into the
pop charts. Films with an ostensible Christian message have always enjoyed a
place in the Hollywood film industry, from as far back as Cecil B. De Mille’s
silent 1923 production ‘The Ten Commandments’. The Bible continues to provide
fodder for film projects of questionable evangelistic impact, as can be seen as
recently as 1999’s Arnold Schwartzenegger vehicle, ‘End of Days’, which takes
place, as most contemporary biblically-based fiction does, during the
Apocalypse. However, the connection that the contemporary evangelicals feels
with movies is perhaps better expressed by the film-criticisms found in David
Bruce’s Hollywood Jesus website (as described below). There is still
relatively little direct use of celluloid movie making by evangelicals, with
the exception of the Trinity Broadcasting Network’s production, ‘The Omega
Code’ (1999), which was given a limited theatrical release in the United
States. Yet even supporters of TBN considered this fictionalisation of events
taken from the Book of Revelation poor filmmaking. It is arguably an effective
evangelistic tool, as several testimonials were published at the time of the
film’s release, claiming that it had successfully lead viewers to Christian
conversion[5].
Video has provided another outlet for dramatic evangelistic productions, and
Campus Crusade for Christ International has taken advantage of the cheaper
production and distribution costs of video to produce their biographical movie,
‘Jesus’. Unlike ‘The Omega Code’, the ‘Jesus’ movie is produced specifically to
be used as an evangelistic tool, and is available for distribution in five
hundred and ninety-two languages. It is arguably one of the most widely used
evangelistic tools, with estimations from its makers that it had been viewed by
over two billion individuals as of May 1999.
The final method of electronically-mediated communication that I would
like to mention is the telephone. Although using the telephone for overtly
evangelistic purposes is no longer in vogue among contemporary Christians,
telephone evangelism was at one time considered an innovative use of the
technology, and still has some adherents. Wilbur Bourne, a British church
pastor and founder of his own ‘telephone ministry’ first described telephone
evangelism in 1957. His book God Gave me a Telephone!, instructed other
pastors in how to use their parish house telephones as a way of spreading
Christianity. Originally conceiving of telephone evangelism as a service similar
to the crisis counselling offered by the Samaritans, Bourne recommended that
pastors place their phone number and an offer of spiritual guidance in their
local newspapers, and allow troubled individuals to call at any time of day in
order to discuss their problems. Callers were to be greeted with pre-prepared
words of Biblical comfort. Bourne’s vision of telephone ministry bore striking
similarity to a telephonic version of the Roman Catholic confessional, with the
ultimate purpose being to “deliver spiritual comfort” rather than expurgate
sin, and its main virtue being the anonymity that it afforded seekers. The role
that Bourne envisioned for telephone evangelists has today been largely met by
organizational help-lines, but contemporary variations on the telephone
evangelism theme are still active. Although some congregations continue to
adhere to Bourne’s suggestion of passive, seeker-initiated evangelism, others,
like the First Baptist Church of Springdale, Arkansas, have taken a more
pro-active stance. The First Baptists of Springdale have a congregation-run
telephone ministry, not the pastor-run model Bourne suggests. Members of the
congregation meet twice weekly to make calls into the community, rather than
wait for seekers to call them. The purpose of this ministry, as described in
the church’s website, is two-fold: “To reach out to new residents in order to
welcome them to the community and give them a personal invitation to visit us
at First Baptist Church; and to call each of our members with a loving, caring
touch on a regular basis.”[6]
With a vast body of experience in using the media behind them,
evangelicals were able to envision the potential of the Internet years before
the e-commerce boom of 1998-99. Because of the lack of any regulation or
guiding organizational influence on evangelistic Internet development during
the early 1990s, and the lack of a physical archive on the Net, it is difficult
to create anything other than a representative chronology of Web evangelism’s
development. By sifting through current websites and referring to the
increasing number of analyses of the subject within the evangelical community,
it is possible to arrive at a rough estimate of the shape of the first decade
of Internet evangelism. The approximate ‘ages’ of websites were derived from
their copyright dates and their ‘about us’ internal pages, where applicable.
The longevity of resource sites are dated using similar methods or the archival
records attached to the site. I would like to add that this chronology is not
exhaustive, and deals only with a select group of mainstream,
non-denominational evangelicals working in the US, the UK, Canada and
Australia.
1990 – 1996
Although some individual evangelists had been involved with the
technology since the early 1990s, evangelical groups and individuals did not
establish a high-visibility presence on the Internet until around 1995. The
drive to bring evangelical Christianity online was a factionalized effort at
first, similar to the early days of radio, with the World Wide Web acting as an
unregulated space, open to all early claimants. As with radio in the early
1920s, the Internet in the early 1990s attracted many who simply had an
interest in the technology for its own sake, rather than a proprietary interest
in its marketing value. The few evangelicals with knowledge of computer
technology and access to a computer were free to spread their own ministry to
the relatively few people that had access to the technology at the time,
without supervision by or obligation to the movement as a whole. Until home PCs
became more widely used, there was little urgency surrounding evangelical use
of IT, and no uniformly stated need for cohesion and ecumenism in evangelistic
use of the medium. High-profile evangelical presence online by 1995 mainly
consisted of informational websites for real-world evangelists, like the Billy
Graham Institute of Evangelism’s (IOE) newsletter Equipping Evangelists
Online, which has archived issues on the IOE website beginning in November
1994, or Doug Lucas’ Brigada site[7].
Lucas began Brigada (and its online newsletter, Brigada Today) in 1995
as a resource for evangelicals and missionaries in the field. Leadership
University launched a version of its ‘gay recovery’ site, Stonewall
Revisited in 1995, anticipating what was later to become a popular approach
in webpage based evangelistic efforts – the organizationally produced ‘issue’
page. As the Internet became better known to the public as host to a multitude
of ‘virtual communities’, evangelists began to think of themselves as actors in
a new public domain. Evangelical perceptions of the Internet slowly changed
from thinking of it as a networked information resource into considering it as
a developing mission field. By 1996 a new form of evangelical self-expression
was in use: the evangelistic webpage. That year several of the more innovative
strategies in evangelical page design were first put to use, with Leadership
University’s (a division of CCCI) Michelle Akers Homepage in the US, and
the Australian Grantley Morris ministry’s take on the ‘lonely hearts’ page, You
Can Find Love[8]. Both sites
represent early examples of evangelists using popular web-page genres and
themes to draw in a non-Christian audience. The first European Christian
Internet Conference (ECIC) took place in Frankfurt in November of the year. At
the conference, the thirty-two delegates from ten countries addressed the
increasing importance of the Internet in contemporary society and its evangelistic
potential. Also in 1996, Mark Kellner published his book God on the Internet,
one of the first critical examinations of how the evangelical movement could
expect to use the Internet to its advantage.
1997 – 2000
As the technical network grew, and the hyperbole surrounding the
Internet began to swell, more Christian individuals, churches and organizations
considered it a priority to establish an online presence. But relatively few
had the technical or design expertise needed to create a coherent website. In
1997, Tony Whittaker at SOON Gospel Literature began collecting what he
considered successful examples of Web evangelism and combined those with his
own thoughts and observations gathered from a career in print evangelism. His Web
evangelism Guide[9], linked
through Lucas’ Brigada homepage, offers aspiring web evangelists hints and
resources for designing the most effective webpage possible. Whittaker’s
instructions range from the broadly helpful, like the popular editor’s note
KISS (Keep it Short and Simple) to the evangelically specific. Some of the more
specific advice, such as “avoiding evangelical jargon” or instructions in
subtly communicating an evangelical message “without being dishonest”, are
responsible for creating the unique and deliberately adaptive style that
characterizes many evangelistic sites. Whittaker’s Guide offers
suggestions for every kind of evangelistic webpage; though it is mainly
concerned with the development of pages to reach seekers, there is also advice
for church websites (pages introducing web users to a church or congregation),
and the Guide itself is a good example of a resource page for evangelists.[10]
In the last three years of the 1990s, the Internet became an even more
important focus for evangelical individuals and organizations, many of which
already had knowledge of or investment in publishing, television, film or
radio. One of the major considerations facing web evangelists was the issue of
how to engage with the ‘post-modernist’, or secular and relativistic, mindset
that was thought to pervade the Internet. The perceived public suspicion of
evangelism was acknowledged to be at least in part the legacy of the
personality-driven and scandal plagued televangelists of the 1980s.
Evangelistic webpages have therefore been developed in careful counterpoint to
the popular image of the slick and rapacious era of television evangelism, as
well as to the suspect influence of corporate culture within Internet
communities. The danger of ‘post-modern uncertainty’ to an evangelistic message
was (and is) deeply felt. It was considered urgent for the evangelical church
to find new ways to grasp and hold the attention of a new generation,
unfamiliar with the concept of moral certainty (Drane 1997, Whittaker 2000,
Kellner 1996 & 1997, Careaga 1999). Adaptive strategies and careful
language were determined to have the least threatening initial aspect for
non-Christians, and were increasingly worked into evangelistic strategies. In
addition to avoiding “preachy” text and “evangelical jargon”, it was (and still
often is) advised that webpages be personal constructs, and that they catch web
surfers’ attention by incorporating the secular interests of their designers.
At the same time, the developing design norms of webpages have drawn considerable
attention, as the proper use of visual cues and menus are vital to making the
page more ‘user-friendly’.
By late 1998 and early 1999, the Western financial markets were
dominated by the technology sector, and a tremendous amount of press surrounded
all forms of information technology and innovative uses of the Internet. Mark
Kellner described the impetus behind increased Web evangelism efforts as the
need for Christians to keep pace with the “non-Christian groups promulgating
their beliefs on the Internet”; he described the Internet itself as “one of the
greatest mission fields in history” (1998). Web evangelism was becoming an
increasingly high priority for the evangelical community at large. Two more
books that addressed the establishment of a Christian presence on the web were
widely released: Vernon Blackmore’s God on the Net (1999) is a listing
of websites and online resources appropriate for Christians; Andrew Careaga’s E-Vangelism:
Sharing the Gospel in Cyberspace (1999) is a published guide to Web
evangelism, from a slightly more theoretical perspective than Whittaker’s
online guide. In April 1999, the Billy Graham Institute hosted the first
Internet Evangelism Conference in the US; also that year the United Theological
Seminary in Ohio began its first MA program in religious communication, dealing
specifically with IT and multi-media. Following this trend, international
organizations like Campus Crusade for Christ International began expanding
their already considerable web-based ministry, adding the creation and
administration of new evangelistic sites by several of their member branches.
The evangelistic sites that were designed by CCCI in 1999 tended toward the
expression of socially relevant themes with an appearance of collective or
organizational authorship, but with a retention of ‘personal style’. One of the
most prevalent current styles shares the format of the online magazine. This
does not signal a total deviation from the agenda of avoiding a ‘corporate’
image; because of independent magazines like Salon (www.salon.com) and Suck (www.suck.com) , the online magazine format had
already been established as a slightly subversive online format well before
many of the similarly styled evangelical sites were created. Newer
magazine-style pages produced by organizations like Campus Crusade and Focus
Radio target specific demographic audiences, like Campus Crusade Canada’s iamnext.com
(for adolescents) and Women Today Magazine[11],
or specific issues, such as CCCI/Leadership University’s website Origins[12],
which deals with the issue of creationism. Before the New Year 2000, a popular
theme for evangelical pages was the predicted millennial computer failure, or the
Y2K bug. Obviously, this particular strategy is no longer effective, but pages
that rely on news stories and public concerns remain a staple of the adaptive
evangelical approach.
Precedent for the adaptive strategies of Web evangelism has been set by the
last fifty years of development in print evangelism. Just as Peale, LaHaye and
Davis have clothed a Christian message in the popular book genres of self-help,
science fiction and romance, web evangelists have learned to approach their
audience through the guise of a webpage that is about a secular subject matter
or shared interest. Multi-media formatting possibilities, as well as its use as
an interactive tool for communication, make the Internet uniquely suited to
implementing lessons learned from of each of the other forms of evangelistic
media. The Internet can incorporate print, static imagery, video and audio
files as aspects of an individual website. It offers the simultaneous anonymity
and intimacy of telephone evangelism as well as the mass appeal of television
evangelism. Through Internet links, users can listen to live radio broadcasts
from thousands of stations anywhere in the world. Increasingly secure networks
make it possible for the Internet to truly operate as a marketplace. The option
of online support giving is already established in some websites (though not in
any of the websites that are examined here). Not only can digitally-formatted
versions of other types of media be transmitted, they can literally be
delivered in their original forms to Internet users by purchasing them online.
There have been some changes wrought by the nature of the format: because the
anonymity goes both ways, people who perhaps would otherwise not feel
comfortable proselytising can share their faith with a large audience or a
single stranger. It allows vast networks of people to communicate
simultaneously, and even confounds Father McBrien’s objection to electronic
media by allowing people who are not part of the same physical community to
ratify their faith or experience a conversion by means of electronic medium,
through planned simultaneous “prayer lifts”. In a very real sense, the Internet
allows expression of the holistic approach to evangelism that evangelists have
been claiming since Charles Fuller was accused of ‘stealing’ local
congregations. There is no attempt to portray Internet evangelism as the only
outlet for worship, conversion or professions of faith – from the first it has
been treated as a tool, resource or community embedded in the real lives of
both the evangelists and seekers using it.
The current and future status of Internet evangelism
Despite the current (April 2000) downturn in IT financial markets, the
evangelical community appears more willing than ever to continue their
development of new media. The increasing number of critical instructional
guides, as well as formalized attempts to legitimate Internet evangelism
through institutionalisation, is indicative of a quickly developing period of
integration within the Web evangelism movement. This ‘normalizing’ process
seems to be increasingly supported by major evangelical organizations.
Standardization of the entire industry is not far behind, as various
international governments and corporate organizations wrestle for regulatory
control of the global public domain. A certain amount of self-regulation within
the “industry” is already evident, as search engines have been modified to act
as filtering and labelling devices for the websites that they catalogue.
Although many Christian groups advocate for increased regulation of Internet
content, industry standardization is not necessarily desirable from the
viewpoint of evangelicals who are trying to communicate with a sceptical
public. Industry labelling of websites can work at cross-purposes with an
evangelical agenda, as is the case with Yahoo’s search-engine labelling of the Stonewall
Revisited site as “anti-gay”. As occurred in the early days of radio and
television, outside organizations could obtain the right to label what is
‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ to mainstream Christian believers. If this
becomes the case, overt or politically sensitive evangelical pages on the
Internet may be in danger of becoming marginalized by regulatory forces within
the industry through the application of standardized labels to websites. Faced
with the prospect of webpage content labelled by an unsympathetic industry, the
adaptive strategies of evangelical webpages could become even more essential to
the construction of viable web ministries targeting non-Christians.
[1] NIV version through Bible Gateway www.bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible 02/00)
[2] The evangelical movement as a non-denominational movement, as opposed to the Evangelical Church as a separate denomination, founded in the 1940s in opposition to the growing power of fundamentalist groups in the US Christian community (Harding 2000: xvi).
[3] The Rapture is an event described by the Apostle Paul in 1Thessolonians 4:13-18 and 1Corinthians 15: 51-55; these passages are believed to prophesy the physical transport of all believing Christians, living and dead, to heaven before the events prophesied in the Book of Revelation take place and cause the end of the world.
[4] Aimee Semple McPherson gained notoriety in the early twentieth century by founding her own Pentecostal church, and in 1924, building a radio station in Los Angeles to spread her ministry. According to Ward (1999) McPherson “drew attention not only as a faith healer and woman preacher, but also for her two divorces and as the victim of an alleged 1926 kidnapping”. McPherson died in 1944 from an accidental drug overdose.
[5] Tony Whittaker writes (15/05/00): “I think you have understated the use of celluloid by Christians. There have been a range of films on both sides of the Atlantic over the years. The Graham organization World Wide Films in UK among others have funded a number (including two with Cliff Richard) and while most have been competent rather than Oscar material, many have been well worth watching. Corrie Ten Booms story The Hiding Place was of sufficient stature to go on general release. Others, (by a different maker, I forget which) such as the children's stories 'Tanglewoods Secrets' and 'Treasures in the Snow' have been very valuable evangelistic material.”
[7] http://www.brigada.org/ 04/04/00
[8] http://net.simplenet.com/love/luv.htm 04/04/00
[10] The advice offered in the Web evangelism Guide was supplemented in 1999 by the creation of an affiliated monthly newsletter, the Web evangelism Bulletin (WEB).
[11] http://www.womentodaymagazine.com/ 04/04/00
[12] http://www.origins.org/ 04/04/00