Religious broadcasting in the 40's and 50's was quite similar to today's broadcasts. You had your purists, your radicals and your preachers with hidden agendas...or not so hidden. Such Right wing fellows as Father Coughlin who embraced the Nazi Empire and preached against Negros and Jews...and indeed, against anyone who was not lily white, male and "right thinking".
Of course around the radio dial you could find Coughlin's disciples', just as Rush has his mimics today.
But you also had the Fire and Brimstone preachers. Many of these were good old boys from the mid west and South, but there was a goodly sprinkling of Negro churches spreading the Gospel to the four corners of the world. Many of them probably could have just stuck their heads out the window and shouted, they were that loud. And I loved to hear the rhythm of their enthusiastic singing and preaching.
Radio ministries built empires for some charismatic preachers.
Herbart W. Armstrong began a radio ministry which really took off when his son, Garner Ted Armstrong took over the mike. The World Tomorrow brought millions of dollars' into the coffers and underwrote at least three colleges around America and in Europe. Hard times befell the ministry when the Armstrong's had a falling out over the direction the church should take, and the book keeper headed South with a huge chunk of the churches money.
The Seventh Day Adventists had a very classy program. I wish I could recall the pastor's name but they had a singer whose first name was Della, who had a voice so sweet that it would have converted the Devil...if he'd been up on Sunday mornings. That always made me chuckle, the Seventh Day Adventists broadcasting to folks on Sunday morning. You could bet they weren't targeting their own folks. But everyone was out to convert the Heathen.
In the 50's my grandma Jarvis would gather about three or four of her Faithful neighbor ladies in her living room and turn on a fellow who could heal you right over the radio. All you had to do was to send him a donation, whatever the Holy Spirit laid upon your heart to give, and he'd send you his little Miracle Healing cloth. These dear ladies, all of them in their 80's, would get down on their knees, tip their heads upward and place the cloth over their faces. Then they would reach out and touch the radio, as he instructed them to do. With mighty shouts through that little radio speaker, and equally loud shouts by these committed believers, he would call upon "Gwad Amighdy" to heal his Faithful servants.
For me, a young teenager, this was better than the Saturday "Shoot 'em up Westerns".
Straying away from the radio just a moment, I also loved going to the tent revivals. Now at the time I was neither a Believer nor an Agnostic, but the Spirit and the joy generated in those revivals was genuine and infectious. I only went inside once. The large woman I sat next to was so loudand moved back and forth, threatening my life, that I couldn't hear what the preacher was shouting. She just kept screaming, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!" over and over for about an hour without stopping for air. After that my cousin and I would sit on the hillside listening to the service and drinking beer that he had somehow talked the local grocer into selling him. We were only in our teens, but my cousin is an Albino and his white hair made him look older.
Seattle had its share of radio ministries', too.
Most popular was Brother Ralph. He broadcast out of some building that he called the temple of the Lord. He packed them in and put on a real show. Great Gospel music and lots of shouting and praising. But the high point was the healing. When Brother Ralph expanded to TV, you could watch the healing take place. I saw with my own eyes a little boy come up on crutches and stand before Brother Ralph. With his hands on the boy's head, Brother Ralph commanded the Lord to heal that poor cripple. And the Lord actually listened to Brother Ralph and obeyed him. The boy's little bent head suddenly shot up, his back straightened and he literally threw those crutches away and sprang off the stage, dashing down the aisle shouting, "I'm healed. Praise the Lord".
During those years many folks were cured of cancer, blindness, Evil Spirits were cast out, but I never saw anyone grow a new leg or hand.
The program went off the air quite suddenly when Brother Ralph and his young secretary took the church treasury and went seeking some warmer home to the far South. South America, I think. But later Brother Ralph returned, begging forgiveness for his wicked ways. He was forgiven. I don't know what happened to the money or to his temptress. I suspect she, like Eve, became the fall guy.
My grandma Ludwig listened for years to a fellow out of Los Angeles. I've forgotten his name but he sounded like everybody's grandfather. Down to earth and kindly, he would explain each day around noon, a verse of the Bible in terms that anyone could understand. Something like Doctor Narymore. I came up with a start many years later, somewhere in the early 90's, when I turned on the radio and there he was, still preaching in that fatherly voice. I couldn't believe it! He sounded just like he had sounded back in the 50's. For a moment I thought that God really did exist. Then the announcer burst my bubble by telling us that these tapes of Doctor Narymore would continue to be rebroadcast through a fund established for just that purpose.
Well Mike, there were so many more, but my old brain seems to have tucked many of the names and programs in the back corners of my mind.
Carl Jarvis
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