TV Preachers’ Religious Intolerance Can’t Be Tolerated

The time-honored privilege afforded the clergy in our land of free religious expression is being distorted today on a grand scale that threatens to undermine the pluralism and tolerance that mark our heritage.

The power of the pulpit to embolden, enlighten and empower no longer rests in the heart and voice of local clergy who speak to their loyal constituency face to face for 20 minutes a week. It has been appropriated by a small cadre who have invented the electronic church to reach into millions of homes day and night with borderline-religious ideologies that often are far removed from biblical teaching but capable of generating millions of dollars.

Sociologist John Seeley believes that “religion for many in America has become a department of the entertainment and communications industry.” The television pulpit is not the place for the preacher personally concerned with individuals’ spiritual well-being; it is the domain of showmanship, style, emotionalism designed to seduce and overwhelm the viewing audience.

The pulpit is a valid forum of free expression. The danger lies in its abuse. We know that it is possible for a person to be both charismatic and a demagogue. We must not allow a select few powerful religious media personalities to define religion or divine will (or lack thereof) for us all. Today, more than ever, the laity, the public at large, has a responsibility to be vigilant in holding accountable all persons of the pulpit.

We are reminded of the prophets in the Old Testament whose purpose was to remind people that something had gone wrong in relations between society, its members and their God. This tradition is carried on today. Clergy of many faiths attempt to call persons, communities and institutions to reassess their potential and contribute to the betterment of society. But too often the electronic pulpit is used not to hold all persons accountable but to single out a few for praise and many for damnation. Too often the TV pulpit becomes an extension of a political cause, and the righteous hand of judgment is waved with an ever-widening sweep.

God has no favorites, save the poor and oppressed, and those for whom justice has not become reality. At a time when our religious impulses might help heal the pains and strains in our society, the pulpiteers preach intolerance, censure and discrimination. They package a “believer life style,” and rail against everyone who doesn’t fit it--homosexuals, communists, secular humanists, Jews and other non-Christians, sex educators and so on. It is scary that we allow these powerful few to stand in judgment of so many.

Martin Marty speaks of our Republic as a “community of communities.” Each community within this vast and diverse nation belongs, and each member of each community is equal under the Constitution--as each is in the eyes of God. This nation derives its strength from the unity in our diversity. It is right, a good and joyful thing, that our diversity includes our religious expression.

We have an obligation to raise the red flag of danger when any mass-media preacher pits Americans against one another in the name of the “correct” religion. An alert public must assert the true, constitutionally empowered American belief that no group, large or small--not even the group associated with a particular President--has the right to determine and then impose a particular moral or religious standard on society. While the clergy has the responsibility, along with the right, to speak against evil and for sound moral principles, as believers, members of the clergy must guarantee the right of all citizens to non-belief, if it may be.

The solution for the ills of society will not be found in rooting out the so-labeled unbelievers. Unity in belief is an impossibility in our nation, but unity in action is possible when men and women given the privilege of the pulpit see the hope in preaching reconciliation, tolerance, acceptance and understanding. It remains incumbent on all in this society to hold the clergy accountable for doing just that. Anything less indicates that we are complicit in further dividing neighbor against neighbor.

Religious intolerance must not be tolerated. The packaging of that intolerance in slick Hollywood programming, or under the guise of patriotic fervor or moral-sounding titles, is skillfully accomplished on many fronts. That, however, does not make it right.

Recrimination and condemnation must pass from our vocabulary and be replaced by an affirmation of every person’s rights as endowed by the creator and protected by the law of our land. If the pulpit is in the vanguard, that unifying message will give it its ultimate power.