Religious Broadcasters Use Convention to Put House in Order

Rebounding from scandals that have felled several of television evangelism’s gaudiest stars during the last two years, the National Religious Broadcasters are concentrating on setting their organizational house in order.

Accountability, financial disclosure, integrity, spiritual depth and the healing of strained relationships were topics mentioned often in speeches and workshops at the broadcasters’ 46th annual convention here this week.

“We have come through our Waterloo and put that behind us and caught a fresh glimpse of who we are,” declared “Old Time Gospel Hour” preacher Jerry Falwell at the group’s closing banquet Wednesday night.

Falwell for a time presided over Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s fallen PTL empire after lurid sex-and-money revelations involving the Bakkers became public in 1986. A year later, TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart tearfully confessed that he had “sinned,” and a New Orleans prostitute said he had paid her to perform lewd acts.

Swaggart Suspended

The National Religious Broadcasters, known as the NRB, this week suspended Swaggart’s ministry from membership on moral grounds and would have kicked out the Bakker ministry had it not already been dissolved and reorganized under different leadership, NRB President Jerry Rose said.

The NRB, which represents about 75% of the nation’s religious broadcasters, also put in place guidelines for its new ethics code. To qualify for membership and obtain the NRB “seal of approval,” applicants must submit to an independent audit and agree to public financial disclosure. In addition, owners of nonprofit ministries with more than $100,000 in annual revenues must have at least half of their board membership composed of non-family members. The NRB previously imposed no management or financial controls on its members.

Rosy Picture

NRB officials painted a rosy picture despite the recent debacles and the hot glare of the media spotlight on the electronic gospel industry.

Executive Director Ben Armstrong hailed the “explosive growth and expansion” of Christian broadcasting during 1988--125 new radio and 50 new television stations in the United States. And solid growth is beginning overseas, representatives said.

While integrity was in, celebrity attention was out at the 1989 convention. Neither the Bakkers, Swaggart, Oral Roberts nor Gene Scott were present.

“God deliver us from the celebrities,” thundered Falwell at the banquet. “As followers of Jesus Christ we don’t need to have Rolls-Royces and be out front.”

Even in the cavernous exhibit halls, where nearly 300 vendors displayed their communications wares, there was less flash and more class: fewer garish promotional gadgets and gimmicks and more high-tech broadcasting and satellite hardware than in previous years.

Political Image

However, the NRB, whose 1,450 member groups broadcast to an estimated monthly audience of 40 million adults, retained its potent political image at this year’s convention.

Vice President Dan Quayle told the 4,500 broadcasters assembled at Washington’s largest hotel that they “maintain a vital role in preserving our democracy.”

The Congressional Prayer Breakfast, addressed by Charles Colson, the former Watergate figure who heads Prison Fellowship, drew Housing and Development Secretary-designate Jack Kemp, five U.S. Senators, at least 15 members of the House of Representatives, the House chaplain and dozens of congressional staffers.

Pat Robertson, a 1988 Republican candidate for President and an active NRB member, received the association’s top award: Christian Broadcaster of the Year.

In an auxiliary event, retired Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North--who was on his way to appear at his trial in the Iran-Contra case--admonished a packed Roundtable Prayer Breakfast honoring U.S.-Israel relations to trust neither Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev nor Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Bush Cancels

And President George Bush, all set to present a major address on Wednesday morning--it would have been his fourth year to speak at an NRB convention--canceled at the last minute because of laryngitis. Instead, in brief remarks presented by his close friend, evangelist Billy Graham, Bush said the Christian broadcasters “influence more people on Earth for Christ than anyone else.”

Yet, for all the visible clout and apparent healthy introspection, there were signs that the NRB hasn’t conquered all of its Waterloos.

Armstrong admitted at a press conference that the past year had been “disappointing” in terms of donations and listeners.

Although experts on religious broadcasting say precise viewer and donation figures are hard to gather--and NRB officials provided none at the convention--several independent surveys point to significant declines over the last several years.

Arbitron ratings, which do not include cable viewers, showed a drop in viewership among the five largest TV ministries--Robert Schuller, Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson--from 6.7 million households in February, 1986, to just over 3 million in July of 1988.

And according to the trade journal, Electronic Media, in the year beginning November, 1987, Falwell’s “Old Time Gospel Hour” fell from 156 to 125 stations while donations dropped from $50 million to $40 million; Roberts’ show went from 176 to 123 stations; Robertson’s “700 Club” declined from 87 to 57 stations, and the “PTL Club” plummeted from 67 stations to 32.

‘Credibility Damage’

The lingering effects of the scandals have caused “credibility damage to broadcasters and churches in general,” acknowledged NRB President Rose, who heads Christian station WCFC-TV in Chicago. Thus, the NRB’s close attention to up-front ethics and self-regulation appears to be a matter of survival, not window dressing.

After two years of tooling up, the NRB Ethics and Financial Integrity Commission was implemented. Nonprofit-organization broadcasters have a Feb. 15, 1989, deadline to apply for certification (a 90-day extension may be granted if needed). The procedures establish high standards for financial self-disclosure and accounting review.

About 450 of the NRB’s 850 corporate member bodies are in the nonprofit category and come under the Internal Revenue Service code subsection 501(c)3, according to the Ethics Commission Chairman, Thomas Zimmerman. These 450 must comply with the new regulations or be dropped from the NRB rolls.

But by the convention’s end, less than a third (148) had either completed or applied for certification, Zimmerman said. And he added that many NRB members were in arrears in their dues to the organization, resulting in a shortfall of nearly 60%, or $366,000.

Nonetheless, Art Borden, president of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, a watchdog group for evangelical ministries that is certifying NRB members under the new ethics commission standards, said he thinks more than 400 NRB groups will eventually comply.

“Maybe we’ll lose about 20 that will drop out for various reasons,” he said in an interview.

“There’s been a different atmosphere at this convention,” Borden added. “There may be a downturn in giving, but most people feel we’ve been too carried away with bigness, influence and power, and this is a needed, healthy change. They realize they have to get back to the biblical basics of why they’re in radio or TV.”

RELIGIOUS BROADCAST STATIONS ON RISE

The number of religious broadcasting stations in the United States has shown a rapid rise, particularly for television.

% Rise 1986 1987 1988 1989 from 88 Radio stations 1,134 1,370 1,393 1,485 6.6% Television stations 200 221 259 336 30.0%

Source: 1989 Directory of Religious Broadcasting