ABSTRACT
Most discussions of televangelism begin by regarding it as a manifestation of fundamentalism. Although sometimes intended as an insult, it is more usually just taken at face-value, as the appropriate description of the major religious broadcasters. With the exception of Robert Schuller, all the leading televangelists have at some time or other in their careers described themselves as fundamentalists. Although the package of ideas, beliefs, and values signalled by the term ‘fundamen talism’ is a good place to start an analysis of just what it is that is preached on religious television, I will suggest that the term now functions more as a totem than as accurate description. Like such ethnic labels as ‘Italian’ or ‘Swede’, it tells us a lot about how the prime-time preachers see their origins and little about the present except that the claimants have a sentimental loyalty to that ‘old time religion’. In his pioneering examination of the importance of ethnic identity, Herberg (1960) suggested a generational pattern. The first migrants of, say, Polish Americans were Poles who happened to settle in America. Their children usually had little time for the old country, language, or customs and devoted their energies to passing as real Americans. But in the third generation, one has people who feel comfortable enough about their place in America to be able to go back and take up again some of the more attractive elements of the culture of the grandparents. They are the Americans who are proud to be Irish, Greek, Polish, or whatever.
