ABSTRACT
The description of the demographic characteristics of the televangelism audience presented in the previous chapter is a good place to start an analysis of the role of paid-time religious broadcasting but it is only a start We need to consider what people do with such programmes and what such programmes do with people. Chapter Eight will consider the political impact of televangelism; here I want to look at the extent to which it succeeds in its manifest or primary purpose of ‘spreading the gospel’. In order to establish a context which will help explain the impact of televangelism, I will look briefly at the religious impact of mass revivalism and at the influence of television generally before evaluating the combination of the two elements in religious broadcasting.
