ABSTRACT
Religious broadcasting began with preaching, using that word in a special sense. The short address from the studio on Sunday evenings was hardly a preachment, neither was it a sermon; it was rather a kind of homily or fireside talk. Radio Times published for some years a feature called 'The Broadcast Pulpit' giving excerpts from these addresses. They were for the most part intimate and personal rather than public proclamations of the Gospel. Read from prepared scripts, their effect was produced, not by great eloquence, but by the persuasive voices of the speakers. Their brevity influenced the style of writing and speaking, and the restricted conditions of the early studios, draped with thick curtains and without any immediate audience reaction, made sermons seem unreal and artificial. To most preachers, it entailed a radical change in their usual mode of speech. Gestures and mannerisms simply had no meaning, but the proper inflection of the voice, short sentences, good phrasing, and carefully regulated pauses were of prime importance. It was a novel experience for all who took part in it, and demanded a new technique. Dr
Archibald Fleming put it well when he wrote in Radio Times, 'Virtue must go out of the preacher, as from heart to heart, mind to mind, and soul to soul. His pulse must respond to his unseen hearers', and J. W. Robertson Scott summed up the requirements of such preaching as 'heartfelt manly utterance, tones as unlike the clerical as they could be, words spoken with complete earnestness and sincerity, brotherly talk of honest, thinking, humbleminded men, simple phrases of experience and hope, faith and conviction, speech without dogma, full of charity, liberality, and inspiration'.
