ABSTRACT
Though black televangelists are now mainstream fare on religious television, their message has been “domesticated” by the economics of today’s deregulated media industry. The white-owned religious media conglomerates that now dominate the genre offer a reach of up to 100 million cable and satellite households, but only for televangelists whose popular appeals are sufficiently broad to attract a mass viewer base and thus raise the funds needed for national exposure. This chapter tells the larger story through the individual stories of the three preachers who were the leading black televangelists of their day: Reverend Ike, who in the 1960s and 70s controversially cultivated a black aesthetic; Frederick Price, who in the 1980s and 90s projected a reassuring businesslike persona; and T. D. Jakes, who soothingly embodies today’s therapeutic culture. Now mainstream, their “prosperity gospel” preaches redemption not through communal resistance to unjust structures, but through individual faith in capitalist possibility.
