Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, and Popular Culture in America [Library Binding]

Tona J. Hangen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 2001

Blending cultural, religious, and media history, Tona Hangen offers a richly detailed glimpse into the world of religious radio. She uses recordings, sermons, fan mail, and other sources to tell the stories of the determined broadcasters and devoted listeners who, together, transformed American radio evangelism from an on-air novelty in the 1920s into a profitable and wide-reaching industry by the 1950s.

Hangen traces the careers of three of the most successful Protestant radio evangelists--Paul Rader, Aimee Semple McPherson, and Charles Fuller--and examines the strategies they used to bring their messages to listeners across the nation. Initially shut out of network radio and free airtime, both of which were available only to mainstream Protestant and Catholic groups, evangelical broadcasters gained access to the airwaves with paid-time programming. By the mid-twentieth century millions of Americans regularly tuned into evangelical programming, making it one of the medium's most distinctive and durable genres. The voluntary contributions of these listeners helped bankroll religious radio's remarkable growth.

Revealing the entwined development of evangelical religion and modern mass media, Hangen demonstrates that the history of one is incomplete without the history of the other; both are essential to understanding American culture in the twentieth century.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this engagingly written and accessible study, Hangen provides a window into both the development of evangelical Christianity in the 20th century and the understudied world of radio, which she says helped cement evangelical conviction. "Radio-paradoxically-prevented the decline of old-fashioned religious belief," she argues. It was a highly contested medium, and Hangen does readers a great service by fleshing out the main characters and contentions of radio's heyday. Separate chapters explore the contributions of Paul Rader, Charles Fuller and Aimee Semple McPherson, who plied the airwaves with slightly variant versions of an American revivalist folk religion. Conservative radio preachers, Hangen explains, had to buy commercial airtime in an era when mainline Protestant denominations often were awarded "sustaining" (free) time in prime slots. Hangen has a keen eye for irony, as when she explores the idea that radio-a very public instrument-functioned as a uniquely intimate religious community, granting preachers unprecedented access into hearers' living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens. She is a highly skilled and innovative writer, with a remarkable talent for description and for employing primary sources to invite readers into the story. She also makes her mark on how evangelical history is told, challenging the oft-touted thesis that evangelicals simply retreated after the humiliation of the 1925 Scopes Trial and suddenly resurfaced in 1976 with the Carter presidency. Instead, she shows, they used that half-century to build their coalition, learn new technologies and define the limits of their theology.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Redeeming the Dial is a clearly and engagingly written study covering an area that cries out for scholarship: the many vital ways that broadcasting has affected the practice of religion in America, and vice versa. Hangen's approach brings the material alive and situates it in the midst of current historical debates. Redeeming the Dial is an important work of revisionist historiography that should be eagerly read by media and cultural historians alike. (Michele Hilmes, University of Wisconsin-Madison)

With deft use of the sources, Tona Hangen offers here a portrait of the pioneers of evangelical radio as well as the vast audiences that tuned in. Redeeming the Dial is religious history at its best: a strong narrative laced with anecdotes and perceptive analysis. (Randall Balmer, author of The Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism)

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Product Details

• Library Binding: 208 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (October 31, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807827525
• ISBN-13: 978-0807827529
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,141,729 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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