Can I Get A Witness?: Televangelism's Holy Hit Parade by Davin Seay
Any cultural anthropologist worth his Coke-bottle glasses will tell you: rock 'n' roll was born in the church. From Little Richard's lascivious glossolalia to Presley's mordant pieties, the style and substance of the devil's music was cradled in the House of God.
But it wasn't just the rhymes and rhythms and raucous testifying of the music that sprung, sweat-soaked and signifying, from the snake-handling Pentacostal sects infesting Dixie like sanctifying swamp fever. In keeping with the hallucinogenic revival fires that had been sweeping the nation since a former slave by the name of William Joseph Seymour set the spark in Los Angeles in 1906 with the infamous Azusa Street Revival, a whole new kind of preacher began hogging the limelight from the Holy Ghost in the late Twenties: strutting, preening, boasting and beseeching, the Pentacostal preacher was the prototype for the modern rock superstar.
And, while the style might fit Axl, Alice or any number of professional bad boys, it was the new breed of savvy, smarmy sermonizers who wore it best. Disdaining the hidebound religious trappings and tiresome theological training of established denominations, these glitzy pulpit-pounders used the sheer force of their personalities to gather the meek and mild unto their silk-clad bosoms. "This morning I intend to explain the unexplainable," claimed one high-stepping Holy Roller, "find out the undefinable, ponder over the imponderable, and unscrew the unscrutable." Another Bible belter commanded the faithful to petition God for "the blood that cleans up, the Spirit that fills up, the fire that burns up, and the dyanmite that blows up."
A half century later, the heirs of this Pentacostal person- ality are still at it, thanks to the magic of the electronic altar. And, while Swaggart's glycerine tears and Bakker's overreactive hormones might have besmirched the profession's already unsavory reputation, there are still a few preach- ers, prophets and shameless hucksters berating their flocks from earth-orbiting satellites, with the authentically addled fervor of their forebears.
Among the most celebrated, if not the most flamboyantly apostate, would have to be the Rev. Dr. Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter II, better known to his covetous minions as Reverend Ike. The Godfather of pulpit pitchmen, Ike works from a homespun theology that can be summed up by his simple mantra, oft-quoted in his ministry's glossy broadsheet Action!: "Don't be a hypocrite about money. Admit openly and inwardly that you like money. Say: 'I like money. I need money. I want money. Money is good: I bless the idea of money in my mind.'" During the late Sixties and early Seventies, Ike's trailblazing thesis of obscene-wealth-as- divine-right plowed the ground for the convoluted creed known as Mustard Seed Faith. Perfected by the dour paranoid Oral Roberts, the notion of having it all by giving till it hurts has served as the cornerstone for evangelistic fund-raising ever since.
Ike likewise set the pace for the Nielsen-conscious preach- er's penchant for snappy, stylish, or simply outrageous wardrobes. Given to floral patterned blazers, flared pastel slacks and patent leather jodhpurs, Ike found his most zealous fashion convert in Akron, Ohio's Rev. Ernest Ainsley. God's own Liberace, Ainsley delivers his melliflu- ous homilies beneath a hi-rise toupe, perched in an ethereal Greek-columned portico and sheathed in three-piece suits ranging in color from irridescent apricot to bilious aquamarine. Strategic lighting reflects the glint of his pinky rings and goiter-sized diamond stick pin, anchoring jumbo paisley neckware. A self-professed healer, Ainsley found his finest moment recently when curing a woman af- flicted by a "partial sense of smell." A cologne-drenched handkerchief, shoved under the reeling supplicant's nose, proved the miracle-working power of the pudgy clothes horse.
Healing, of course, has been the crowd-pleasing main attrac- tion since the days of Billy Sunday's massive tent revivals. And little of the divine physician's barnstorming ballyhoo has changed, as exemplified by the frenzied ministrations of Peter Popov.
In a loose, flapping tie, with shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows and drenched at the armpit, the Texas-based evangel- ist's laying on of hands is accompanied by a restless roaming of aisles, the better to ferret out the infirm. The Lord's ostensible healing power flows through Popov's massive frame with alarming jolts and shudders and the healing touch, when it comes, is delivered with a numbing impact on the forehead of the lame, blind, or partially-scented. Prospects of rampant charlatanism fade to insig-nificance in the face of Popov's heroic, hair-raising performances.
Curing the crippled may be an inherently theatrical occupa- tion. But TV's gifted men of God can eke drama from the most mundance of pursuits. On-the-air Bible studies can, in the hands of a spirited practitioner such as Dr. Gene Scott, become wrenching revelations into the viewer's simpering spiritual state as well as the Pasadena, California-based preacher's own towering hubris.
Scott, a wildly eccentric curmudgeon given to wearing a variety of whimsical headgear (from English bobby helmets to ten-gallon Stetsons) illustrates his biblical theorems by erratic scribbles on a large slab of mounted plexiglass. Insight into the Levitical offerings may be capriciously interrupted by a shameless demand for call-in pledges. If an equally arbitrary goal is not met, Scott will promise to stare silently into the camera until his followers pony up. Making good on his threat, Scott at once perfects a new fund-raising technique and explores the outer reachers of interactive television much in the manner of Ernie Kovacs.
The ranks of TV's oddball avatars is endless, from Dr. E. Howard Estep's tirelessly extrapolated mathematical proofs of the Second Coming, to O.L. Jaggers' eerie evocation of God's gilded throne, lovingly recreated with tin foil and dashboard saints. While rock 'n' roll may have stolen its best licks from gospel, the biggest stars are still the true believers.
PULL-OUT SUGGESTIONS (2): God's own Liberace, Ainsley delivers his mellifluous homilies beneath a hi-rise toupe, perched in an ethereal Greek-columned portico and sheathed in three-piece suits ranging in color from irridescent apricot to bilious aquamarine.
The Lord's ostensible healing power flows through Popov's massive frame with alarming jolts and shudders and the healing touch, when it comes, is delivered with a numbing impact on the forehead of the lame, blind, or prtially-scented.
"Meanwhile, Crewy Lou emerges from the laundry cart."