Book Review: Fussell On Class substack.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from substack.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
I saw this new thing called television,” Rex Humbard later recalled, “and I said, ‘That’s it.’ God has given us that thing … the most powerful force of communication, to take the gospel into … every state in the Union.” The year was 1952, and Humbard was the first evangelical preacher to launch a successful television ministry out of his church in Akron, Ohio.
Evangelical preachers had taken to radio with gusto in the 1920s and 1930s. The leap from radio to television, however, was huge, and the pioneer evangelists who used the medium in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s faced enormous challenges.