American Protestants and TV in the 1950s Responses to a New Medium

by Rosenthal, Michele; Marty, Martin E.

• ISBN13: 9781403965738
• ISBN10: 1403965730
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-09-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

While television today is taken for granted, Americans in the 1950s faced the challenge of negotiating the new medium's place in the home and in American culture in general. Protestant leaders--both mainstream and evangelical--began to think carefully about what television meant for their communities and its potential impact on their work. Using the American Protestant experience of the introduction of television, Rosenthal illustrates the importance of the interplay between a new medium and its users in an engaging book suitable for general readers and students alike.

Author Biography

Michele Rosenthal is Lecturer of Communication, University of Haifa, Israel.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction: The Triumph of Televangelism and the Decline of Mainline Religious Broadcasting	p. 1
American Protestantism and the Television: A Paradoxical Relationship	p. 7
"Turn It Off!": The Liberal Protestant Critique of Television	p. 21
Mainline Religious Broadcasting: A Failure?	p. 37
"Preserving Our American Heritage": Television and the Construction of Evangelical Identity	p. 63
"The Age of Space Requires Space Age Teaching Tools": Technology on Evangelical Terms	p. 85
Protestants and the Television: The Paradox Reassessed	p. 109
Afterword	p. 117
Notes	p. 121
Bibliography	p. 157
Index	p. 171
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.