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" What Was Left on the Cutting Room Floor: "
Eschler-Freudenrich, Cristi A.
Keeler, John D
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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1106167
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| Doc. No
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TLpq2378066270
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| Main Entry
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Eschler-Freudenrich, Cristi A.
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Keeler, John D
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| Title & Author
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What Was Left on the Cutting Room Floor:\ Eschler-Freudenrich, Cristi A.Keeler, John D
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| College
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Regent University
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| Date
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2019
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| student score
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2019
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Page No
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279
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| Abstract
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Tent crusades were transformed into sight-and-sound entertainment as evangelicals brought the religious revival experience to television. Oral Roberts was a renowned televangelist who filmed his crusades beginning in 1955, and his ministry’s impact has been attributed to the spread of Pentecostalism and rise of the Charismatic movement in the twentieth century. Roberts’ first use of television paralleled escalating racial tensions in the United States. Many studies have considered Roberts’ theological contributions, and some have documented the evangelist’s sensitivities to race including his self-identification as mixed race, both white and Native American. However, little scholarship has examined Roberts’ early television ministry. This study’s methodology used close textual reading of the evangelist’s 1956 crusade sermons from sermon transcripts edited by the ministry’s TV and film director. Race is considered through five lenses: biological heritability, cultural identification, social classification, power, and oneness. The study also includes interviews of those who worked in Roberts’ ministry from 1955 to 1959. Findings revealed Roberts was speaking directly to race in his tent crusades, but most of his direct responses were edited out for television. Detailed production practices suggest the films were “whitened” for TV, and this is attributed to the influence of broadcast regulations expressed in the TV Code. This study contributes to the historical record for broadcast television, religious television, and race in the earliest days of the modern Civil Rights Movement.
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American history
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Mass communications
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Religious history
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Rhetoric
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