Jerry Falwell may be dead, but the televangelists are tooling up for a new age, says joe mackertich |
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To most people in Britain, the death last week of televangelist Jerry Falwell meant little. The last time Falwell made UK headlines was in 2001, when he blamed the World Trade Centre attacks on "pagans, abortionists, feminists and gays." He was the last of an antique breed - a product of the paranoid 70s and 80s, when his Moral Majority lobby group was able to wield huge influence over the US government.
Certainly recent scandals involving Pastor Ted Haggard, an evangelist outed as a drug-using homosexual by a former male prostitute, suggested the American evangelical movement had become a debauched parody of itself.
Yet the truth is that Falwell's death comes just as the movement is furiously re-branding, tooling up for the digital age. The familiar image of apoplectic men delivering hellfire and brimstone sermons is being phased out in
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| Falwell’s heirs are the websites GodTube, MyChurch and Creationwiki |
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favour of something more dynamic, modern and international.
For evidence, look at Rob Bell, Pastor of the Mars Hill Bible Church and "the next Billy Graham" according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Bell's sermons are downloadable films, reminiscent of Apple ads in their slick minimalism.
Unsurprisingly the internet figures heavily in the new evangelical agenda. YouTube finds itself with a Christian counterpart, GodTube, on to which users upload satirical videos poking fun at Darwinism. The trend continues with a MySpace alternative (MyChurch) and a evolution-free Wikipedia (Creationwiki).
If this sounds uniquely American, consider that when not staging the Queen musical, London's Dominion Theatre regularly holds evangelical services. Hillsong Church, which organises them, fill the theatre to capacity - claiming a congregation of over 8,000.
And in July the multi-million dollar Christian media company The Word Network will expand its operations into Britain, hoping to prove we are no longer impervious to the charms of the televangelists. 
FIRST POSTED MAY 21, 2007
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