CHRISTIAN RADIO
When did Christians take to the airwaves on the radio?
By Rebecca Higgins
One can make the argument that the answer is the “first” time was on December 24th, 1906, when a CanadianAmerican inventor named Reginald A. Fessenden broadcast his voice and music over the airwaves. It was not supposed to be a public broadcast, but instead an invitation-only demonstration of his invention. However, because ships at sea that had not been invited to listen picked up the transmission it became the first “public” broadcast. He played on his violin “O Holy Night”, and he read Luke 2-14. "Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace to men of good will" This broadcast would give several claims to fame as he would be the first to broadcast music as well as the first public speech. Because many of the things surrounding electricity and radio have obscure beginnings and parallel developments, there is controversy surrounding the claim of first. Researching this know that you will run into a great deal of quibbling over what is “public” and what is “first” and what “counts”. However, it is worth taking to the internet to read about Reginald Aubrey Fessenden as he worked with Edison and did pioneering work in developing radio technology, particularly AM radio. He is considered the “father of voice radio”. I believe that when a man of Mr. Fessenden’s reputation says he did something, he did it. Radio had a crazy time of development through the first two decades, but the next consensus landmark for Christians was on January 2nd, 1921. That is the first broadcast of a church service on the radio by KDKA of the Calvary Episcopal Church service from Pittsburgh, PA. The service was led by Reverend Lewis Whittemore. By 1925, there were 63 Church owned radio stations in the US. In 1943, an interesting development happened when what is now the National Council of Churches attempted to limit religious broadcasting to only “responsible”, “approved” broadcasters during public service time slots. It took six years to overturn this effective ban on the purchase of airtime for religious broadcasting. A group of 150 Evangelical Christian broadcasters and church leaders formed the National Religious Broadcasters in order to fight for the rights of Christians to broadcast on the national networks. American Broadcasting Company, ABC, which was the newest network, reversed their ban first. This opened the floodgates. New programs and shows were produced for national and regional programing. Today, in addition to what you may hear occasionally on secular radio stations, there are about 1,600 organizations broadcasting Christian content in the US. Most of the programing is Protestant. This number includes both single station operations and networks that are country-wide. Programing includes everything from music, preaching, call-in shows, news, talk shows, and even some radio dramas. If you include television, there are over 4,000 Christian broadcasters. The last numbers available estimate that approximately 141 million people per month use some form of Christian broadcast media. This number actually tops church attendance which stood at about 132 million. The last firm numbers I could find are from around 2010 and all indications are that, especially with the pandemic, church attendance has dropped with many turning to television, the internet, and radio. It seems that outreach by Christians through all forms of media, including radio in all its forms, over-the-air, streaming, and satellite, will be more and more important to bring the Word to people wherever they are.
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