Oral Roberts: Televangelist (Coronet Magazine, 1955)When this article about the media-savvy preacher Oral Roberts (1918 – 2009) hit the newsstands in 1955, his television program was less than a year old, and yet his name was already a household word in many corners of the United States. His sermons were heard every Sunday on a radio show that was broadcast by over two hundred outlets across the fruited plane and he lorded over a film production company that produced movies seen on almost 100 television stations. Indeed, Robert's ministry/corporation employed hundreds of people on its payroll, owned a Tulsa office building and a large swath of Oklahoma real estate and the thirty-seven year old preacher had even grander plans for the future.
The editors at CORONET recognized that Oral Roberts was not your average minister, who was simply contented to preside over thirty full pews every week; they labeled him a "businessman-preacher" and subtly pointed out that the man's detractors were many and his flashy attire unseemly for a member of clergy:
"God doesn't run a breadline...I make no apology for buying the best we can afford. The old idea that religious people should be poor is nonsense."
Christ is Big Box-Office (The Literary Digest, 1927)Hollywood film producers have long known that "In the beginning, there was the word, and the word was Box-Office, and the word was good." Each generation of producers learn anew that Jesus Christ is, in the lingo of Beverly Hills, Boffo Box Office (keeping in mind that the 2004 film Passion of the Christ grossed $370 million).
This magazine article is a review of one of the first movies to tell the story of Jesus, "King of Kings", which was directed by one of Hollywood's founding fathers: Cecil B. DE Mille (1881 – 1959). The film was genuinely adored in all circles; one critic ranted:
"Cecil B. DE Mille's reward for 'King of Kings' will be in heaven..."
Click here to read about the 1922 discovery of King Tut's tomb.
Humanism (The Literary Digest, 1933)If Martin Luther had a publicist he was not nearly as efficient at the job as the flak who was hired by the Humanists in 1933 to spread the word that they were opening shop and welcoming all comers.
The attached column appeared on the pages of THE LITERARY DIGEST and was written in response to a press release that was sent to the Associated Press a short while after a document titled the "Humanist Manifesto" was signed by "thirty-four editors, educators and ministers".
With very little column space available, the uncredited journalist did a fine job in summarizing the "creedless creeds" of this new atheist philosophy that was born of the machine age. Like so many social movements that came out of the Twenties, Humanism holds that "the religious forms and ideas of our fathers [are] no longer adequate", we are all simply mammals, we answer to no one, nothing is sacred, there is only the here and now and it would be suitable if we all behaved nicely.
A hefty percentage of the signers were practicing Unitarians. Educational philosopher John Dewey, Rabbi Jacob J. Weinstein, and theologian J.A.C. Fagginger Auer were among the most well-known of the signers.
An Islamic View of Christianity (The Literary Digest, 1897)The credited source for the attached article was a Christian cleric in Baku by the name of Pastor von Bergmann, who, having lived among the "Mohammedans" for some time, had gained a unique understanding as to their creed:
"But, by the rejection of the great grace of God through Mohamed, Christians and all other unbelievers have become such gross criminals that their lives have no worth or value whatever...It is a terrible sin to regard the Christians as equal to a Mohammedan or to consider them entitled to any rights over against the latter."
Were the Jews Responsible for the Death of Jesus? (The Literary Digest, 1897)The French archeologist and mathematician Théodore Reinach (1860 – 1928) believed that the answer to the question posted above was a big, fat "no", and he turned to two ancient sources for his answer: a sentence form Tacitus and a paragraph by Josephus:
"The paragraph by Josephus has given rise to an immense literature. Every word of the paragraph has been studied and commented on. All the works of Josephus have been cherished by the Christian Church as a sort of preface to the Evangelists."
"It is not then the execution of Jesus, it is the long martyrdom of Israel which constitutes the greatest judicial error in the history of man...Judaism has been expiating for nearly sixteen centuries, by daily humiliations and incessant persecutions a crime it never committed and which it had not even the power to commit."
The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus
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