The Radio Right in Decline

As the National Council of Churches’ Fairness Doctrine campaign accelerated, US Senate Democrats on the Commerce Committee announced an investigation into the Radio Right. That one-two punch convinced hundreds of radio station owners to drop conservative programs altogether. The cost of paying for free response time combined with the risk of losing their station license was too much. Carl McIntire appealed for help to Richard Nixon, but the administration was much more interested in the ways it could use the Fairness Doctrine to intimidate the major television networks into giving the president and the war in Vietnam more favorable coverage. With no help forthcoming and the loss of station WXUR in 1974, Carl McIntire’s program declined precipitously, although not without one last protest action from McIntire involving a World War II surplus minesweeper blasting a pirate radio signal off the shore of Cape May, New Jersey, in defiance of Federal Communications Commission rules.

Outsourcing Censorship

After the election of 1964, the Democratic National Committee stopped its involvement in the censorship campaign, but the Fairness Doctrine rules remained a tool for any interest group smart enough to imagine the potential uses. The National Council of Churches, which had a long history of conflict with broadcaster and fundamentalist clergyman Carl McIntire, launched a wave of Fairness Doctrine complaints against stations airing the offending broadcasts. In particular, the National Council of Churches wanted the Federal Communications Commission to deny radio licenses to two stations: WXUR, which Carl McIntire had recently purchased, and WLBT, which had a history of defending segregation on the airwaves.

God’s Strange Messengers

This essay examines the relationship between the thought and ministry of Carl McIntire and the subject of flying saucers. McIntire was a prominent American fundamentalist in the middle decades of the twentieth century. His interest in UFOs culminated in 1973 with the formation of the 20th Century UFO Bureau. McIntire and his associate Robert “Bob” Barry provide an opportunity to build upon recent scholarship that explores the ways Christians positively engaged the subject of flying saucers. I argue that his conservatism led to his interest the subject and that he drew from both theological and Theosophical influences to form his interpretation. I argue further that, understood within the context of his broader ministry, his interest arose from what he perceived to be the religious challenges brought about by space exploration. McIntire’s interests ultimately demonstrate the malleability of Christian “orthodoxy,” even among its most staunch defenders.

Three-Way Chess

By following the career and networks of Dutch missionary and diplomat Arie Kok (1883–1951), this essay explores the motives for creating a transatlantic fundamentalist network after World War II. Using private correspondence, interviews, institutional records, and periodicals, the essay demonstrates that the goal, means, and strategy of American fundamentalists tied them closely to other American Protestant groups active in postwar Europe. Apart from the exclusivist doctrine and antithetical style, which burdened the chances for positive cooperation among traditional Protestants, it was the national agenda of Carl McIntire, the American father of international fundamentalism that nullified Kok’s transnational endeavors. Despite these limitations, Kok succeeded briefly in captivating a group of Europeans, shaping the discourse and the religious activities of the Americans on the European continent, and causing the emerging evangelicals serious concern.