6 January. Although the Television Evangelists of America also owned jets, they understood that their power lay less in these perks of the wealthy than in their own ability to manipulate their TV congregations’ religious feelings. So, after a lengthy conference call, they announced a massive evangelical rally in the Houston Astrodome which would be televised over their religious cable network. They went all out. The Trade offer was the evangelists’ chance to rebuild their prestige and fortunes, neither of which had recovered from the Jim and Tammy Bakker and the Jimmy Swaggart scandals. They would achieve this much-desired goal by playing on, rather than trying to change, the strongly racist views of their mostly working-class television audiences. True, some of the preachers had a substantial black following, but evangelical support for the Trade would not be the evangelists’ decision. Rather, these media messiahs heralded it as God’s will.
The Space Traders were, according to the televised “Gospel,” bringing America blessings earned by their listeners’ and viewers’ faithful dedication to freedom, liberty, and God’s word. Not only would rejection of these blessings from space be wrong, so the preachers exhorted; it would be blasphemous. It was God’s will that all Americans enjoy a tax-free year, a cleaned-up environment for years to come, and cheap heating forever. True, a sacrifice was required if they were to obtain God’s bounty–a painful sacrifice. But here, too, God was testing Americans, his chosen people, to ensure that they were worthy of His bounty, deserving of His love. Each preacher drew on Scripture, tortuously interpreted, to support these statements.
A “ministry of music” quartet–four of the most popular television evangelists, all speaking in careful cadences like a white rap group–preached the major sermon. It whipped the crowd into a delirium of religious feeling, making them receptive both to the financial appeals, which raised millions, and to the rally’s grande finale: a somber tableau of black people
marching stoically into the Space Traders’ ships, which here resembled ancient sacrificial altars. Try as they might, the producers of the pageant had had a hard time finding black people willing to act out roles they might soon be forced to experience, but a few blacks were glad to be paid handsomely for walking silently across the stage. These few were easily supplemented by the many whites eager to daub on “black face.”
The rally was a great success despite the all-out efforts of the media to condemn this “sacrilege of all that is truly holy.” That night, millions of messages, all urging acceptance of the Space Traders’ offer, deluged the President and Congress.
To be continued. . . . .
Ann
