NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, June 20. Good morning! This is The world and all in it of WORLD Radio supported by the listeners. I am Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. This month marks the 100th anniversary of a promotional radio program that launched the first Christian radio ministry. Here’s Paul Butler with this week’s WORLD history book.

SOUND: TELEGRAPHIC MORSE CODE

PAUL BUTLER, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Wireless telegraphy has been around since before the First World War. But broadcasting as we know it today began in 1920 with the KDKA radio station.

SOUND: REENACTING THE RESULTS OF THE KDKA ELECTIONS

Across the country, hobbyists bought radio sets and began listening to broadcast stations that were popping up across the country. But many in the church weren’t so sure.

JAMES SNYDER: The church didn’t trust the radio.

James Snyder is a biographer and pastor:

JAMES SNYDER: You know, Satan is the prince and the power of the air, the radio goes through the airwaves. The radio is therefore the instrument of the devil.

Another concern for Christians of the time still persists today…

MARK WARD: Well, it’s something that gets so much secular entertainment…

Mark Ward, Sr. is an associate professor of communication at the University of Houston-Victoria.

MARK WARD: …and we don’t want to participate in such a secularized, mundane medium.

But in June 1922, a well-known Chicago minister named Paul Rader was preparing for an evangelistic tent meeting.

MARK WARD: Being the promoter par excellence that he was, he was looking for any opportunity to be able to promote the work. And… he was invited by the mayor of Chicago… to come and broadcast from a radio station that the mayor was sponsoring.

Thus, on June 17, 1922, Paul Rader arrived at Chicago City Hall with his brass quartet in tow. They go up the stairs and head for the roof. The studio is little more than a lean-to full of wires and tubes…and a microphone made from an old telephone receiver.

MARK WARD: The clock has ticked, it was time for the show. And the brass quartet was in this little billboard studio on the roof of Chicago City Hall. And the engineer passes the phone and says play.

MUSIC OF THE QUARTET

Once the quartet is over, Paul Rader grabs the microphone and begins to speak. Tom McElroy recreated the moment for the 2003 documentary Save Them: The Life of Paul Rader.

TOM MCELROY/PAUL RADER: One hundred thousand sinners at the sound of my voice today are to be saved. The world drifts. Crime reigns and temporal officials are blamed when religion and religion alone – a non-sectarian, non-questioning, and non-dogmatic religion will bring the peace you pray for.

A photographer from The Chicago Daily News take a photo of the moment and pass it on to the newspaper for the evening publication. Rader and the crew joke that all of Chicago must have heard them…not because of the broadcast, but because of how loudly they were instructed to speak and play for the equipment to pick them up. Historian Larry Eskridge:

LARRY ESKRIDGE: And Rader was kind of surprised when all of this happened, the response from people in the Chicago area. It really amazed him that this obscure little gadget could reach so many people.

Rader’s tent meeting in 1922 was so successful that it soon became a permanent and active evangelistic center on Chicago’s North Side: The Chicago Gospel Tabernacle.

Over the next few years, Rader made appearances on various Chicago radio stations. When he discovered that the mayor’s station did not broadcast on Sundays, he offered to buy all day. Soon they built a studio in the tabernacle and began broadcasting 14 hours a weekend.

LARRY ESKRIDGE: They came up with programs for young boys called Radio Rangers, they came up with a program for young girls called Aerial Girls, and he also came up with a program called Sunshine Hour, which was kind of about closing ins and bedridden people and he interweaves excerpts of poetry with comforting biblical passages and hymns played by one of the Tabernacle’s mighty Wurlitzer keyboardists.

A few years later, Rader and his broadcast team even had a network, a daily morning show airing on CBS:

AUDIO: Hello Breakfast Brigade! Revielle Hour by Paul Rader once again welcomes the host of early risers across America and Canada with refreshing music and message…

LARRY ESKRIDGE: What Rader seems to bring to radio is that he had a knack for being able to talk conversationally and intimately with people that really made him feel like a friend.

RADER: Are you going to sing around the table this morning? Many of you listen in bed…

LARRY ESKRIDGE: And he sort of imagined that you could be sitting across from him, maybe you have your Bibles open or you’re just sharing a cup of coffee, and he’s talking to you one-on-one. head as a friend or neighbor.

Paul Rader’s broadcast ministry coincided with the Great Depression.

Farmers had crops they could not sell, and people across the region suffered. So Rader turned his tabernacle once more—this time into a major food distribution center—canning beans, cabbage, and whatever else he could find. The radio got the word out.

But as the recession dragged on, Rader’s broadcast initiatives were ultimately unsustainable and he had to shut them down. He died a few years later in 1938, but not before transforming the way Christians viewed media. Again, biographer and pastor James Snyder:

JAMES SNYDER: There should be a connection between the show and the listeners. So his idea of ​​radio was that it was another way to connect with people… And so in that sense I believe Paul Rader really invented Christian radio and really set the standard for what should be Christian broadcasting.

It’s this week’s WORLD history book. I am Paul Butler.

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