The overlooked African American religious history of the phonograph industry Winner of the 2015 Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize for outstanding scholarship in church history by a first-time author presented by the American Society of Church History Certificate of Merit, 2015 Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research presented by the Association for Recorded Sound Collections From 1925 to 1941, approximately one hundred African American clergymen teamed up with leading record labels such as Columbia, Paramount, Victor-RCA to record and sell their sermons on wax. While white clerics of the era, such as Aimee Semple McPherson and Charles Fuller, became religious entrepreneurs and celebrities through their pioneering use of radio, black clergy were largely marginalized from radio. Instead, they relied on other means to get their message out, teaming up with corporate titans of the phonograph industry to package and distribute their old-time gospel messages across the country. Their nationally marketed folk sermons received an enthusiastic welcome by consumers, at times even outselling top billing jazz and blues artists such as Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. These phonograph preachers significantly shaped the development of black religion during the interwar period, playing a crucial role in establishing the contemporary religious practices of commodification, broadcasting, and celebrity. Yet, the fame and reach of these nationwide media ministries came at a price, as phonograph preachers became subject to the principles of corporate America. In Preaching on Wax, Lerone A. Martin offers the first full-length account of the oft-overlooked religious history of the phonograph industry. He explains why a critical mass of African American ministers teamed up with the major phonograph labels of the day, how and why black consumers eagerly purchased their religious records, and how this phonograph religion significantly contributed to the shaping of modern African American Christianity.

This book, first published in 1968, describes the development of religion by radio, and its influences on people both inside and outside the Church. It tells of experiment and practice, of acceptance and rejection, of inspiration and comfort in peace and war, and assesses the great contribution made by religion to British broadcasting over the decades since the first religious broadcast, on Christmas Eve of 1922.

Evangelical Christianity--the faith professed by one in four Americans--exerts an enormous influence in American society. Believed by some to have originated as a reaction to the social revolution of the 1960s, evangelicalism as a distinct subculture in fact dates to the advent of radio. The evangelical faithful flocked to the airwaves, developing a nationwide mass culture as listeners across denominational lines heard the same popular preachers and music. Evangelicals left behind the fundamentalism of the early 20th century as broadcast ministries laid the foundation for the culturally engaged New Christian Right of the late 20th century. This historical ethnography presents the era's major radio evangelists and songwriters in the own words, drawing on their writings and recordings, as well as songbooks, liner notes and "song story" anthologies of the period.

Broadcasting the Faith tells the riveting story of the American church’s embrace of radio in the early decades of the twentieth century. By investigating major radio personalities like Walter Maier, Aimee Semple McPherson, Harry Emerson Fosdick, and Charles Fuller, this study considers the implications for theology in America when Christianity moved to the airwaves. In the heyday of radio, religious-radio preachers sought to use their programs to counter the secularization of American culture. Ultimately, however, their programs contributed to secularization by accelerating changes already evident in both the conservative and liberal streams of American Christianity. To reach a vast American audience, radio preachers transformed their sectarian messages into a religion more suitable to the masses, thereby altering the very religion it aimed to preserve. To make religion accessible to large and diverse audiences, radio preachers accommodated their messages in ways suited to the medium of radio. Although religious-radio preachers set forth to advance the influence of religion in American society, their choice to limit theological substance ironically promoted the secularization of the American church.

"Preaching in Black and White" is the first attempt to bring together a noted black preacher and white preacher to interact on the dynamics of pulpit ministry and what can be learned from each other. The conversation between the two authors discusses the similarities and differences in styles of preaching in the two communities.