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Parachurch Organizations
The defining characteristic of a parachurch is that it stands outside of the
organizational structure of well-established religious bodies. The autonomy of the parachurch
from established religious bodies allows a much greater degree of flexibility for innovation
than is possible within an established organizational hierachary. Parachurches are often the
creation of an entrepreneaur or a small cadre of people who seek to achieve specific goals.
The parachurch is effectively a new form of religious organization that dates from the early
19th century. In the first quarter of the 19th century, parachruch organizations were abundant
in many forms -- Bible tract societies, independent educational organizations, independent
missionary groups, and moral reform organizations. The parachurch model is the most
significant organizational form in urban revivalism from the early 19th century. In the
20th century, most of the organizational structure of the major religious broadcasters
could be characterized as parachurch in nature.
While parachurch organizations are organizationally autonomous, they typically function
with a considerable degree of interdependence with established religious oganizations. The
Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is instructive of the symbotic relationship.
A Billy Graham Crusade is the culmination of an extended period of cooperation between the
host community and the BGEA. The process begins with an invitation from an interorganizational
alliance from the host community. BGEA brings it's organizational resources and skills to
the local community, but local groups carry the burden of enlisting literally hundreds of
local churches and community organizations, and thousands of volunteers.
Filling coliseums for Jimmy Swaggart Crusades typically involved a more narrowly defined
symbotic relationship. Before his personal sexual indiscretions lead to his dismissal
from the Assemblies of God, the typical audience was substantially composed of members of
this denomination as was evidenced by parking lots filled with Assembly of God busses.
AG ministers promoted attendance at the crusades and reaped the benefit of congregations
stimulated by Swaggart's high-powered preaching.
As this Religious Broadcasting Page develops, we will include a more detailed treatment
of the concept parachuch.
In this segment, we use to concept to identify broad array of organizations that
stand squarely within the parachurch tradition, but organizations whose essential purpose
is not religious broadcasting. The American Family Association, for example, began with
a rather narrow mission of promoting decency and morality in media. The organization
monitored sex, violency and profanity in network television broadcasting and sought to
encourage large corporations to drop advertising on programs that were high on AFA's
index of decency. The organization got a big boost in visibility in the early 1980s when
Jerry Falwell embraced the cause and frequently mentioned AFA on his television program.
Without the support of local ministers, AFA would not have been able to arouse interest
in its cause or recruit program monitors.
American Center for Law and Justice is an example of a parachruch organization that was
sponed by a religious broadcast organization, namely Pat Robinson's Christian Broadcasting
Corporation. Frequent guest appearances of Jay Sekulo, Chief Counsel of ACLJ, on The
700 Club gave the organization high profile which resulted in both financial support
and identification of legal cases for the organization. Later, Sekulo would develop his own
television program.
All of the parachurch organizations we identify here have benefited from exposure on the
programs of religious broadcasters. Many of them found their way into broadcasting as they
developed, but broadcasting per se is not the central mession of any of these organizations.
We begin the development of this segment of the Religious Broadcasting Page by simply creating
brief abstracts about the groups and links to their home pages. As we identify additional
Internet resources about each groups, we will create additional links. As we have the time
and resources, we expect to add profiles of the organizations (essentially following the
structure of the Religious Movements Page Profiles).
As with other segments of this Religious Broadcasting Page, we welcome feedback, especially
constructive criticism and suggestions for additional resources about parachurch organizations.
We know there exists vast materials on the Internet dealing with these and other parachurch
organizations that have not yet come to our attention. If you know of something that is
not accessible from this page, we urge you to send us a note with the URL and we'll check it
out.
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