(ANALYSIS) Why care that herring fishers protest required payments for onboard monitors?

Answer: A Jan. 17 hearing suggests the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on resulting fishing lawsuits could overturn its 1984 Chevron ruling, which gives federal agencies broad latitude to define laws passed by Congress.

Alongside conservatives’ “deep state” complaints, religious groups say federal agencies go beyond what Congress intended when they devise and enforce regulations on abortion, birth control or transgender claims.

Here’s another matter seemingly unrelated to religion. Why care about a pending bill in Congress deals with electromagnetic fields in hybrid and electric vehicles? 

Answer: Electric vehicle technology causes AM radio static that’s costly to counteract, so Tesla and other companies are now making cars and trucks without AM radios. 

Drivers are a pivotal audience for the nation’s 4,508 AM stations and for their Christian preaching programs, which very likely have more impact on listeners’ beliefs than religious TV. 

Some brief background: U.S. radio was only via AM (amplitude modulation) from the night in 1920 when pioneering KDKA in Pittsburgh first went on the air with election returns. In 1940, the Federal Communications Commission added FM (frequency modulation) broadcasting, with improved audio quality that’s especially desirable for music. In the 1970s, FM surpassed traditional AM in listeners. 

The AM industry faced dangerous decline by 1987 when the FCC abolished the “fairness doctrine,” which had required balanced — and thus bland or non-existent — treatment of public issues to keep broadcast licenses. The very next year, Rush Limbaugh launched his fervently conservative talk show, with heavy AM distribution. 

When Limbaugh died in 2021, iheart Radio, the biggest station owner, hailed him as “the man who saved AM radio.” An exaggeration — but not by much. Limbaugh not only created his own huge audience but was followed by numerous national and local conservative gurus, often on AM. 

It may be surprising, then, that many Democrats in Congress are joining Republicans to support a proposed “AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act,” which would require all car and truck manufacturers to provide AM receivers as standard equipment. The two lead sponsors are both Democrats, Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey for House bill 3413, and Ed Markey of Massachusetts for Senate bill 1669. 

Their chief reason for backing AM is not commerce but non-partisan concern to preserve its role in providing emergency and weather information, including signals available in rural areas where cell phone reception can be spotty. FM transmissions are more limited geographically than with AM, usually reaching only 100 miles at most. Of particular importance are some 220 AM stations around the nation that cover longer distances by transmitting at the maximum 50,000 watts of power.

AM radio may be important for politics and public safety, but it’s also an important factor in American religion. By the latest FCC count, 16.4% of AM stations have religious formats that typically emphasize talk such as preaching and Bible teaching, compared with 34.7% for music, 17.9% for news and 11.7% for sports. (Among FM stations, 63.3% have music formats with religion in second place at 22.3%.) 

In the Donald Trump era, some “religious” outlets have taken on a conservative political edge, in particular the radio operations of Texas-based Salem, self-described as “America’s leading Christian media company.” 

With both AM and FM, religious broadcasting has been dominated by evangelical Protestants. AM can be inexpensive and has not only practical but symbolic and historical importance by playing a central role in America’s evangelical movement and its competition with moderate and liberal “mainline” Protestantism. 

At first, radio networks and individual stations sold time for religious programs — which necessarily meant on-air fund-raising — led by local ministers or national “parachurch” ministries that proclaimed conservative biblical and evangelistic messages.

Meanwhile, established denominations were granted free “sustaining time” for generally softer programming that counted as required “public interest” air time. Network allotments were controlled by the Federal (later National) Council of Churches. 

NBC stopped selling time to religious groups in 1928 and CBS in 1931. Local stations often followed their example. Popular independent radio preachers like Charles Fuller (who later named an important new evangelical seminary in California after his father) pieced together their own lineups of individual stations or went on the Mutual network, founded in 1934, which sold time. 

In the 1930s, radio’s dominant Catholic broadcaster also built a nationwide following through purchased time and independent networking. That would be fiery Michigan priest Charles Coughlin who, unlike evangelicals like Fuller, pioneered in controversial political talk. But his original pro-union and anti-capitalist sermonizing turned virulently anti-Jewish, pro-Nazi and anti-war. Catholic officials ordered him off the airwaves in 1942, 

The Mutual network alarmed evangelical independents by restricting purchased time in 1943. That threat helped energize the founding of the National Association of Evangelicals in 1942 and the related National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) in 1944. Despite the “religious” label, the NRB trade association is emphatically Christian and provided a cooperative platform that helped build up the U.S. evangelical movement. It's not surprising that the NRB currently embraces the AM cause and Congress’ “Every Vehicle Act.” 

Newsroom note: The annual NRB convention, at Nashville’s Opryland Feb. 20-23, will feature a Thursday evening talk by candidate Trump “on national issues of Christian concern.” NRB says it does not endorse politicians and had invited “all eligible candidates from both parties.” Earlier that day, Liberty University publicist Ryan Helfenbein will address how evangelicals can cope when “virtually every major cultural institution" is now “captured for secular progressivism and the sexual revolution.”

Richard N. Ostling was a longtime religion writer with The Associated Press and with Time magazine, where he produced 23 cover stories, as well as a Time senior correspondent providing field reportage for dozens of major articles. He has interviewed such personalities as Billy Graham, the Dalai Lama, the late Mother Teresa, and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI); ranking rabbis and Muslim leaders; and authorities on other faiths; as well as numerous ordinary believers. He writes a bi-weekly column for Religion Unplugged.