Maier v. Council

No U. S. religious denomination may buy broadcasting time on the two big radio networks. Why? Because, in general, the chains fight shy of religious controversy; because, in particular, Columbia Broadcasting System was embarrassed seven years ago by the rabble-rousing rise of blatant Rev. Charles Edward Coughlin as a paying speaker on its hookup. Instead of such firebrands Columbia today maintains an innocuous interdenominational Church of the Air, while National Broadcasting Co. gives time to the Federal Council of Churches and the Catholic Hour run by the National Council of Catholic Men. Judged by fan mail, however, none of these programs is radio's most popular religious broadcast. That distinction belongs to a sectarian, time-buying program--the Lutheran Hour, which in the past three years has expanded from two to 62 stations on the Mutual Broadcasting System. With Rev. Dr. Walter Arthur Maier, professor at St. Louis' Concordia Theological Seminary, as its speaker, the Lutheran Hour draws as many as 8,000 letters, as much as $5,000 in contributions per week during its yearly 26 Sunday half-hours (4:30 p. m. E. S. T.).

Stocky, hard-driving Dr. Maier is a Fundamentalist, gets his fan mail from Bible readers. Last week, in a broadcast sermon at a Lutheran Rally in Manhattan, he lit into an organization which many of his fellow Fundamentalists view with alarm--the Federal Council of Churches. Denouncing it as "one of the major menaces to conservative and Biblical Christianity in this country," Lutheran Maier declared that the Federal Council maintains a radio monopoly in the U. S., which he proposes to take up with the Federal Communications Commission. As documentation. Dr. Maier quoted a statement made by the Council's general secretary in 1929: "In the future, no denomination or individual church will be able to secure any time whatever on the air unless they are willing to pay prohibitively high prices. . . ."

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