Thank you Ray Robinson and Jeff White for sharing this week's Wavescan program script.
Jeff: Recently, a program on BBC television celebrated the 100th anniversary of Christian religious broadcasting in the UK. Of course back then, they were talking about radio broadcasting, so today Ray Robinson in Los Angeles takes a look back at those early days of putting Christianity, and God, on the air.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. Just off Trafalgar Square in Central London is an iconic landmark – the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. 100 years ago, that was the scene of a ground-breaking event in the British Isles, because it was from that church that the BBC broadcast their very first service of live worship. But back in 1924, some people were outraged by the idea of broadcasting worship on the radio. There was a vicar in North London who said people might listen in pubs, or even listen while wearing hats – can you imagine!?! They thought that somehow broadcasting services would be sullying the ‘beauty of holiness’ with the ordinaryness of people’s lives.
Because of this suspicion of the new technology, both St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey turned down the BBC’s invitation to host the first broadcast service. But, St. Martin-in-the-Fields grasped the opportunity, and so the very first service of worship was broadcast by the British Broadcasting Company, as it was back in 1924, from that church led by the then vicar, the Rev. Dick Shepherd. And thanks to religious broadcasting, he went on to become one of the most popular voices on the airwaves in the UK in the years leading up to and during the Second World War. Here’s the voice of Rev. Shepherd during that first broadcast:
Bringing the Word of God into people’s homes was, for Dick Shepherd, deeply connected with the message of Christianity – that we don’t need to go on a long journey to find God, but that through Jesus, God reached out to us. As well as the outrage that the first broadcast service provoked, the service touched the hearts of many ordinary Christians who wrote into the BBC – “it was spellbinding”, “it was remarkable”, “it was moving”, “they had never experienced anything like it”, etc., which of course they hadn’t, at least not on the BBC. And so
Dick Shepherd had inspired people around the country from that very first broadcast. However, while that may have been the first service of live worship broadcast on BBC radio, it certainly wasn’t the first Christian religious broadcast in the UK. At 9PM on Christmas Eve 1922, two years earlier, the Rev. John Mayo of Whitechapel, East London had broadcast a message over the BBC’s ‘2LO’ station from their studio in London. This was the first religious programme on the BBC. In 1932 to celebrate the 10 th anniversary of that broadcast,
He said, “Surely no man has ever proclaimed the Gospel from such an extraordinary pulpit as I am now occupying.” Well at least one man had, five months even earlier, during the pre-BBC era of broadcasting in Britain. Dr. James Ebenezer Boon, a 55- year-old medical doctor, preacher and radio ham, was the pastor of what is now known as Christ Church Evangelical Fellowship, in McDermott Road, Pekham, South London. He had been inspired by Marconi’s big radio demonstration, called ‘The Miracle of Broadcasting’, at Peckham Town Hall in June 1922. The demonstration was run by Arthur Burrows, The Marconi Company’s Publicity Director, who a few months later on November 14 th was to become the first voice heard on the BBC with a 6pm radio newscast. Dr. Boon reasoned, if Marconi could send music from central London to the Town Hall in Peckham, why couldn’t he do the same from his church?
He applied for a broadcast licence, but was turned down on the grounds that the airwaves were getting full and every church would want one! Dr. Boon conceded this was a valid standpoint, but not to be put off, he contacted Burndept Wireless Ltd., a wireless manufacturer which had an ‘Aerial Works’ site five miles away in Blackheath, and which did have an experimental broadcast licence. Together, a plan was hatched. He’d originally wanted to broadcast from his church, but since permission for that been denied, he decided he’d broadcast an entire Sunday service remotely: congregation present, but minister absent. Now, you may remember during the COVID lockdown months that often a minister would be the only one in church, livestreaming via Youtube into people’s homes. Well, this was the exact
opposite.
On a table in front of the pulpit rails in Christ Church Evangelical, he placed a three- valve receiving and amplifying set with a gramophone horn as a speaker. To this he ran a feed line from an aerial on the roof which was supported by two clothes props.
On Sunday 30th July 1922, the congregation arrived – but he didn’t. The service consisted of the disembodied voice of Dr. Boon coming from five miles away in Blackheath, where he preached a 20-minute sermon based on the Bible verse John 3:16. He also played hymns from gramophone records including ‘O God Our Help in Ages Past’ and ‘The Church’s One Foundation’. Most people present had never heard radio before, or had even heard of radio. The next day, the London Times reported that the 400 seat church was filled to overflowing, and that the words of Dr. Boon’s sermon were heard with remarkable clarity throughout the building.
Unfortunately none of the documentation I have seen records the wavelength or anything about the transmitter that was used, but it was likely between 325 and 500 metres medium wave, and it clearly was very effective. Boon had addressed ‘listeners in the north, south, east and west of England’, because listeners weren’t confined to the church building. Letters of appreciation came from all points of the compass, mostly around London, but it became apparent that the broadcast had been received over a radius of some 100 miles. Congratulatory postcards came in from radio amateurs in Watford, Hertfordshire (north of London – “Last night I happened, quite by chance, to be tuning in on my one-valve wireless set, when I was amazed to hear the strains of ‘O God Our Help in Ages Past’, and later I received your address with remarkable clarity.) from Coventry, even further north (“Your sermon reached hear quite clearly”), Eltham in south east London (“It enabled me to concentrate much better than in a building”), from Godalming, south west of London
(“I shall be glad to know if there will be another broadcast sermon next Sunday?”), and Frinton, some 60 miles to the east, way out on the Essex coast. The listeners in Frinton even sent a telegram to Dr. Boon which he received just before the end of the service, saying: “Message received perfectly by great crowd on the sea front. Will take up a collection if it is desired!” For the first time Boon had put the ‘mission’ into ‘transmission’, wirelessly sending his Gospel message into people’s homes.
But, Boon never did broadcast again. Rev. John Mayo’s broadcast at Christmas a few months later was the next religious broadcast heard on British airwaves, and indeed, there has been some sort of religious programme on BBC radio every Sunday since 24 December 1922.
But of course, there were even earlier religious broadcasts outside the UK. The WORLD's first religious broadcast took place in January 1921 in Pittsburgh, where Calvary Episcopal Church was wired up and broadcast on KDKA, the world's first proper radio station. They even went so far as to dress the broadcast engineers as choristers, so as not to distract the congregation!
Way before that, Christmas Eve 1906 saw a religious broadcast too, when Reginald Fessenden read from Luke's gospel and played O Holy Night on the violin - just for ships off the Massachusetts coast. And back in the 1890’s, twelve London churches sent their Sunday services via phone-lines to the homes of people who had subscribed to the Electrophone service – which was also a form of broadcasting... although not by wireless/radio.
(Ray Robinson/Jeff White/Wavescan-03 Nov 2024)