By closely examining four television programs--Falwell's "The Old-Time Gospel Hour," Robertson's "700 Club," the Bakkers' "PTL Club," and the telecasts of Jimmy Swaggart--this work considers the attraction of televangelism for its conservative Christian audience. It argues that televangelism, as ritual performance, both legitimates the beliefs of viewers and at the same time adapts other beliefs of its viewers to the broader culture.

Victor Turner altered the way ritual is viewed, by emphasizing its role as an agent of social change rather than an agent for conserving the status quo. This book reconsiders and clarifies Turner's theory of ritual in response to its frequent misinterpretation and then demonstrates its usefulness for interpreting such phenomena as ritual possession in a politically militant African-American Pentecostal congregation and the countercultural theatrical experiments of Jerzy Grotowski's Polish Laboratory Theater.