Hale and farewell

Northern Ireland's only holy roller evangelist has failed. His grand plans for a massive 'Faith Cathedral' with its own recording studio, audiitorium, motel and sports centre have produced only one small building and some £180,000 worth of debts to banks, building societies and finance houses. Leslie Hale has moved to a small town in Florida where he has bought a house and a church. In Bellfast and Moira small groups of disspirited and confused followers try to make sense of the apparent collapse of a young evangelist who made materrial success such an important conseequence of salvation and who for ten or more years successfully marketed .his faith.

Hale's career as an independent evangelist began in 1961 when he resigned from his job as a clerk in a bakery, hired a tent and advertised his gospel services in a local newsspaper. He was immediately memorrable and distinctive with his American drawl, loose, informal and enthusiastic delivery, and his message. He preached the material benefits of salvation. Borrowing the theology wholesale from the Oklahoma evangelist Oral Roberts, Hale told his listeners that they could share the benefits of "seed faith." In his religion, God's grace was translated into a slot machhine. You put in so much, pulled the lever of prayer and God paid out tennfold. Nothing unique in that; all reliigions offer rewards in this life as well as the next, but Protestants tradiitional conception of the rewards of religion involves notions of intangible improvements in one's personal and social life. The Roberts/Hale "seed faith" gave a particularly concrete and financial colour to all the Biblical propositions about casting one's bread upon the water.

Hale gathered a Belfast congregaation, a following in Moira, had a coupple doing 'missionary work' in Dublin, and drew reasonable numbers for his Sunday evening meetings in Belfast's Ulster Hall. The media seemed willing to promote Hale's self-image as a dynnamic evangelist. Given the prominence which material rewards held in Hale's own preaching, it is not surprising that much media coverage focused on his own prosperous life style and the collections raised at his meetings. What is often missed though, was the willingness of the media to naively report Hale's own claims about his success. The desire for a good news story seems to have blunted any desire to investigate these claims.

If Hale's rise was inadvertently .:JJ assisted by a gullible media willing to represent the image Hale had of himself, his fall can also be put down to the media, although this time the influence was indirect. Hale was trying to repeat in Ulster what Oral Roberts (who now has, in addition to his primeetime TV and radio shows, a large uniiversity and a hospital of his own) had pulled off in the States.

Taking his product first, his messsage and style were all wrong for Ulster. The overt materialism of 'seed faith' may have big' appeal. in a healthy, thriving economy where people inntuitively feel that hard work and ammbition will produce the goods. America has a solid tradition of playing up the material benefits of the Christian faith, but in Ulster such preaching seems immproper. The style also jarred. Paisley has consistently played to the tradiition of Ulster Presbyterianism. He is almost incapable of preaching for two minutes without mentioning Knox, Calvin, Spurgeon and Cooke (always leaving the audience to make the final link and identify Paisley as the heir to this rich tradition). His services follow classic Presbyterian lines and he wears the clerical garb of a nineteenth cenntury minister. While Paisley has borrrowed some elements of his religion from his fundamentalist friends in America he is at pains to disguise such innovation. The claim he makes in what he says and in the symbols he uses is that he is simply the latest in an honourable and trusted tradition.

In contrast Hale was a self-conscious innovator. The hopping, hand-clapping, hugging your neighbour, praising the Lord, amening and allelujahing that Hale gave his people - a watered down version of the Black church service in the States - is offensive to the deeply conservative Protestants of Ulster and although it can be found in some of the very small pentecostalist halls it has not caught on in a culture in which almost everything is judged by how well it fits with, and supports, a tradiition.

If in America you get bitten by a desire to become a preacher you raise somehow a small sum of money and buy a fifteen minute slot on your local radio station. If those who hear you like your style and appreciate your message then they will send in donaations. You can raise a few extra bucks by selling your listeners religious gimmicks and nick-nacks, bringing in enough money for more air-time.

Provided you have the talent and ambition, the openness of US radio and TV - the fact that almost anyone can buy time - allows you to reach vast audiences.

Hale, because he could not buy radio and TV to reach a mass audience, could only recruit those who were prepared to actually turn-up and see him, and this brings up his other problem.

America has never had an estabblished state church and there are few strong ties to any particular denominaation. It is much more free enterprise. The believer is a consumer who checks out the available products. Although Ulster has a variety of denominations, the Presbyterian Church has numerical superiority and it has a parish system. Although there may be some Sunday "commuting" to a favoured church, many people simply attend their -local parish church. To continue with the soap powder imagery, Hale could not recruit a mass following because most of his potential market did not see themselves as free consumers, able to experiment with new brands; they were heavily loyal to their old tradiitional brand.

Without access to the media) Hale needed bodies in the shop and his prooduct was not sufficiently attractive to a large enough number of people in what is, after all, a very small and, compared to the United States, poor market.

Opinions about the motivation of Hale will continue to be deeply divided. For his dwindling band of followers he is still a man of God and he will lead them on to better days. For them his move to the States is a temporary fund-raising exercise. To others Hale is perhaps. a charlatan who has got his just desserts. No matter.

The nature of the culture, the immportance of traditional loyalties, and the closed nature of the media meant that a career pattern that is common in America could only have succeeded here if Hale had been supported by ~hat he always claimed he had Èmiracles!