NASHVILLE (BP) — Perhaps you’ve heard of M.E. Dodd, the father of the Cooperative Program. But have you ever heard him? What about longtime Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Duke McCall or legendary First Baptist Dallas Pastor W.A. Criswell or pioneering FBC Atlanta Pastor Roy McClain? Thanks to an ongoing project of the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives (SBHLA), you can hear them all and many more.

For the past few years, members of the SBHLA staff have been digitizing hundreds of recordings of Baptist radio programs, including the “Baptist Hour” and “Christian Home” series, both of which became popular during the latter part of what’s known as the “Golden Age of Radio.”

“This project captures the voices of distinguished Baptist preachers and leaders,” said SBHLA Director Taffey Hall. “In the 1940s and ‘50s, the ‘Christian Home,’ ‘Southern Baptist Evangelistic Hour,’ and ‘Baptist Hour’ broadcasts allowed listeners to hear prominent, insightful Southern Baptist preachers and scholars through the radio in the comfort of their own homes.”

The SBHLA took ownership of hundreds of recordings when the Baptist Radio and Television Commission was dissolved in the 1990s. They’ve been in storage in the archives in Nashville ever since.

When the digitization project began in 2021, the first order of business was to find a way to play the recordings, which are on “transcription disks” – basically extra wide record albums.

Hall located a machine at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, but it didn’t work. An SBHLA staffer made the two-hour trek north on I-65 to Louisville to get the machine and bring it to Nashville, where a Music City recording technician got it working.

“When people think about an archive, one of the first things that may come to mind is all the paper materials collected and preserved,” Hall said, adding that the SBHLA has plenty of that.

“But in addition to those paper materials, we also have a lot of special formatted materials, items such as oversize photographs, glass plate negatives, motion picture films and these 16-inch transcription record disks, that need special storage and preservation.

“Our approach to digitization, and as was the case with this project, is for both preservation and access. Digitizing these early recordings of the Southern Baptist Radio Committee/Radio Commission was important from both the standpoint of long-term conservation of the physical items, and for making the material available to a wide audience of current listeners.”

Baptists on the air

Southern Baptists began discussing the use of radio in 1930. In 1934, Dodd, who was SBC president at the time, was part of a three-man committee tasked with looking into the idea. In 1936, Southern Baptists adopted a resolution calling for “a joint study of radio opportunities for Baptists.”

Then in 1938, Southern Baptists formed a seven-member committee to look into the possibility of using radio to “broadcast our Baptist message,” as it was put in the motion adopted by messengers. By then, most U.S. homes had radios, and Americans had become accustomed to getting news and entertainment from the medium.

The next year, nine additional members were added to the committee, and the group was allotted $1,200 to promote Baptist broadcasts on powerful radio stations.

The “Baptist Hour” was launched in January of 1941 and proved popular immediately, eliciting 17,500 pieces of mail, according to that year’s SBC Annual.

Over the next few years, the committee’s success grew. It was responsible for getting Baptist content on radio stations covering about half of the United States. Southern Baptists appointed a full-time director of the committee in 1942.

At the 1946 annual meeting in Miami, the name of the group was changed to the Radio Commission, and it became an official agency of the SBC. By 1948, the “Baptist Hour” was aired on 120 radio stations from coast to coast.

Gospel on display

Episodes of “Baptist Hour” flow a bit like a worship service. In an episode from May of 1945, Dodd preaches from John 3:16 and uses the word “gospel” as an acrostic for the verse: God Only Son Perish Everlasting Life. The episode begins with choral music, (“When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” and “Tell Me the Old, Old Story”).

You then hear a recorded testimony from a traveling salesman who was saved at a church while on business in Knoxville, Tenn. The man tells of hearing a radio broadcast while traveling. The next day, he happened to see the church where the broadcast he’d heard had originated – City Temple Baptist Church.

“Something told me I should go in,” the man says, “so I went on in and asked for the pastor.” The pastor listened to him, read the Bible with him and led him to faith in Christ.

“Since then I have had a new life and joy of living,” the man says.

After the testimony is a prayer, another choral piece (this one based on John: 3:16), followed by Dodd’s sermon.

“John 3:16 is the greatest verse in the greatest book in the greatest volume on the greatest subject about the greatest Person or the greatest object in all the universe,” preaches Dodd, who was pastor of First Baptist Church of Shreveport, La.

And later: “God loves because the primary essence of His character is love.”

The “Christian Home” series featured practical messages on family topics as well as dramatizations of family life situations. An episode from 1956 follows a father, mother and son through the son’s life from babyhood to young adulthood. It depicts the son taking after his father in the worst ways and the tension between mother and father.

Hall says the recordings are an example of Southern Baptists’ ever-present desire to stay relevant and to share the gospel by any means possible.

“Many of the sermon titles and broadcast series productions of these recordings addressed the concerns and issues facing Americans during that time period,” she said. “These were topics of everyday and contemporary importance to Southern Baptists — topics of marriage life, family life, home life as well as challenges of wartime.

“The ‘Christian Home’ series in particular captures an image of home life, what Southern Baptists wanted to present, in dealing with home issues and documents a time of how Baptists viewed family, marriage and raising children.

“On almost all of the programs, Southern Baptists talked about how the gospel can change people’s lives and make their lives more joyful.”

The digital audio-visual resources of the SBHLA are available here.

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Laura Erlanson is managing editor of Baptist Press.)