BlinkBlog

The pretty princedom of Monaco, the center of Europe’s playboy country, has now become the central redoubt of Protestant evangelism. On a mountain overlooking the Mediterranean, a Detroit-born Baptist minister and a staff of 17 are beaming a constant stream of religious broadcasts over five giant “curtain antennas” that reach across Asia to the Pacific. Broadcasts in the other direction—to Spain—carry on to Latin America. The Gospel message is carried in Russian, Spanish, Latvian, Hebrew, Arabic, Swedish, Portuguese, French, English, Italian and German. Within three months, Armenian, Georgian and Uzbek will be added; within a year, Chinese and Hindustani. And the Soviets have never tried to jam it.

This new-style speaking in tongues had its origin at a meeting near Interlaken, Switzerland, in 1948, at which a group of North American Protestant evangelical leaders, including Billy Graham and Dr. Harold Ockenga of Boston’s Park Street Church, decided that European Protestantism was hiding its light under a bushel. Though there were 28 Protestant religious stations outside the U.S., they noted, there was not one in Europe—which had two-thirds of the radio sets outside the U.S.

Courtesy A. Hitler. Assigned to set up a Protestant radio station, beamed at Europe and supported by U.S. funds, was the Rev. Paul E. Freed, 42, a Baptist minister who grew up in Syria and Palestine, where his father was a businessman turned missionary. “We started in Tangier on a shoestring,” Freed recalls. “Our budget was around $25,000 a year. Today it’s closer to $1,000,000—and it all comes from Protestant churches and other radio stations. Every major denomination is involved, and nowadays we get as much support from European Christian groups as from Americans.”

Trans Wrorld Radio, as the mission is called, was forced to leave Tangier in 1959, when Morocco declared that it was about to incorporate the free port. Its new site in Roman Catholic Monaco, near the summer palace of Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, has proved to be admirably suited for the operation. The location is nearer Europe’s geographical center. Ready and available were broadcasting facilities installed by Adolf Hitler. Trans World rented the installation from Radio Monte Carlo with a ten-year lease, automatically renewable.

“Our biggest interest, our principal target, is the Soviet Union and the Communist bloc,” says Broadcaster Freed. To prepare the Russian broadcast—a daily half-hour from 7 to 7:30 p.m., which will soon be increased to an hour—Trans World has called on an American couple of Russian Orthodox origin, Nicholas and Rose Leonovich, who live in Morocco. Their typical program begins with folk music, gradually changing to church music—instrumental at first, then sung—followed by a Christian message.

Airway Communion. Baptist Freed, who has gathered his knowledge of Russian hearts and souls firsthand in three extended trips through the Soviet Union during the past five years, finds the Russian response heartening. Even in the depths of Siberia he found families who listened regularly to Trans World broadcasts. Appreciative letters arrive each week from the U.S.S.R. A recent sample: “Peace unto you, our dear friends. We give thanks to our Lord for the privilege he gives us of listening to the loving Word over the radio. We are Christians living here in Moscow. The reception is excellent. We take our part in the prayer and the singing.”

As to why the Russians do not interrupt this communion over the airways. Freed has not a sure answer. “No doubt they feel they have nothing to fear from religious propaganda,” he says. “But beyond the materialist dimension there are still men’s hearts and souls. No country can decree these out of existence.”

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