Do people know the real Donald Wildmon? That’s a question I have pondered frequently throughout the making of the AFA documentary Culture Warrior: Don Wildmon and the Battle for Decency And the answer I’ve come to again and again throughout the process is no, I don’t think most people do. I’ve seen Don presented as everything from an ignoramus to a fundamentalist to a money-hungry charlatan to a moral zealot to a fascist censor. Some Christians have even painted him as mean-spirited or Pharisaical or just plain wrong for emphasizing the culture war. But who was the real Don Wildmon?
Rev. Donald E. Wildmon was a Methodist minister from northern Mississippi who, after years of pastoral ministry, felt compelled to leave the pulpit ministry and begin an organization called the National Federation for Decency. This group was intended to hold television accountable in serving the public interest but grew to become much more than that—confronting pornography, anti-Christian bias in media, defending the natural family, and building a national radio network. The ministry he started in 1977 still stands today as American Family Association.
Wildmon: The Censor?
When Don initiated the “Turn the Television Off Week” he gained a lot of newspaper coverage, mostly as a curiosity. “Who is this preacher telling us to turn off the TV?” Once he lodged successful consumer boycotts against the advertisers of shows like Three’s Company and Charlie’s Angels, Don was no longer a curious novelty but a threat to freedom and democracy! Funny how quickly things can change!
Charges of censorship and appeals to the First Amendment were classic ways the media elite would obscure the truth and tar those whom they hated. How could anyone question the morality of their virtuous programming? Don saw right through their hubris. “If we’re breaking the law with boycotts and pickets, that is, if we’re violating the First Amendment, then simply take me to court,” Don would say. “Try me, convict me, and put me in jail! If we’re not doing that, then your cries of censorship are either made out of ignorance or are intentionally trying to mislead people who are independent to make up their own minds.
Nevertheless, the censorship charge was a popular one against Don—a charge that especially resonated among the pornographers who had spent a couple of decades draping themselves in the First Amendment to avoid obscenity charges. Don knew the criticism was bogus and didn’t waste his time trying to defend himself against those who refused to be convinced.
Whether he was debating the producer of the popular show Dallas, the vice president of CBS, the head of an ACLU state chapter, or Phil Donahue in front of a crowded arena, Don remained cool under pressure. He frequently surprised his opponents by bringing facts to the debate, sticking to his ground, and not getting ensnared in an emotional battle of feelings. Even when opponents lied, gaslit, or manipulated, Don would find a way to ask probing questions that might live long in the minds of those watching. “More than 80 million Americans go to church regularly, but rarely on television…”
Television: A Spiritual Battleground
Don had a way of cutting through the clutter. He knew TV was the most influential mass medium in the world and, therefore, it would be a spiritually contested space. He didn’t realize quite how bad it was at first. However, after monitoring TV programming for several years and keeping track of anti-Christian content along with indecent themes and depictions, Don began to see something more than mere permissiveness on the airwaves. There was a secular worldview underneath the stories, the characters, the news coverage, and advertisements.
“Can you name one person depicted as a Christian on a program, cast in a modern-day setting, who was shown in a positive manner?” Don would ask. It was all in plain sight and yet so few saw it or asked why.
The Christians who did get shown on TV were dumb, deceptive, hypocritical, naïve, calloused, judgmental, or petty. They were never simply the kind neighbor or the good friend or a caring parent. They would never be the main character on a show and, most certainly, Christian convictions would never be positively presented. This was more than a coincidence.
A study by three sociologists about the values held by the media elite only confirmed what Don had suspected. The study reported that while most of these powerful people (93%) had received some kind of religious upbringing, the same percentage (93%) seldom or never attended religious services now. It was further confirmed that the media elite largely believed that religious thought should have very little influence on society. Even further, the report found that they—the media elite—saw their role as a force for social change, seeking to “move their audience toward their own vision of the good society.”
Apparently, this “good society” was one devoid of Christian influence and values. These gatekeepers of the media landscape and creators of media content were not only out of touch with religion, but indeed were hostile toward it. Don saw this as a spiritual attack on people of faith and decided to call it out.
“No one denies that any and all Christians have their faults and failures,” Don told a room full of television professionals in Vail, Colorado in 1981. “But to continually present Christians, their values and culture in a negative light is a gross injustice.” These were straightforward and somewhat obvious observations. What astonished Don was how these statements turned a room full of dignified, well-educated professionals into seething, profanity-laced enemies. But then again, this wasn’t merely about Christian representation in media. There were spiritual forces at work in the hearts and minds of these media professionals. It turns out, “the unfruitful works of darkness” (Ephesians 5:11) do not want to be exposed.
How You Know You’re Over the Target
Shockingly, Don didn’t take this as discouragement. Not that he didn’t have times where he questioned his call and wondered whether the battle was worth fighting. He did. He was human. But, he saw the hostility against his work and the false statements about him and his purposes as proof that he was right over the target.
Similar attacks happened when the NFD took on convenience store pornography in the mid-1980s. After spending several years boycotting 7-Eleven (the largest seller of Playboy and Penthouse at the time), the company finally relented. It took years of confrontation, a 10,000 person rally outside the headquarters, and an Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography to get there, but it did happen. Afterward, reeling from lost profits, Playboy tried to intimidate Don and AFA by suing them. The claim was that AFA’s coordination of consumer boycotts by concerned local citizens was extorting money from these sellers of adult magazines! While the lawsuits were thrown out, they speak to the ways smut peddlers tried to bully and intimidate anyone who might stand against their profiting from the exploitation of women and children.
At every step, Don was forced to become more savvy. First, about primetime TV. Next, about the media. Then, about pornographers. And then, about the law. Most of his opponents likely never realized he subscribed to all of their industry periodicals so that he could be aware of the latest news, current trends, and whatever data might be behind them. His opponents likely also didn’t know how moved he was to help the poor, how tender he was with children, or how compassionate he was to the needs of his co-workers at the ministry. He may have commanded respect like a military general, but he always had the heart of a pastor. And it was this burden for the American family that motivated his work.
It is this multi-dimensional character of Don Wildmon that I hope comes through in Culture Warrior: Don Wildmon and the Battle for Decency. Don was sharp and bold, shrewd yet tender, compassionate and unwavering. In short, he was a Christian, compelled by the gospel he trusted and the Savior who had saved him. While many Christians have enjoyed acting as if Don was somehow unfaithful or misguided for focusing on the culture war, I want to present the opposite case. Perhaps Don saw something very important on the horizon and tried to warn us. Perhaps he wasn’t a reactionary and, instead, was thinking quite clearly.
Perhaps Don’s story offers something important we could learn about Christian faithfulness in our own time.
To learn more about the amazing story of Don Wildmon, watch Culture Warrior for FREE.
