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Family Radio (Family Stations Inc.) is a non-commercial traditional Christian radio religious broadcasting network in the United States, founded by Harold Camping also known as "Brother Camping" on February 41959 in Oakland, California. The network consists mainly of FM radio stations on non commercial licenses (with a few commercial licenses used as non commercial) and relays, with some AM stations and a television station, plus WYFR shortwave in Okeechobee, Florida. The network produces programming in numerous languages. (broadcasting stations) http://forms.familyradio.org/stations/search.php (streaming audio) http://www.familyradio.com/english/connect/broadcast/ Camping came from a Dutch Reformed Church background and owned a construction company before founding Family Radio. FR began obtaining FM licenses on commercial frequencies before many Americans even owned FM radios. Mr. Camping's affiliates in New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore/Washington, and San Francisco are on prime commercial frequencies and the licenses of these stations alone may be worth hundreds of millions of dollars if sold today. Camping endorses both the King James Bible and the Modern King James Bible as he has said one or more times on his Open Forum show, claiming that the King James version is the most accurate translation. Music played by Family Radio stations consists mainly of early American hymnals. Family Radio avoids contemporary Christian music and southern gospel and all other styles of music. One of Family Radio's popular broadcasts is a live call-in program called Open Forum in which Mr. Camping answers questions using the Bible. Other shows are "Family Bible Reading Fellowship", "Family Bible Study" with Harold Camping, "Sunday Preaching" by Harold Camping, "Beyond Intelligent Design", "Christian Home", and "Family Radio World Wide". Family Radio relies on listener-supported funding and is unaffiliated with any religious denomination. Any outside programming ever aired on Family Radio was always aired free of charge and Family Radio never sold time to ministries. These ministries though buy time on other stations. The stipulation was always that these programs would edit out solicitations for donations and replace them with solicitations to give to Family Radio or to write the ministry in care of "Family Radio". Also local Family Radio stations, unlike other non-commercial stations, do not get a percentage of donations coming into a ministry from its listening area. Today though, almost no outside ministry is still aired over Family Radio. Family Radio has never discussed politics directly, in the sense of campaigning for political candidates for whom a Christian should vote for or even suggesting that a Christian should vote. Family Radio has distanced itself from directly political social issues, which is one of the reasons "Focus on the Family" was removed back in the early 1980s long before other ministries were dropped. However, it does present programs that take strong positions on issues with political and social ramifications, such as advocating creationism.
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History
Harold Camping along with a few other Christian fundamentalists of Christian Reformed, Bible Baptist, and Conservative Presbyterian faiths got together in 1958 and purchased an FM radio station in San Francisco, California called KEAR, then at 97.3 MHz. The mission was to preach the traditional Christian gospel to the conservative Protestant community as well as witness and minister to others who are unsaved. Their doctrine was always that their form of Christianity was the one true teaching. Other teachings, including but not limited to Roman Catholicism, Pentecostalism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and liberal, as well as moderate mainline Protestant Churches, all were Another Gospel.
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In addition they believed and still believe that people of non-Christian religions are unsaved as well since they reject the true gospel. They believed that Christ only died for a limited number of people. They believe to be saved a person must hear the gospel, their heart and mind be changed by God (so that they believe the gospel feel remorse over their sins against him and ask him for forgiveness after which God forgives not just their past but future sins.) As has been believed by all manner of genuine Christians for thousands of years (as is shown by Psalm 49:7-13), they do not believe a person can do all of those, or at least without doubt in their minds when doing them. The ministry was always non-commercial. In the 1960s Family Radio would acquire 6 other FM stations and 7 other AM stations (14 stations was the limit until 1984). Their flagship station is KEAR in San Francisco (now at 610 kHz, until 2005 at 106.9 MHz), but their second largest station is 94.7 WFME Newark, NJ licensed to serve the New York City radio market. Over the years the stations all aired programming from production facilities in Oakland, California. They produced a few hours a day of teaching to air on all the stations. They also gave about 8 hours a day to national fundamentalist and evangelical ministries to air their shows free of charge over Family Radio stations. These ministries included "Focus on the Family" (which was pulled in 1985), "Freedom Under Fire", "Unshackled", "Back to the Bible", "Family News in Focus", Beyond intelligent design and many others. Also, for a couple of hours a week, local Family Radio stations aired church services from nearby fundamentalist churches in their areas. The rest of the time Family Radio played traditional Christian music of the kind previously mentioned in this article. They prerecorded two weeks of shows on reel-to-reel tapes and sent them to each station where a board operator at each local station played these tapes. The ministries that aired free on Family Radio sent cassette and reel-to-reel tapes to each station which also played locally. Each local station had board operators and on morning and afternoon weekdays also did local news, announcements, played local traffic reports from phone line, and announced weather. In the late 1980s the programming was delivered via satellite. Local news was taken off the stations in favor of a various national news from a Christian Newsource. The style of music in the '60s and '70s of Family Radio sounded typical of religious stations commercial and non-commercial. No religious station played Contemporary Christian music full time. Some commercial ones did so a few hours a week but CCM music was in its infancy until the early '80s. In the '80s as commercial and some non-commercial Christian stations evolved to Contemporary formats, Family Radio decided not to play contemporary music. They held to traditional music such as hymns sung by choirs, traditional singing groups, vocalists with a crooning '50s sound, softer urban contemporary gospel songs, etc. In the '90s though they began mixing in some lighter contemporary Christian artists but dropped them by 2002. To this day all but a few local announcements are run out of their Oakland, California facilities.
1994?
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This article or section is written like a personal reflection or essay and may require cleanup. Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style.(December 2007) |
Mr. Camping wrote a book entitled 1994? in which he hypothesized that the end of the world might happen in 1994. His reasoning was based on the cycles of various Jewish holy days into modern times and how they coincided on various dates and based on his calculations of various numbers in the Bible or dates coinciding with the cycles of the Jewish holy days. As end of the world did not occur in 1994, Mr. Camping's dating theory is evidently wrong, at least partially since he made an allowance for an alternate date in the future (2011).In addition, Mr. Camping has stated on "open Forum", that the Rapture would take place on May 21, 2011, and 5 months later Christ will come to bring judgement to the world-this will happen on October 21, 2011. The failure of the fulfillment of Mr. Camping's hypothesis seems to have lead to a large backlash against him which is prominent on the Internet however reasons for it also include his teaching that Christians should no longer be apart of a Christian hierarchy or "church" as he puts it. Harold Camping hypothesized and is still teaching that the world will probably end in the year 2011 AD. His other controversial teaching is that the Church age, the period of time during which God is working through churches, is over. Mr Camping contends that every denomination holds to a different doctrine. The only true doctrine is the one given from the Holy Bible and therefore, some of the church teachings are false. He claims that the Holy Spirit has departed from all churches, and that consequently all churches today are counterfeit and "The Whore Of Babylon". Today he states that the true-believers must leave the local congregations because they are under the spiritual rule of Satan. He urges listeners to listen only to the Bible, and search the scriptures themselves for truth of the Bible. The controversial new teachings led to criticism from some supporters and prompted some Family Radio staffers to resign as well. Many churches who disagree with his teachings pulled their programming from Family Radio. Harold Camping has served Family Radio without pay since 1959. One teaching by Harold Camping, which is not a traditional of any known Christian church, is that after the universe is renewed, all Christians will be equal to one another. In other words there will be no rank or no one who has lesser or greater wealth than another Christian.
Future
Harold Camping was born according to some sources in 1922. Other sources claim he was born in 1917, 1918, or 1920. If any of these are true then he would be in his mid 80's to early 90's. Some reports say there are a couple like-minded people who are set to continue the current teachings airing over Family Radio after Harold Camping dies. Others say that a few people are pretending to subscribe to Harold's views with plans to move Family radio in more of a Baptist direction upon his death. Other rumors consist of selling the ministry to the more Baptist based Bible Broadcasting Network ending Family Radio's teachings altogether. BBN has a format similar to what Family radio was like prior to 1990 and much less Calvinistic theology. BBN's target area is the Bible Belt while Family Radio's area was in more patrician areas where liberal branches of Christianity, Roman Catholicism, and Judaism dominate. Family Radio stations would expand BBN's service area.
External links
- Family Radio Website
- Family Radio Graphical Website
- Website that supports Family Radio's teachings
- Harold Camping's Publications
- Website that supports Harold Camping's teachings
- Website critical of Camping's teachings
- Christian Research Institute refutation of Camping's teaching
- Articles and Links opposing the Depart Out Teachings of Harold Camping otherwise known as Campingism.
Books
- 1994?
- As Wise as Serpents as Peaceful as Doves
