Ernest Angley

      The Reverend Ernest Angley passed away recently at the age of 99.

Angley was your stereotypical television evangelist with about every stereotype that one would write for a film script involving that industry.

Angley was involved in scandals like many from the televised evangelical world, but the Reverend stands out to me from childhood more than the others from the business- for one reason.

The business of televised religion comes down to one thing- attracting enough donated dollars to buy televised time on smaller independent stations and occasionally an early Sunday morning slot on a larger station.

When you have those dollars, it enables you to stay on the air, do your routine, and keep an often lavish lifestyle running, but getting those dollars often takes some less than scrupulous dealings, and the Rev. Angley's "Healing" didn't exactly ring the "OK" bell with legitimacy.

SO why did Ernest Angley stand out from the bushel of television evangelists from that era?

Pro Wrestling.

You see, in the era of pro wrestling being a one-hour infomercial for a promotion's live house shows, there was only one hour a week for me in my infancy as a fan and it was Saturday at 11:00 AM on WDCA-TV from Washington.

At that time, UHF stations usually programmed local sports (WDCA had the Bullets, Capitals, and ACC Basketball), reruns of old television shows like Star Trek, and the remainder was left for old movies and time buy programs- such as wrestling and various religious programming.

A time buy was basically someone literally purchased an hour of air time and WDCA placed the program on their network at the agreed time.

The station liked those because they didn't have to try to sell advertising and the buyer didn't have to sell their product to the station, pleasing both parties.

I've shared stories about that time and the WWF show in the past but assuming that my dad wasn't getting his laughs by asking for a chore to be done with ten minutes before the show and I had the time to turn the channel (Literally) to the UHF station, the program before pro wrestling was the Rev. Ernest Angley show, so I'd see the last ten minutes of Angley's hour (which like WWF was paid for by the company) and that was quite a trip, dear readers.

The end of Angley's program would feature the good Reverend and his "faith healing" and this would feature people that took better bumps on the platform than Steve King and Victor Mercado would in the next hour.

Angley wobbled out, usually in a white suit, looking like a bizarre mashup of North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith (I spent many a North Carolina game in the 80s, yelling at Dean Smith and calling him "Ernest Angley")  and Eddie Munster, and would ask "followers" what their various malady was that ailed them.

Angley would then give a standard pablum and then call the Lord, strike the person, and drive them backward in a Nestea Plunge-type fall where two fellows in suits would catch them in mid-flight.

Angley then would "test" the newly-healed follower and in a miracle, the problem was solved!

I try not to be too hard on these things because they are more carnival sideshow than real religion, but it was hard not to laugh as a kid and it's hard not to be sad today as you just wonder how many poor people have been conned out of their dollars by stunts like these.

When you are exposed to this every week, suffice it to say that many wrestling fans in junior high school were well-schooled in the Ernest Angley impersonation!

But there is one more wrestling connection to the late Reverend- my childhood hero -The Magnificent Muraco loved adding Ernest Angley touches to his promos for the upcoming card at your local area, in my case, the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland.

Muraco has admitted in recent interviews that he did this and it wasn't hard to see when the Magnificent One was going into "Angley" mode as he would chant "Can you say Baby" (Angley used that phrase often when he had "healed" someone from deafness and would ask them to repeat the word) and would add some "YEA-HH"'s in the tone of a traveling preacher.

The Reverend has always been thought of as a charlatan by me even forty years ago and despite his passing, I haven't seen anything to cause a re-evaluation of him in my mind.

Still, there are a few phrases to this day, that when I hear them I'll flashback to being twelve years old with the excitement of watching wrestling for that week and the odd little man and his routine before the action began.