PR Masters Answer a Higher Calling

Would Jesus do the “Geraldo” show? In her line of work, Lucinda Dyer has to ask herself theoretical questions like that. She is part of the small but growing number of public relations experts who represent big names in religion.

Dyer, a literary publicist in Nashville, Tenn., and partner Annette Swanberg in Columbus, Ohio, have worked with mainstream authors like John Gregory Dunne and Bob Woodward, but increasingly they represent religious superstars and media darlings. Televangelist Jerry Falwell and social activist Jim Wallis, who founded Sojourner magazine, are among recent clients.

Dyer got into the field 14 years ago. “If these people just keep preaching to the choir, it does their book no good whatsoever,” she says. “They have to get out there and tour.”

Yes, even those in the business of saving souls need a little PR.

The Christian retail industry, including books and other products, is a growing $3-billion annual business. The religious book divisions of HarperCollins, Doubleday and Ballantine are well established; in recent months, Bantam Doubleday Dell acquired WaterBrook, an evangelical Christian publishing house, Doubleday reactivated its “Galilee” line, and Simon & Schuster launched its “Religion in Praxis” line.

To keep pace, a number of mainstream publicists now include religion as one of their areas of expertise. Some, like Dyer, handle big-name authors. Others take on personalities known more for their ministries than for their writings. Most mix religious figures with Hollywood and corporate clients, but several have managed to build entire companies on religious public relations.

“Promise Keepers was a nonentity five years ago,” says Lawrence Swicegood of the DeMoss Group in Atlanta. “We’ve had it for 2 1/2 years, and it is one of the largest religious organizations in the country.”

Before he met the folks at DeMoss, the Promise Keepers’ founder, former University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney, could fill a stadium with men attracted to his movement, which addresses the challenges of being a husband and father. But with the help of DeMoss, Promise Keepers has been featured in every major news magazine and nightly news broadcast.

The 4-year-old DeMoss Group has a client list that features some of the biggest names in evangelical Christendom, including Falwell and his Liberty University; Chuck Colson and his Prison Fellowship ministry; Bill Bright and his Campus Crusade for Christ; and Franklin Graham, the Rev. Billy Graham’s heir apparent.

Franklin Graham was recently named “Person of the Week” on the ABC network news for his work as director of the Samaritan’s Purse relief program. The group’s mission to ship shoes and other gifts to war victims in Bosnia has also gotten a lot of national and local news coverage.

“Instead of pitching a bunch of junk, we pitch what is news,” says Swicegood, who learned his trade doing corporate PR for PepsiCo and Frito Lay.”

DeMoss does business in an unusual way. Most clients sign on with a handshake. Since most are CEOs of a nonprofit ministry, DeMoss charges them a rate 20% to 30% lower than what it charges corporations, Swicegood says.

Most other publicists for religious clients charge them “full freight,” which means that only the most successful can afford their services. Judy Hilsinger of Hilsinger Mendelson in Los Angeles and New York offers a basic package that includes a press kit, cover letter and biography for more than $3,000. Author tours, a national versus a local publicity campaign, and a run at the talk radio and TV circuit can all be arranged. They’re extra.

“At the end of the year the bill can be $30,000, or as high as $60,000,” says Hilsinger, a longtime literary publicist. Often, the book publisher, not the author, picks up the tab.

Hilsinger’s clients have included Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition, televangelist Pat Robertson and others of that level.

The firm is “good at making connections to the general market,” says Jana Muntsinger, publicity director for Word Publishing, a religious book publisher in Dallas.

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It might sound like a fairly easy sell. But religion talent can present publicists with image problems and other delicate matters. “They tend to be long-winded,” says Hilsinger of some religious figures. She sends them to a media coach, who teaches them to talk in zippy sound bites.

Certain erstwhile religious leaders are so hot, not even the toughest religion publicists will touch them. “Too dicey,” says one of Jim Bakker, the former televangelist who was imprisoned from 1989 to 1994 for mishandling millions of dollars donated to his ministry.

Instead, Bakker and his new book, “I Was Wrong” (Thomas Nelson), went to entertainment publicist David Brokaw, whose clients include Bill Cosby and Loretta Lynn. Brokaw saw it as a PR man’s dream.

“Jim Bakker has been unavailable for so long, I thought the major media would be running at him,” Brokaw says. Now that he has scored interviews with Barbara Walters and Larry King, Brokaw is working on a double bill.

“How can I make a big pop?” he muses. “The Rev. Bakker and Tammy Faye on ‘Oprah.’ ” (The former couple last saw each other while he was still in prison. She has since remarried.)

Arielle Ford of La Jolla says of her work, “I’d call it spiritual rather than religious PR.” She helped launch mind-body health spokesman Deepak Chopra to national name recognition by generating feature stories, guiding publicity for his books and helping facilitate his PBS series. Her other clients include “Chicken Soup for the Soul” book series editors Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen.

Ford learned her skills as a corporate publicist in Los Angeles, but she started her own business two years ago because she wanted an ocean view. In setting up her office she hired a feng shui master to rearrange her furniture according to the ancient Chinese system for creating harmony in the home.

“They told me, if your front entrance has sliding glass doors all your money will slide out the doors,” Ford says. “I followed all the advice and it paid off rapidly.”

Most religion publicists complain that their clients refuse to do anything that looks like self-promotion. Not Ford.

“Everybody wants to know how to get on ‘Oprah,’ ” she says. “I give them the phone number for the Science of the Mind prayer line.”

They make the call to get their intention listed among the requests that Science of the Mind members pray for each day. Ford says she may be good at her job, but she knows her limits. She tells clients, “If you want to get on ‘Oprah,’ you’ll need God’s help.”