Rousing Patriot Passion: Propaganda

Herbert Armstrong was a master at mass media propaganda - on the radio, delivering his messages, and in the written word. His autobiography and Mystery of the Ages are full of it. He learned the principles of advertising, and began to sell his product - religion. Advertising can be considered a form of propaganda- it doesn't play fair. It plays for keeps. Advertisers want you to buy as much of their product as you can, as often as you can, again and again and again. It makes them money.


Not that, according to mass media communications theory, propaganda is always inherently bad. Our own government used propaganda in WWII to bolster morale, discourage  dissent, and rouse the patriot passions in support of the cause against the opposition.


Now, on the previous post, someone commented, "I notice Dunkle's wife's name contains "Ward"; is that connected to past church royalty, thus mitigating his claims of being "just a lay member". 

While I don't personally know either of the Dunkles, that comment really did get me thinking. How did Sue Ward Dunkle just happen to post an "open letter" to the  UCG pastors from her husband, who claimed to be "just a lay member" on the tightly controlled UCG: Resolving Issues. Who was the intended audience, and what was the open letter intended to accomplish?


Another poster there commented:  "I sent a copy of the letter to loyal UCG minister Dr. Ward. He in turn just sent it to all the Houston UCG brethren on the reminders list! He and Don Hooser know your husband by the way." 


In a telephone interview with Ambassador Reports this morning, Mr. Dunkle said he wrote the open letter, and serves as a deacon in the Columbus, OH church.  


Besides Frank Dunkle, how many just "lay members" are out there speaking and writing as UCG lay members, who also happened to have graduated from Ambassador College? That also serve as UCG local deacons? Who also preach on a regular basis to their UCG congregations, and claim to be lay members? Not many, I suspect.

Looking at the UCG Columbus, OH website, a series of five mp3 sermons are being offered, given by Frank Dunkle over the last few months.  One given on the anniversary of D-Day, June 6th was interspersed with vivid historical sketches of the Battle of Dunkirk, French resistance movement, and Gen. "Monty" Montgomery. All that history was thrown together with the Second Coming, of course. Another Dunkle sermon takes over a solid hour to go into great detail into how animal sacrifices were conducted in the book of Leviticus. 

So Frank Dunkle is not exactly some average, "just a lay member" bloke sitting his bum on the hard, cheap seats, dozing off to sleep at the back of the church service. He is someone speaking from the lectern hour after hour, communicating messages to the congregation. 

Frank Edgar Dunkle, married to Sue Ward Dunkle, is a graduate of Ambassador  (attending at both Pasadena and Big Sandy). He followed that up by attending UT in Tyler and then took graduate history at Texas A &M as he notes on his resume here. He teaches as an adjunct professor of history at Columbus State Community College and is Program Officer for the Ohio Humanities Council. In fact, according to the website, "Frank Dunkle’s historical research has focused on early American biography and military history.  Serving a number of years as Road Manager for Ohio Chautauqua helped Dr. Dunkle see the effectiveness of living history as a form of education and entertainment.  He has spent several years studying the life of John Brown and developing this realistic portrayal.

The War on Slavery: An Evening with John Brown

John Brown is best known for his failed raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia in 1859, and rightly so. That event was a major step towards secession and the Civil War." 

Click this link to see a picture of UCG's Frank Dunkle portraying radical abolitionist John Brown.

And what did Frank Dunkle write about for his Phd. at Texas A & M University in 2007? Why, he wrote about rousing the passions - with propaganda!

Frank Edgar Dunkle, “Rousing Patriot Passion: Propaganda in the Boston Press, 1754-1756,” History (May 1997). 

and that's how you came to read the "open letter" written by Dr. Frank Edgar Dunkle, Phd., so passionately constructed by "just a lay member" in the UCG.

Dr. Dunkle specifically disavows that anyone on the UCG Council of Elders had any prior knowledge, or that anyone in the UCG caused him to write the open letter. It was "entirely my idea" to write the open letter, he said.