Billy James Hargis

Billy James Hargis (August 3, 1925, Texarkana, Arkansas – November 27, 2004, Tulsa, Oklahoma) was a fundamentalist Protestant Christian evangelist. At the height of his popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, his Christian Crusade ministry was broadcast on more than 500 radio stations and 250 television stations. He promoted an anti-Communist message as well as evangelization, and founded a radio station, monthly newspaper and a college in Tulsa, Oklahoma to support his ministries. In 1974 several students at his American Christian College accused Hargis of sexual misconduct;^[1] however, the Tulsa district attorney found no evidence or wrongdoing. Hargis went into early retirement and the college closed in 1977. He continued to publish his newspaper and to write books.

Biography

Hargis was adopted by a railroad employee, Billy James Hargis, and his wife; by the time the boy was 10, his adoptive mother was in poor health and close to death. The boy had been baptized and had few pleasures other than the family's daily Bible readings as his family was too poor during the Great Depression to own a radio.^[2] When his mother was hospitalized, Hargis promised to devote himself to God if she were saved. She recovered, and at age 17, Hargis was ordained in the Disciples of Christ denomination, before completing Bible college.^[2] After a few years, he left his pastorate for a ministry of radio preaching.^[3]

In 1943, Hargis entered the unaccredited Ozark Bible College in Bentonville, Arkansas, and studied there for one year. By 1947, when he became concerned about Communism, he was pastor of the First Christian church in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, a small town outside Tulsa. He later received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Pikes Peak Bible Seminary in 1957, and a theology degree from Burton College and Seminary in Colorado in 1958.^[4]

In 1950 he established an organization called the Christian Crusade, for which he gained tax exemption as a religious institution. In the mid-1950s, Hargis was closely associated with the evangelist Carl McIntire and former Major General Edwin Walker of the John Birch Society, but he increasingly went his own way in preaching anti-Communism. His targets included government and popular singers.^[3][4] In 1957, the Disciples Of Christ withdrew his ordination because he was attacking other churches in his anti-Communist crusade, but by then Hargis' radio program was bringing in $1 million annually and he had established independence.^[3]

In 1966 Hargis founded his own congregation in Tulsa, Oklahoma, called the Church of the Christian Crusade. This was part of a complex of organizations which he founded in Tulsa, including the American Christian College in 1971, and the Christian Crusade monthly newspaper.

Marriage and family

Hargis married Betty Jane Secrest in 1952. They had three daughters and a son, Billy James Hargis II.

Career

Hargis' motto was "All I want to do is preach Jesus and save America."^[4] He believed that there was a conspiracy behind the threats he perceived for the United States, which he identified with Communism. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, he said in 1994 that communism "is making a dramatic, secret comeback". The historians Glenn H. Utter and John H. Storey noted that Hargis' belief was "More an article of faith than a product of empirical observation," and "such a view of history remained unaltered by empirical evidence." His propensity for conspiracy theories distinguished Hargis and a group of like-minded preachers from what was later to emerge as the Christian right.^[4]

Drawing on premillenialist theology, Hargis saw national and world events as part of a cosmic struggle, where the ultimate actors were Christ and Satan. While Communism represented the latter, the United States was the object of God's love and should return to what he believed were its founding Christian ideals. He had a "simplistic conception of Americanism consisting of a vague notion of Protestant Fundamentalism and an idealization of the virtues of republicanism".^[5]

Positions and activities

Hargis preached on cultural issues: contending the evils of sex education and Communism, and urging the return of prayer and Bible reading to public schools, long before the rise of the late 20th century Religious Right. He accused the government, media and pop culture figures, among whom he included the Beatles in the 1960s, of promoting Communism. (HIs subordinate, Rev. David Noebel, wrote the short work, "Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles" (1965), which he expanded into "Rhythm, Riots and Revolution" the following year. Both pamphlets were published by the Christian Crusade.) Hargis claimed to have written a speech for Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, notable for his anti-Communist crusade.

Hargis alleged that John F. Kennedy was killed by a Communist conspiracy, which gained him some notoriety in the immediate post-assassination media furor. He was a member of the John Birch Society. Hargis favored segregation, accused Martin Luther King Jr. of being Communist-educated, and published James D. Bales's anti-King book, The Martin Luther King Story. He said that the United States should leave the United Nations. Hargis urged his listeners to write to their Representatives and Senators, and was one of the first fundamentalist Christian figures to urge his audiences to become politically involved.^{[citation needed]} Successors also adopted this tactic.

Hargis addressed rural audiences with his revival style. He created publicity stunts, such as his 1953 scheme to release 100,000 balloons with Biblical quotations attached to them, to float across the Iron Curtain into Communist countries. He was the author of at least 100 books, including The Far Left, and Why I Fight for a Christian America. In addition, his organization published an influential pamphlet on sex education, entitled "Is the School House the Proper Place to Teach Raw Sex?", by Gordon V. Drake, who worked closely with him on his educational mission.^{[citation needed]}

In 1964, Hargis supported Republican Senator Barry Goldwater in that year's presidential race. On his radio program, Hargis presented a false work history about the journalist Fred J. Cook, who had written a book critical of Goldwater's policies.^[2] When Cook requested air time to deliver a rebuttal, the broadcaster Red Lion refused. The journalist took his case to court, and eventually it was heard by the Supreme Court. In 1969, the high court upheld the FCC's "equal-time provision" in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Commission, codifying what became known as the Fairness Doctrine.^[2] Hargis also supported the late conservative Democratic Louisiana State Senator, Harold Montgomery of Doyline, whom he often mentioned on his programs.

Founding of institutions

Hargis founded the Christian Crusade in 1950, an interdenominational movement designed as a "Christian weapon against Communism and its godless allies." In 1964 the IRS found that Hargis' involvement in political matters violated the terms of the Internal Revenue Code for religious institutions and withdrew the tax-exempt status of the Christian Crusade. At the time, Hargis had reported that the average contribution to his movement was $4, from a constituency of 250,000 donors, and it was receiving $1 million annually.^[2] He was the publisher of the monthly Christian Crusade Newspaper, with a circulation of 55,000, and Weekly Crusade.

He founded the David Livingstone Missionary Foundation, which operated hospitals, orphanages, leprosy villages, medical vans and mission services in South Korea, Hong Kong, India, the Philippines and Africa. The direct mail entrepreneur Richard Viguerie began his career working for Hargis.

Concerned with the liberalization of abortion laws, in 1971 Hargis organized Americans for Life. That same year, he founded American Christian College in Tulsa, to teach fundamentalist Christian principles and provide an alternative to perceived left-wing and counterculture influences. When asked what was taught there, Hargis said, "anti-communism, anti-socialism, anti-welfare state, anti-Russia, anti-China, a literal interpretation of the Bible and states' rights."^[6]

He also started a television show devoted to gospel music, called Billy James Hargis and his All-American Kids. It was sold to independent television stations. Students from the college performed in the musical group.

Scandal

In 1974, when Hargis was nearly 50, he was forced to resign from the presidency of American Christian College, and many of his activities due to a sexual scandal. Several students at the American Christian College, of which Hargis was president, claimed that Hargis had had sex with them over a period of three years: four males and one female. One couple, whom he had married, claimed to have discovered on their wedding night that each lost virginity with him. These events had taken place at the college, his farm in the Ozarks, and while the "All American Kids" were touring.^[7] Time Magazine covered the scandal in early 1976. The local newspapers, the Tulsa Daily World and the Tulsa Tribune, declined to publish the accusations. The Tulsa district attorney investigated but never brought charges against Hargis.

Hargis stepped down as president of American Christian College, where he was succeeded by former vice-president David Noebel. In February 1975, Hargis tried to regain control of the college, but was rejected by its board. By September he returned to his other ministries. They were said to welcome him after he repented, and because his name was an irreplaceable money-raising asset. As Jess Pedigo, president of the David Livingstone Society said, "There was a danger of bankruptcy."^[7] Hargis did not give the deed to the property to the college for months after leaving, which prevented it from gaining regional accreditation. In addition, he withheld the fundraising lists, which previously all the organizations had shared.^[7] With declining enrollment after the scandal became public, the college closed in 1977.

Hargis denied the sexual allegations until his death, both publicly and in his autobiography, My Great Mistake (1985). After his book was published, in 1985 he told a Tulsa reporter, "I was guilty of sin, but not the sin I was accused of."^[2] He eventually retreated to his farm in Neosho, Missouri, where he continued to work, issuing daily and weekly radio broadcasts. He continued to publish the monthly newspaper, The Christian Crusade Newspaper, and wrote numerous books.

In his final years, he suffered from Alzheimer's disease, and died in 2004 at the age of seventy-nine in Tulsa.

Legacy

His son, Billy James Hargis II, continues his ministry. Hargis' organization and college also started the radio station KBJH (FM 98.5) in Tulsa in the early 1970s. After the college's closing and the demise of his ministry, the station was sold to Epperson Broadcasting.

Hargis and his church owned and operated a small AM radio station in Port Neches, Texas up until the early 1990s. KDLF radio (so named after the David Livingston Foundation) played Southern Gospel Music and religious programming until it was sold around 1993. In the latter days of Hargis' ownership, the radio station was independently managed but was required to play Hargis' hour-long program daily.

His papers, described as "a goldmine for students of American politics," are stored at the special collections department of the University of Arkansas Libraries in Fayetteville.^[8]

References

1. ^ James Stuart Olson, Historical Dictionary of the 1970s, Greenwood Publishing, 1999 p. 187 ISBN 03133005439 9780313305436
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Adam Bernstein, "Evangelist Billy James Hargis Dies; Spread Anti-Communist Message", Washington Post, November 30, 2004.
3. ^ ^{a b c} Michael Carlson, "Billy James Hargis. Rightwing preacher laid low by sexual scandal", The Guardian, 10 December 2004
4. ^ ^{a b c d} Glenn H. Utter & John W. Storey, The Religious Right: A Reference Handbook, ABC-CLIO Ltd 2001, 2nd edition, p. 6f., 92. ISBN 978-1576072127
5. ^ John M Werly, "Premillennialism and the paranoid style", American Studies 18, no. 1 (Spring 1977).
6. ^ "Billy James Hargis", The Economist, 16 Dec 2004, accessed 26 May 2011
7. ^ ^{a b c} "The Sins of Billy James" Time, February 16, 1976.
8. ^ "Hargis Papers Document Birth of Religious Right", University of Arkansas Daily Headlines, June 17, 2009.

Further reading

• Heather Hendershot, What's Fair on the Air? Cold War Right-Wing Broadcasting and the Public Interest (University of Chicago Press; 2011) 260 pages;covers H.L. Hunt, Dan Smoot, Carl McIntire, and Billy James Hargis.
• John H. Redekop, The American Far Right: A Case Study of Billy James Hargis and Christian Crusade, William B. Eerdmans, 1968.

External links

• Billy James Hargis Papers (MC 1412), University of Arkansas
• Christian Crusade website

Persondata
Name	Hargis, Billy James
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	August 3, 1925
Place of birth
Date of death	November 27, 2004
Place of death