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Who has had a greater impact on Christianity in America, Billy Graham or Bill Bright? There is no right answer to this question, but it would be fun to discuss. While I think I might choose Bright, most people, I suspect, would not even take this question seriously. Everyone knows who Billy Graham is, but even people who have heard of Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC) probably know very little, if anything, about its founder.
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Here is another question: Who was the most influential religious activist in the Sixties? The names you are likely to hear are Martin Luther King, Jr., William Sloane Coffin, and the Berrigan brothers. Although King is hard to beat, a good case can be made that none of them were as active as Bright in creating organizations aimed at changing American culture. In fact, it is possible that no single individual in the 20th century worked harder to reach more people with the Gospel message than Bill Bright.
Bright (1921-2003) is not as well known as he should be because he worked behind the scenes for CCC, but John Turner's new book puts his life and career center stage for all to see. A disappointment as a businessman and a failure as a student, Bright became the most innovative and successful promoter of Christianity on college campuses in America and across the world.
Bright grew up in Coweta, Oklahoma, in a world where there was little difference between Sunday school and public school because most of the teachers taught both. After moving to Los Angeles in 1944, he joined Hollywood Presbyterian, the nation's largest Presbyterian Church, which was full of the rich and famous. There he came under the influence of a remarkable teacher, Henrietta Mears. With the loss of many young men during the war, Mears understood the need to inspire a new generation of Christian leaders. She did so by linking the call to Christian conversion with the defense of American values against communist influence. Mears thought that Christians should be as courageous as soldiers in their willingness to speak to anyone, anytime, about Christ. Throughout his life Bright continued to be motivated by what I have called "American providence," the idea that America's destiny is tied to the spread of the Gospel. [1]
Bright left first Princeton and then Fuller Seminary, because he resolved "not to be sitting here studying Greek when Christ comes!" He never let the classroom get in the way of the Gospel again. He founded CCC in 1951, the same year William F. Buckley published his scathing indictment of higher education, God and Man at Yale. Bright was as organized as Buckley was articulate. Campus Crusade took off because Bright knew how to re-create the feel of small town values within the impersonal structures of American universities, which were already becoming bureaucratic behemoths. Crusade is frequently criticized for not doing more to change the intellectual climate of higher education, but Bright viewed universities as centers of socialization, not intellectual debate, and he was probably wise to do so. As universities marginalized the role of Christianity—which occurred during the peak of Protestant liberal hegemony over American culture—students could only turn to the margins for their spiritual education.
The abandonment of the Christian roots of higher education by liberal Protestants is one of the most disgraceful and puzzling events in the history of Christianity. The idea that the faithful should never betray their faith, no matter the cost, is foundational in the Christian tradition, but in the middle of the 20th century liberal Protestants went out of their way to hand over the Christian traditions of their schools to hostile ideologies. This spectacular failure of nerve was so rapid that it almost seems as if liberal Protestants were afraid that if they did not give away their universities fast enough then evangelicals might take control.
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