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Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America
by John G. Turner
University of North Carolina Press
304 pp., $19.95 (paperback)

"God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life." Probably no slogan outside the Bible is so familiar to evangelicals as Bill Bright's first spiritual law. More than a few non-Christians have heard this line as well, thanks to tireless evangelism by Bright and staff for Campus Crusade for Christ, which he founded in 1951. Since then, Crusade has become the largest non-philanthropic evangelical parachurch organization, collecting about $500 million in annual revenues. Nearly 30,000 staff around the world share Bright's Four Spiritual Laws tract. These staff members raise their own financial support, a practice pioneered by Crusade that has become standard among missionaries.

In short, Crusade has grown into an evangelical powerhouse, the point of first contact for many college students who moved away from the churches that reared them. Crusade was overdue for the new critical, scholarly evaluation written by John G. Turner, assistant professor of history at the University of South Alabama. His book, Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America, has already rankled some of the late Bright's family and colleagues. Indeed, Turner admits in the introduction that some Crusade insiders who reviewed the manuscript "in some cases vehemently disagreed" with his conclusions. But Turner's book succeeds precisely because he recorded the first-hand observations of so many Crusade insiders.

Turner composes a compelling narrative of Crusade's development, and it's the story of postwar American evangelicalism. Bright started Crusade at UCLA during the revivals that followed World War II. He sided with Billy Graham over Bob Jones during the split between evangelicals and fundamentalists in the 1950s. Crusaders counter-protested radical youth on college campuses in the 1960s even as they simultaneously embraced Jesus hippies and their music. Bright developed ties with conservative politicians in the 1970s and 1980s, and organized support for traditional family structures in the 1990s.

Turner's analysis follows the experience and perspective he admits in the introduction. He was involved with Young Life and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship while growing up. He admires Bright's personal piety but rejects other characteristics of Crusade and the evangelical movement.

"While I respect Campus Crusade for boldly and aggressively pursuing its objectives," Turner writes, "I also highlight the ministry's period anti-intellectualism, its infatuation with large crowds and statistics, and the messy ways Bright connected his mission to partisan politics."

Bright emerges as a compelling figure in Turner's book. For many years, Bright and his wife, Vonette, lived with Henrietta Mears, the famed Sunday school teacher at Hollywood Presbyterian Church. This pocket of Southern California became a waypoint for numerous evangelical superstars, including Billy Graham. Evangelicalism was a small world in those early days after World War II. Turner shows how these leaders were united by conservative theology, fear of Communism, and resolve to defeat the Red Menace with evangelism and American military might.

Before long, cracks began to show in the conservative Protestant alliance. Much has been written about Graham's break with Jones after the 1957 New York City crusade, but Bright's split with fundamentalism was similarly painful. Bright joined Graham on the platform for his 1958 crusade in San Francisco. Vonette declined the invitation, still unsure about whether to support Graham. Afterward, Bob Jones Sr. wrote all alumni from his school who worked for Crusade and told them to choose between Bright and their alma mater. The crisis was enough to threaten the viability of Crusade, which drew heavily from Bob Jones University. Turner observes that Jones and Bright both cared about evangelism and doctrinal purity. But Jones cared more about purity, and Bright cared more about evangelism.

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August (Web-Only) 2008, Vol. 52

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