Mordecai Ham

Mordecai Ham

Mordecai Fowler Ham, Jr. (April 2, 1877–November 1, 1961), was an American Independent Baptist evangelist and temperance movement leader. He entered the ministry in 1901 and in 1936 began a radio broadcast reaching into seven southern states. Early in his ministry, he was ordained at Burton Memorial Baptist Church in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

The son of Tobias Ham and the former Ollie McElroy, Ham was born on a farm in Allen County near Scottsville in southern Kentucky, north of the Tennessee state line. Descended from eight generations of Baptist preachers, his namesake grandfather was Mordecai F. Ham, Sr. He once stated that "From the time I was eight years old, I never thought of myself as anything but a Christian. At nine, I had definite convictions that the Lord wanted me to preach...." Ham studied at Ogden College in Bowling Green and relocated to Chicago, Illinois, where he engaged in business from 1896-1900. There, he married the former Bessie Simmons in July 1900. In December 1900, he closed the business to devote full-time to the ministry.

One target of Ham's sermons was alcohol abuse, particularly before the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. He believed that problems involving liquor could best be resolved by conversion to Christianity and the placement of new believers in churches which stress abstinence of alcoholic beverages. In 1928, though many in his congregation were Democrat, Ham supported Republican Herbert Hoover for the American presidency: "If you vote for Al Smith, you're voting against Christ, and you will all be damned". Smith was the Roman Catholic and Democratic governor of New York who lost the election to Hoover.

In November 1934, Billy Graham was converted under Mordecai Ham's preaching in a revival in Charlotte, North Carolina. Through Ham's influence with W.B. Riley in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Graham was launched onto a national and international platform of influence and prestige among evangelical ranks. Ham had held his greatest number of meetings in Texas. Graham joined a Texas church, First Baptist of Dallas, then the largest Southern Baptist congregation in the nation and pastored by W.A. Criswell.