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. 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. After a few years, he left his pastorate for a ministry of radio preaching.
In 1943, Hargis entered 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 city west of 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.
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 in the early 1960s Hargis developed a close relationship with the resigned 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. 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.
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.
Read more about this topic: Billy James Hargis
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