[I had no idea this was the start of the Fairness Doctrine.]
Obituary
Billy James Hargis
Rightwing preacher laid low by sexual scandal
Michael Carlson
Friday December 10, 2004
The Guardian
Although Billy James Hargis, who has died aged 79, never achieved the respectability of Billy Graham, his mix of fundamentalist Christianity and virulent anti-communism, disseminated at his peak in the early 1960s across a network of some 250 US television and 500 radio stations, gave him an influence reminiscent of the 1930s right-wing radio preacher Father Coughlin. When someone finally stood up to his red-baiting broadcasts, the result was a landmark court decision on broadcasting fairness.
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His use of his churches to organise rightwing candidates might have served as a template for the strategy of George W Bush's svengali, Karl Rove. Hargis's ministry brought him a vast fortune, and, in a tradition going back at least to the inter-war period and Sister Aimee McPherson, he was brought down by sexual scandal.
Standing 6ft 6ins and weighing nearly 20 stone, Hargis resembled the stereotypical southern sheriff more than a preacher, and his brand of fire and brimstone preaching came from a tradition known in the Ozarks as "bawl and jump". Born in Texarkana, Arkansas, the orphaned Hargis had promised to devote himself to Christ if his adopted mother recovered from illness. Although he never finished Bible college, he was ordained by the "Disciples Of Christ" while still a teenager, but after a few years abandoned his pastorate after finding success preaching on radio.
In 1950, with the red-baiting McCarthy era in its ascendancy, he launched the Christian Crusade Against Communism. In 1953, he travelled to West Germany to launch 100,000 balloons, with Bible verses attached, over the iron curtain.
Hargis's "communist" targets soon expanded, to government, the media, and even churches less committed than his to his fight. In 1957, the Disciples Of Christ withdrew his ordination, but by then his televised ministry was bringing in more than $1m a year, and he had established links with another evangelist, Carl McIntire, and General Edwin Walker, the rightwing general and John Birch Society leader. But the seeds of Hargis's downfall were planted firmly in his success.
First, the Internal Revenue Service decided Hargis's work was political and removed his tax exemption.
Then, in a 1964 radio broadcast, Hargis accused journalist Fred Cook of smearing the Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, saying Cook had been fired from jobs for journalistic misconduct. When Red Lion, a Pennsylvania radio station refused Cook a right of reply, he sued, and, in its "Red Lion" decision, the US Supreme Court established the "fairness doctrine". Under the first President Bush, the requirement of balance was removed; the current administration has reduced the protections even further.
As his media power waned, Hargis founded the American Christian College in 1971. Having denounced the Beatles as "godless", he sold his school with cleancut images of its choir, the "All-American Kids", which became a touring show. In 1976, however, Time magazine reported that a student couple, married by Hargis in the college chapel, discovered on their wedding night that both had lost their virginity to Hargis. A number of male choir members accused him of coercing them into sex, justifying his seductions by quoting the example of David lying with Jonathan. Hargis denied the charges, saying communists and Satan were conspiring against him. But Hargis was forced to resign from his college.
He spent the next two decades back on the revival circuit, and founded a missionary foundation that set up orphanages, hospitals, and leprosy clinics in the third world. In his autobiography, My Great Mistake (1985) he wrote: "I was guilty of sin, but not the sin I was accused of." Despite a series of heart attacks, he continued to run Christian Crusade ministries until last year, when his son, Billy James Hargis II, assumed control.
He survives him, as do Hargis's wife Betty Jane, and three daughters.
· Billy James Hargis, evangelist, born August 3 1925; died November 27 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,1370700,00.html
