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HARGIS, BILLY JAMES 1925-

RIGHT-WING CHRISTIAN MINISTER

Right-Wing Christianity

Billy James Hargis attracted public attention in the 1960s with his Christian Anti-Communist Crusade ministry, located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This right-wing political and religious group focused on the threat of Communist subversion in the United States and Communist influence in Mainline Protestant denominations.

American Christian College

In 1970 Hargis organized the American Christian College in Tulsa to teach "anti-Communist, patriotic Americanism." The following year he organized Americans for Life, one of the growing number of antiAbortion groups hoping to block the liberalization of Abortion laws. Hargis's thriving ministry erupted in scandal in 1974 when several of the students at his college, male and female, accused him of sexual improprieties. In spite of Hargis's resignation from the college presidency, the American Christian College closed in 1977. Meanwhile Hargis himself returned to the revival circuit, opening the Billy James Hargis Evangelistic Association in 1975, but he had passed the peak of his influence.