LA HAYE, TIM 1926- AND LA HAYE, BEVERLY 1926-

RELIGIOUS RIGHT-WING ACTIVIST TEAM

Christian Heritage College

Tim and Beverly La Haye married in 1950 while students at the Bob Jones College, the Fundamentalist school in Greenville, South Carolina. Unable to continue at the college because of their marriage, they then began a Baptist mission, moving in time to California, where they created a television program, The La Hayes on Family Life, that ran for three years. In 1965 Tim La Haye opened the Christian High School of San Diego, which expanded to the Christian Heritage College in 1970. He remained president of the school until 1976.

Sexual Manual for Christians

In 1972 the La Hayes expanded their television program into their Family Life Seminars, a ministry designed to revitalize Christian marriages. In 1976 the Christian publishing company Zondervan published their Act of Marriage, a sexual manual for Christians. Some observers believed this explicit book was an important signal of the lessening of conservative Christians' concern over sexual pleasure.

Creation Science

Tim La Haye was also a founder of the Institution for Creation Research, which insisted that biblical accounts of creation could be studied scientifically. He sought to include what he called creation science in the public-school curriculum, to be taught along with evolution. La Haye insisted his opponents not only were secularists but also practiced a new religion that he called secular humanism, adding a catchphrase to the decade.

Concerned Women for America

In 1979 Beverly La Haye organized Concerned Women for America, a major group of the New Religious Right, opposing ERA, Abortion, and gay rights and supportive of prayer in schools. Tim La Haye was one of the organizers of the Moral Majority, the political-action wing of the Christian Right. The La Hayes demonstrated the shift of conservative Protestants from religion and cultural issues to explicit political issues that would become a critical part of life in the coming decades.