Republicans and Evangelicals: Bill Bright, Campus Crusade, and Cru

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This episode is part of a long series exploring how some evangelicals tied themselves to the Republican Party in the 1970s and 80s. The whole season has been building up to these episodes, so there may be some terms here that make more sense if you've been tracking along with me. When you're done, go back and start at the beginning of season 6 with the one titled,

What is Biblical? This is Bill Bright, Campus Crusade for Christ and crew. I recently had the chance to video chat with an old friend. Well, Dave, thanks for joining me. Yeah, glad to be here.

It's good to see you. This is Dave Hopping. I am an associate pastor. My official title is Associate Pastor of Emerging Generations, which I can say now without

laughing. Meaning he oversees the junior high, senior high, and young adult ministries at his church. We met about 25 years ago when we were both a part of a campus crusade ministry in Ithaca, New York.

How did you get involved with Campus Crusade, now called Crew? Oh yeah. I grew up in a church. I was in the same church my whole life, right?

It was generational. His grandparents and his parents pastored there. When I was in high school, especially my senior year, I started to kind of move away from my faith.

You know, everything became about me and what I wanted to do. I would tell you I was a Christian. I went to church every Sunday because my grandparents made me go. Then he went away to college at Syracuse University.

And my freshman year I was really turning away from the Lord. And then he slapped me around the day before my sophomore year and got ahold of me. I recognized that my faith was bigger than just going to church or my family was Christians, but I needed to follow the Lord and seek Him in order to grow and be who He wanted me to

be. So anyway, I did that. And when I got back to college, I didn't know what to do, but there was this group, Campus Crusade for Christ, now known as Crew.

My freshman year, my roommate had dragged me to one of their meetings and I was like, Oh these people are all weird and I never went back. But I had filled out like one... I didn't.

But I had filled out one of these little forms, right? Like a little quarter sheet. And this guy showed up to my room once a month to like play video games with me. He was a crew like staff member.

And he would ask me questions about Faith and I had a lot of the right answers because I grew up. But I always felt so guilty whenever he came because it was like I knew that There were aspects of my life that just I didn't want to tell him about and all that.

So when I went back to college my sophomore year and the Lord had turned everything around, I was like, you know what? I'm going to go find this guy and, uh, you know, same old story. He had moved to Uzbekistan and, uh, he wasn't there, that guy.

But the guy who was there kind of took me under. Wait, moving to Uzbekistan is the same old story. You know how it is. One thing leads to another.

You and your family end up in Uzbekistan. Even though that guy was no longer in the country, Dave joined Crusade and started to grow in his faith. So I just had this great experience of Christian community in college.

Campus Crusade is an evangelism ministry that focuses on people in higher education. Meetings may be a worship night, but primarily emphasizing evangelism, equipping students to do evangelism on their own. organizing trips to spring break destinations where young people practice sharing their

faith with others. Campus Crusade had a big impact in Dave's life and in mine. It brought us community, it taught us to own our faith, and it encouraged us to get out of our Christian bubble.

We're in the middle of a series within a series, exploring some of the people critical and tying evangelicals to the Republican Party. People you may know, like Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, and Pat Robertson. A player you may not recognize is Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade.

In the midst of all we're going to cover today, I don't want you to lose track of an important reality. Some of these guys did real ministry that positively impacted actual people. Campus Crusade for Christ enriched the lives of untold numbers of people around the world,

even as their leader was busy encouraging Christians to get involved in politics, was himself courting big donors with questionable backgrounds. This is the story of both of those things, a man who impacted people like me and my friend Dave

and one of the people responsible for tying evangelicals to the GOP. His mission to share the gospel with every person in the world and his desire to push the nation

further to the right. You're listening to the show that uses journalistic tools to look inside the Christian church.

We press pause on the culture wars in order to explore how we got here and how we can do better. I'm Chris Starrin, and this is Truths. To tell this story, I'm going to need some help.

I'm John Turner. I teach at George Mason University and the departments of Religious Studies and History. He wrote the book, Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ. He's also the author of a biography on Brigham Young and A History of the Plymouth Colony.

And honestly, the type of guy you want to hang out with at a barbecue. Anyhow, Bright was born in 1921. Bright grew up in a really small town in Oklahoma named Kauwata. He grew up in a Methodist church in a culture that very much was still publicly Christian.

Including prayer and Bible readings in public schools. that were, again, not universal in American institutions.