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Bill Bright & Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America

Online ISBN:
9781469604756
Print ISBN:
9780807831854
Publisher:
University of North Carolina Press
Book

Bill Bright & Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America

Published:
31 March 2008
Online ISBN:
9781469604756
Print ISBN:
9780807831854
Publisher:
University of North Carolina Press

Abstract

Founded as a local college ministry in 1951, Campus Crusade for Christ has become one of the world's largest evangelical organizations, today boasting an annual budget of more than $500 million. Nondenominational organizations such as Campus Crusade account for much of modern evangelicalism's dynamism and adaptation to mainstream American culture. Despite the importance of these “parachurch” organizations, states this book, historians have largely ignored them. The book offers a history of Campus Crusade and its founder, Bill Bright, whose marketing and fund-raising acumen transformed the organization into an international evangelical empire. Drawing on archival materials and more than one hundred interviews, it challenges the dominant narrative of the secularization of higher education, demonstrating how Campus Crusade helped reestablish evangelical Christianity as a visible subculture on American campuses. Beyond the campus, Bright expanded evangelicalism's influence in the worlds of business and politics. As the book demonstrates, the story of Campus Crusade reflects the halting movement of evangelicalism into mainstream American society: its awkward marriage with conservative politics, its hesitancy over gender roles and sexuality, and its growing affluence.

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