Values, Truth, and Spiritual Danger: Progressive Christianity and the Age of Trump

By Edward G. Simmons

In a series of ruminations, Edward G. Simmons brings a lifetime's experiences, along with biblical and historical insights, to the ethical problems faced by Christians living under the impact of President Trump. Teaching values and respect for truth to college students and Christians of all varieties, he sometimes lectures on the Bible and sometimes writes sermons full of conviction. His combination of history, science, and biblical information is stimulating, encouraging, and often provocative for young and mature readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Sep 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781666708882

Edward G. Simmons

Edward G. Simmons is part-time Instructor of History at Georgia Gwinnett College near Atlanta. He earned an MA and PhD in history from Vanderbilt University. After teaching briefly at Appalachian State University, he was drafted during the Vietnam War. From 1973 to 2005 he worked with top management at Georgia’s largest state agency as a trainer and consultant for upper managers, and he sometimes worked across agency lines. In retirement, he returned to his original career, applying professional experience along with academic knowledge of history, biblical studies, and popular science. He is the author of Talking Back to the Bible: A Historians Approach to Bible Study (2016) and two chapters in The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity (2020) edited by Ronald J. Sider.

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Introduction: Values, Beliefs, and Cognitive Dissonance

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith, by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

But someone will say, You have faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. —James

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Beliefs or behavior, which is more important as a measure of the genuineness of someone’s religion? This question lies behind the point made in the above passage from the book of James. The answer in James was similar to the Calvinistic principle that led to the Protestant work ethic—genuine faith must be shown in behavior.

That’s not the way the passage was interpreted in the Baptist evangelical tradition in which I was raised. Martin Luther didn’t interpret the passage correctly either, for he wanted to throw James out of the New Testament based on Paul’s contrast of faith and works.

Misinterpretation and misuse of the Bible continue to spawn theological, political, and social division where unity should prevail. James shifts priority from beliefs as a value in themselves to an emphasis on charitable actions as evidence of beliefs that matter. Anyone familiar with the parables of Jesus might suspect that James was familiar with the story of the Samaritan or of separating sheep from goats, for they convey a similar message.

This is not an old debate without meaning today. The United States in 2021 is nearly as divided as it was on the eve of the Civil War. Conflict over beliefs was inflamed by a president whose actions and words were out of step with the beliefs he claimed to defend. Yet President Trump’s most loyal supporters were self-described conservative evangelical Christians who exemplified cognitive dissonance as extreme as the immorality of their champion. What is cognitive dissonance? It’s a psychological condition defined as the mental discomfort that occurs when a person holds contradictory beliefs or when there is a mismatch between attitudes and behaviors.¹

Progressive Christianity is a major effort to reform dysfunctional Christian beliefs and move toward unity in diversity by siding with the passage in James. The traditional way toward unity has been to impose authority, for example by defining an orthodoxy that requires agreement and obedience. Another traditional strategy was to break religious congregations apart as members rejected fellowship with those whose beliefs had gone astray. It’s time to reverse the dynamics of intolerance and reciprocal excommunication, for those are works that use faith to disrupt brothers and sisters who should behave as family.

This book emphasizes values over beliefs as the measure of true Christianity. Values bring behavior and beliefs into harmony, which James summarized as: I by my works will show you my faith. A central argument is that Progressive Christianity is a form of Protestantism that can unite Christianity by following the teachings and example of Jesus. Roman Catholicism and Protestantism have a legacy of trying to unite Christianity with authoritarian methods. Common rituals and sacraments within Christianity have not been strong enough to overcome the disruptive force of varying beliefs. Progressive Christianity is an attempt to reverse divisive forces by using values and behaviors to unite.

Furthermore, inclusiveness and compassion are central strategies for unity. Tolerance is too passive and judgmental for the kind of unity emphasized by Progressive Christianity. Those who are on top in society typically extend tolerance as long as those on the bottom have political, economic, or military strength that must be respected. In such cases, weakness of those on top or the bottom can quickly reverse tolerance as one side or the other becomes dominant. Inclusiveness and compassion are based on the right to equal consideration, rather than acquiescence to power.

Following values supporting equality takes Progressive Christianity in an anti-authoritarian direction rarely seen in the history of Protestantism or Catholicism. The first half of the twentieth century was dominated by two world wars that demonstrated the horrors of combining nationalism with the might of industrial capitalism. Democratic regimes increased after both wars to combat the growing threat of totalitarian governments as a more deadly form of authoritarian rule. Demands for human equality also increased, to the extent that the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

American domestic politics since the 1950s have struggled with human equality, contributing to an increasing conservative-liberal divide that infected denominations and churches as well as politics. President Jimmy Carter, a Baptist evangelical who made human rights the centerpiece of American foreign policy, was opposed by the emerging Religious Right as too liberal. The evangelicals who supported Trump’s rejection of human rights considered Progressive Christianity a liberal movement. Nevertheless, the unifying aspect of human rights offers our country its best opportunity to move beyond the paralyzing separation of our society into liberal or conservative camps.

Historical Background

Before exploring the many dimensions of Progressive Christianity, one should understand how this movement derives from the biblical and Christian traditions and why it is opposed by the conservative evangelical Trumpians. This will be accomplished through four historical-theological vignettes representing features of the biblical and Christian traditions. The first one is about Moses and the Ten Commandments which led to the Torah. It includes Paul’s reaction to the Torah that inspired Martin Luther and the Reformation. The next one is about the Sermon on the Mount, which is often incorrectly seen as Jesus’s revision of Moses. A third one is about the Nicaean Creed and the Reformation, a combination representing a tradition of using state authority to establish and enforce orthodoxy. Last is an examination of religious opposition to science as seen in the message of Billy Graham, whose crusades and prominence helped launch the Religious Right that anchored Donald Trump’s base of support.

Vignette 1. Commandments, Torah, and Paul

The Apostle Paul attacked the law and its works in letters to the Galatian and Roman communities. Paul was a Hellenized Jew whose writings were in Greek to Hellenized churches. Law meant the Torah. Paul’s main concerns were the requirements of male circumcision and kosher diet for membership in Judaism. As an evangelist proclaiming the risen Christ to Gentiles, he opposed requiring them to become Jews to follow Christ. In 1 Corinthians and Romans, Paul used exaggerated symbolism to make his point. He shifted importance from Moses, the reputed author of the books of Torah, to the sin of Adam which made the Torah necessary. Then he replaced the Old Adam with Christ, the New Adam, who superseded the Torah and Moses.

The Old Testament attributes the Pentateuch or Torah to Moses, who received ten commands—the basis for the reputed 613 holy commandments in the Torah—from God in a dramatic event on Mount Sinai. Israelite flight from Egypt led to a scene at the base of Mount Sinai in which Moses proclaimed the commandments given to him by God in a conference on the mountain. This was the terse beginning of the Torah. The law was given first in Exodus, then elaborated in Leviticus and Numbers, and repeated with an emphasis on writing it down in a second giving in Deuteronomy. Thus, three additional books in the Pentateuch, and many more rabbinical collections, were needed to flesh out the skeleton given to Moses on Sinai. Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy amplified the commandments by adding requirements for temple rituals, special festivals, dietary restrictions, and even rules for personal hygiene and sexual intercourse.

The Ten Commandments require obedience that is shown primarily through behaviors that are avoided—Thou shalt not was the usual beginning of many rules. The first command is for dedication and loyalty to one particular God. It’s not a matter of belief but of choosing one God among others. Faith in God is implied as a by-product of the loyalty and compliance of the followers. The original ten commands do not spell out consequences for violation, for that comes in the amplification after the event on Sinai. Throughout the Torah, details of what is believed about the nature of God make little difference. Belief or disbelief is shown through loyalty and obedience—through behaviors that can be seen.

The Judaism known to Jesus and Paul evolved into a complex religion during the Second Temple. The compilation and editing of books in the Hebrew Scriptures began before the Babylonian conquest that destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BCE and carried most of its cultural elite to Babylon. Further development occurred during fifty years of exile so that those who returned and completed a second temple in 516 BCE were using early versions of the Torah. In Jesus’s time, Scriptures were referred to as the Law and Prophets because the Bible and Jewish complexity were still evolving.

With the development of Scripture in the Second Temple period came the formulation of Judaism as an organized religion no longer tied exclusively to one locality or ethnic group. Non-Jews could convert by having males circumcised, following kosher dietary rules, and observing the rules for the sabbath, daily life, and temple worship. Recognizing the priority of Jerusalem and its temple was a requirement that excluded Samaritans, who were ethnic Israelites with a Torah and rituals associated with Mount Gerizim near Shechem.

When Jesus and Paul referred to Moses or the Torah, they were talking about Jewish practices that had been codified under the Second Temple. The temple in Jerusalem was also the central religious institution for Jewish communities in Babylon, Alexandria in Egypt, Antioch in Syria, and nearly every major city in the Roman empire. Paul was a Hellenistic Jew from Tarsus whose mission work originated from Antioch and its Hellenistic Jewish community.

It is often forgotten that Paul, like Jesus, was a practicing Jew all his life. A resurrection encounter with Jesus transformed his understanding of Judaism so that Christ became the center of his message. Personal belief in the saving power of the risen Christ became the primary qualification for membership in the new community, which was the body of Christ. It was his fight against those who wanted to require full membership in Judaism that set up the contrast with faith and works. This opposition led to misunderstandings about rules for morality in the Galatian church. For Martin Luther, who opposed a different set of works in medieval Catholicism, Paul’s emphasis on faith was liberating, but he failed to appreciate that Paul was always a Jew and found more than works righteousness in the Torah.

Vignette 2. A New Moses

Most of the epistles in the New Testament were written by Paul or showed his influence decades after his death by claiming Pauline authorship. James is an exception. Tradition attributes authorship to James the brother of Jesus, who became the leader of the Jesus movement in Jerusalem along with Peter, the leaders with whom Paul argued as a representative of the movement centered in Antioch. Commentators have noted that James was probably not written by the brother of Jesus but may indicate his lasting influence, as other letters showed the influence of Paul. One commentary pointed to its practical OT morality, and its echoes of the teachings of Jesus.² It is the teachings found in Matthew and Luke, not those in John, that James pointed to.

The Gospels of Matthew and Luke included bodies of teaching drawn from the same oral tradition. Matthew was notable for presenting words of Jesus in five blocks that focused on specific themes, suggesting that Jesus was a new Moses whose teachings should be compared with the Torah. The Sermon on the Mount, covering three chapters, made a direct comparison as Jesus used the formula You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times . . . but I say to you (Matt 5:21).

Many of the sayings in the Sermon on the Mount seem more extreme than the Torah’s expectations—for example, turning anger into murder and lust into adultery (Matt 5:21–30), or forbidding retaliation by expecting nonresistance to provocations and loving those who harm you (Matt 5:38–48). But Matthew preceded these statements with the assertion that Jesus intended to fulfill or complete the Torah, not replace it (Matt 5:17–20).

A point that is often overlooked is that Jesus’s teachings in the Sermon on the Mount followed the example of the Torah in being practical and non-theological. For Paul, the guiding star was the significance of being in Christ so that his moral guidance had a theological foundation. Most of the teachings in Matthew’s sermon centered around actions as the way to show dedication to God. The sayings that conclude the sermon prove the point: they emphasized do to others, urged taking the difficult narrow gate, advised judging prophets by their fruits or consequences, and implored followers to be doers not just hearers (Matt 7:12–27).

What about the role of Jesus himself? This issue was raised in Matt 21:23, Mark 11:28, and Luke 20:2: By what authority do you do these things? Jesus spoke as if he had special qualifications or authorization to issue commands. In the Gospel of John, this special authority was explained by statements such as: I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6). This was one of several I statements in John suggesting the authority of God, Yahweh, whose name translates roughly as I am. In Mark, Jesus made no claims for himself but expected his exorcisms and healing to be seen as the power of God at work. His actions, then, proved God’s authorization as he proclaimed the rules of the coming kingdom of God and warned listeners to prepare for its arrival. Matthew and Luke followed the pattern set in Mark.

A notable part of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount is the section giving instructions for prayer. Jesus provided a model prayer which became part of most Christian liturgies. Something that is often overlooked is how the prayer demonstrated Jesus’s claim to an especially close relationship with God—demonstrating his authority to speak for God, as he did in healing and exorcism. The prayer represented more than teaching, for it was a gift that offered disciples a relationship with God similar to the one Jesus enjoyed. It was also an excellent summary of Jesus’s teaching about the kingdom of God. Repeating the model prayer, then, became a form of expressing commitment to the kingdom of God, making it a sort of creedal pledge directly to God based on a relationship made possible by the pre-resurrection Jesus.³

The theological foundation of the teachings in Matthew, Mark, and Luke was the importance of the kingdom of God—which can also be called the rule of God. This was the central theme of Jesus. It represented the arrival of the ethics of the Torah and prophets as upgraded by Jesus. In general, Jesus was a social and religious critic of his time, not a revolutionary. He called on religious and political leaders to live by standards in Scripture, which would naturally improve the lot of the common people who flocked to him. No one, rich or poor, common or privileged, was exempt from the practical and God-centered upgraded Torah ethics proclaimed by Jesus.

Vignette 3. Nicaean and Protestant Unity

The Council of Nicaea in 325 and the Reformation that followed the posting of Luther’s theses in 1517 were theological events that relied on political authority. Nicaea may be regarded as the beginning of the Medieval Church as Christian orthodoxy was established under the authority of the Roman emperor and church structure became part of Roman governmental structure. The main thrust of Nicaea was to impose order on the increasing diversity in emerging Christianity by setting an established mainstream and outlawing variations. The Protestant Reformation, on the other hand, began as religious reform but survived as princes and monarchs turned it into a tool for political independence, a trend that led to the emergence of competing nation-states as the result of a century of religious wars. Politics and theology cooperated to unleash a dynamic of ongoing subdivision that continues in our time.

The growing influence of Rome over the message from Galilee and Jerusalem can be seen in the New Testament. Jesus avoided the many Hellenistic cities in Galilee and Judaea, limiting himself to the countryside where few elements of Hellenism were found. He sent disciples on missions imitating his wandering style but limited them to Jewish populations. After the crucifixion, the leadership of the movement appears to have moved to Jerusalem, where James, the brother of Jesus, and the disciple Peter were acknowledged as leaders. The central role of the temple made it natural for Jewish movements to look to Jerusalem for leadership. According to the book of Acts, the leaders in Jerusalem were known for meeting in one part of the temple. But the movement also spread to Hellenistic Jewish communities, especially those in Syria. Antioch appeared to rival Jerusalem by sending missions to cities around the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. The most notable representative of Antioch was Paul, whose letters are primary historical sources for the development of Christianity in the 40s and 50s CE.

The kingdom of God, as preached by Jesus, assumed the usual imperial concept of leadership, so it provided no support for participative approaches to governing. But it represented the actualization of ethical standards in the Torah combined with the sympathy for the poor and needy highlighted in some prophets. Paul’s Christ-centered message criticized the immorality he saw in Roman society but would not endorse opposition to Roman authority or even the elimination of slavery. Yet Paul endorsed a form of human equality in Christ that was radical compared to Roman practices and his letters indicated prominent roles for women in churches he established. The beginning of accommodation to Roman standards can be seen in limitations on women in the letters falsely attributed to Paul. These reflected conditions around the Mediterranean a few decades after Paul as elements of Jesus’s teachings were moderated to suit Roman communities.

Centralized leadership of early Christianity disappeared with the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70. The leadership that began emerging tended to rely on bishops in centers of Roman power as the structure of the church began to mirror the structure of the empire. Official persecution came to an end with Constantine’s Declaration of Milan in 313. In the following years, Constantine became involved in disputes among bishops and issued decrees honoring sabbath observance and putting Christian symbols on coins. Then he called a council of bishops in Nicaea to resolve a controversy over the Trinity. The bishops, most of them from the Eastern half of the empire, came up with a creed expressing the solution and Constantine exercised his role as imperial religious head by enforcing orthodoxy against dissenters who were branded as heretics. Thus, the church became subservient to the emperor.

The Nicaean Creed established a pattern to be followed by other creeds. Unlike the Torah or Sermon on the Mount, it said nothing about ethics. Statements were made about God, then Jesus, then the Holy Spirit that had to be accepted as true. Theological statements about each member of the Trinity, interpretations of events that happened in the past, and expectations of events to happen in the future were wholeheartedly endorsed as factual. Theological statements were formulated with a precision that allowed no variation. This was an approach lending itself to enforcement as the power of the state and church were brought to bear against those who disagreed.

The specific target of the Nicaean Creed were Arians, who disputed the equality of Jesus with God. Imperial Roman authority forced Arianism underground but did not eliminate it, for it reappeared among Germanic groups that brought an end to the empire in the West. It also took on other forms in the Reformation. Among other heresies suppressed by the empire were the Ebionites, who appeared to be the continuation of the Jerusalem movement under James but whose inadequate Christology brought condemnation.

The collapse of Roman authority in the West freed the bishops from imperial domination, marking a distinction between Eastern and Western versions of Christianity that would lead to a schism in 1054. Eastern Orthodox Christianity and its offshoots among Slavic populations continued as a component of imperial government until the end of the Byzantine empire in 1452.

The imperial structure continued in Western Europe as the Bishop of Rome came to be recognized as the top rung of an ecclesiastical ladder. Bishops and their subordinates found it necessary to take responsibility for the functions of government. Medieval politics is the story of the gradual reemergence of monarchies and their efforts to reclaim authority from the church. The pope and other bishops sometimes supported and often opposed the reassertion of imperial authority within emerging states.

Martin Luther wrote out ninety-five propositions for debate and hung them on the door of a church in Wittenberg in 1517. His purpose was to call attention to abuses, especially those connected with the fundraising tactic of selling indulgences. The theological explanations in the 95 Theses were not revolutionary, but the church responded to them as an attack on its authority and the sacredness of traditions approved by the church. Theological debate turned into a political and social movement as German princes protected Luther and used his protests in a power struggle with the church. Luther’s theology began to attack the authority of the church, upholding the priority of Scripture over church tradition. Belief was emphasized in a new way, using the authority of the Bible and Paul’s use of faith as theological mainstays.

The Reformation continued the reliance of Christian officials on imperial power that had begun under the Roman empire. Princes who supported Luther imposed his reforms in their domains, expecting everyone under their authority to follow the same religious beliefs and practices. The Reformation brought one hundred and fifty years of religious warfare in Europe, resulting in the emergence of nation-states and the general principle that the rulers of states decided the religion in the state.

The Council of Nicaea confirmed the merger of Christianity with imperial authority as official christological beliefs were imposed and enforced. Heresies in belief and practice continued to appear, but there was a semblance of church unity until the Reformation. The princes who supported Luther and other reformers turned imperial authority over religion into state authority that brought a diversity of beliefs and practices to Western Europe. But the Reformation opened a veritable Pandora’s box as variations within Christianity continued to appear as increasingly extreme reforms. Among the notable dissenters were Puritans, whose rigid expectations of belief and behavior were enforced more strictly in their community than in the states where they lived; and the Quakers, who practiced equality of members to the extent of being so completely anti-ecclesiastical and antiauthoritarian that many communities saw them as a threat to order.

Vignette 4. Bible or Science

Advances in science were remarkable during the century and a half of religious warfare that began with the Reformation. Historical awareness and techniques for studying relics of the past improved at the same time. Catholic and Protestant religious figures contributed to scientific and historical achievements. Protestant reliance on the Bible also sparked the application of both scientific and historical study to Scripture, leading to biblical criticism that was pioneered by Protestant ministers.

A revolution in Paris at the end of the eighteenth century brought a systematic attack on the church and Christianity, realizing the atheistic and anticlerical views expressed in the French Enlightenment. A long-term product of the French Revolution was a political and cultural battle between conservative monarchies and the revolutionary movements that at first were liberal then became socialist as liberal republics came to power in the nineteenth century. In Europe, liberal and socialist movements often attacked Christianity, in part because state churches were aligned with authoritarian conservative rulers.

The constitution of the United States was enacted just as the French Revolution began. It enshrined liberal ideas of the Enlightenment in the American republic without the atheistic or anticlerical aspects, partly because the connection between religious and political authority was broken by constitutional separation of church and state. Nevertheless, American evangelical religious groups became conservative opponents of biblical criticism and Darwinian science after the middle of the nineteenth century, fearing they led to atheism. A central issue was the authority of the Bible as it was interpreted very literally. Belief was considered more important than ethics to the extent that the Social Gospel assistance to the poor in cities was opposed as too liberal. According to evangelical Christians, the very idea of affirming evolutionary change—the foundation of history and Darwinian science—endangered the eternal truth in the Bible with the poisonous idea that everything is always changing, thereby replacing biblical morality with relativism.

The scandal of the Scopes Trial in 1925 seemed to undermine biblical ultra-literalism, but it was not eliminated from evangelical churches in the South. Billy Graham’s success in the 1950s brought new respectability and national support for salvation based on faith that denied mounting evidence against traditional ideas of biblical inspiration. In alliance with the Eisenhower administration and leading business figures, Graham helped forge the idea of Christian America that is now defended by the Trump administration.

In his autobiography Just as I Am, Billy Graham is candid about a religious decision that preceded the beginning of his now-famous crusades in major cities. Before the Los Angeles crusade of 1949, the success of which launched subsequent campaigns, he made final preparations at Forest Home, a retreat center east of Los Angeles. Conversations with friends during that week brought on a crisis, no doubt partly fueled by anxiety over the prospects of the upcoming crusade. The central issue in his mind was the extent of biblical inspiration, which he phrased as: Could I trust the Bible? He was most troubled by a close friend who said: Billy, you’re fifty years out of date. People no longer accept the Bible as being inspired the way you do.⁴

Graham did not see the issue as one calling for flexibility—for him, it was all or nothing. "With the Los Angeles campaign galloping toward me, I had to have an answer. If I could not trust the Bible, I could not go on. I would have to leave the school presidency. I would have to leave pulpit evangelism."

The struggle came to a resolution during a moonlight walk in the adjacent San Bernardino Mountains. Falling to his knees at a tree stump and opening his Bible in the dark, Graham admitted to being overwhelmed by the variety and seriousness of questions about biblical reliability. Then came the denouement:

I was trying to be on the level with God, but something remained unspoken. At last the Holy Spirit freed me to say it. "Father, I am going to accept this as Thy Word—by faith! I’m going to allow faith to go beyond my intellectual questions and doubts, and I will believe this to be Your inspired Word."

Graham’s transparency in describing this struggle was admirable, but his interpretation of the outcome was self-serving. First, he posed the issue in a way that ruled out flexibility and stacked the deck in favor of blind acceptance. Why did the decision have to be an all or nothing outcome? Second, he attributed the decision to God’s intervention—to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. There is no way for anyone to prove or disprove whether that was true. His conviction of God’s leadership brought relief from internal tension before the decision and provided a way for him to call on others to accept his decision as carrying out God’s will.

Another way to understand Graham’s decision is to see how it resulted from cognitive dissonance, an extremely uncomfortable mental state reflecting a clash between beliefs and actions. Reconciling doubts or skepticism with the evangelical certainty he wanted to project brought on an internal crisis. To resolve the problem, Graham resorted to a form of blind faith by claiming inerrant biblical authority despite evidence to the contrary.

The real issue was not faith versus disbelief, but whether faith should disregard data and evidence calling its reliability into question. In short, blind faith opposed being fact-checked. Psychologists Carol Tavris and Eliot Aronson explained how efforts to resolve cognitive dissonance can lead to further problems when the solution walls someone off from external reality. First comes self-justification as people convince themselves that what they did was the best thing they could have done. This is followed by confirmation bias, a tendency to continue ignoring or misinterpreting any fact-based evidence against the belief.⁵

Billy Graham’s decision to use faith that claims guidance of the Holy Spirit as justification for denying scientific and historical evidence became a publicly respected model for Christian behavior. Faith became a way of setting one’s own rules and dismissing growing scientific and historical evidence against treasured beliefs.

The life of Billy Graham, on balance, demonstrated more capacity for openness to data than is suggested by his decision in the San Bernardino Mountains. He gained a well-deserved reputation for integrity that stood the test of fame as he mixed with celebrities and political leaders. He showed a capacity for growth with respect to civil rights, but he never budged from blind faith in biblical authority that ignored historical and scientific evidence.

A plethora of radio, television, and Internet evangelists followed the style