Selling Jesus to Modern America: Campus Crusade for Christ, Evangelical Culture, and Conservative Politics

This study uses the history of Campus Crusade for Christ to explore the trajectory of post-1945 American evangelicalism. Campus Crusade, founded by Bill Bright (1921-2003) and Vonette Bright (1925-) at the University of California Los Angeles in 1951, grew by century's end into a global evangelical empire with ministries far beyond the university campus. Much like the older transdenominational fundamentalism networks, a loose coalition of missionary agencies, seminaries and colleges, and megachurches provides the structural framework of the modern evangelical movement. Campus Crusade exemplifies the contribution of these parachurch organizations to evangelical vitality, the ability of evangelicals to adapt quickly to changes in popular culture, and the theological pragmatism and fundraising prowess central to modern evangelicalism. As evangelicals grew better educated and more affluent, evangelicalism moved closer to mainstream American culture. Evangelical organizations, including Campus Crusade, carved out a niche for evangelicalism at otherwise secularizing universities and colleges. Although evangelical ideas rarely penetrated the university classroom, evangelicals effectively marketed their message in Greek houses, locker rooms, and dormitories. Also, evangelicals occupied an increasingly prominent place on the American political landscape. The world of postwar anticommunism drew many evangelicals, particularly in the Southwest and California, into conservative political circles. Moreover, as parachurch organizations, suburban megachurches, and televangelist empires grew into large enterprises, conservative politicians like Richard Nixon and John Conlan cultivated relationships with Bill Bright and other rising evangelical leaders. On issues of gender, by contrast, evangelicals created distance between themselves and mainstream culture. In the 1950s and 1960s, Campus Crusade's emphasis on male leadership and female domesticity reflected broader cultural trends. By the 1970s, mainstream culture began moving towards an egalitarian conception of gender, but conservative evangelicals retained and even sharpened their traditional teachings. Such rhetoric legitimated continued gender inequality within evangelical organizations, but by the end of the century evangelicals partially accommodated themselves to mainstream gender norms. Through their willingness to retain only a small number of theological essentials and continually adapt themselves to cultural change, evangelicals kept their gospel an attractive product in the marketplace of modern American religion.