Billy James Hargis, 79, flamboyant evangelist, anticommunist
LOS ANGELES -- The Rev. Billy James Hargis, a colorful and controversial evangelist and anti-communist crusader who launched the ''Bible balloon barrage" to float Scriptures behind the Iron Curtain and who tangled with the IRS, the church that ordained him, and the college he founded, died Saturday in a Tulsa, Okla, nursing home. He was 79.
Mr. Hargis had suffered from Alzheimer's disease and a series of heart attacks, but the cause of his death was not specified.
Overflowing with words and big ideas, the 270-pound dynamo spewed forth over 500 radio and 250 television stations, in films, books, and gospel records, and from the pulpit and the rostrum in campaigns from the Holy Land to Los Angeles.
Haranguing ''for Christ and against communism," Mr. Hargis in his heyday in the 1960s and early '70s approached the fame and influence of such evangelists as Carl McIntire, Oral Roberts, and even Billy Graham.
But unlike others, Mr. Hargis seemed to concentrate more on communism than Jesus Christ, which put him at odds with both secular and religious leaders.
A poster boy for the old far right, Mr. Hargis unabashedly denounced President Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., the National Council of Churches, and network news anchors Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, and Walter Cronkite for encouraging, or at least ignoring, the threat of a communist takeover of the United States.
Mr. Hargis's Christian Crusade, which had a $2 billion budget in 1972 financed by the donations he solicited from a mailing list of 250,000 names, was described by a Wyoming senator as ''the best-heeled right-wing organization in the United States."
The IRS had earlier agreed, revoking the organization's income tax-exempt status in 1964, citing ''political activities"; the exempt status was reinstated later.
Born Aug. 3, 1925, in Texarkana, Texas, the future minister was adopted by Jimmie and Laura Hargis, who brought him up in ''Christ-conscious" Depression-era poverty. Recreation consisted of daily Bible reading and weekly gospel singings. Young Mr. Hargis, who first stepped into the pulpit at 17, had little formal college education. He was ordained May 30, 1943, by the Disciples of Christ.
He soon developed what Oklahomans call the ''bawl and jump" style of preaching, shouting oratory at the top of his lungs to the point of hoarseness, while flailing with his hands and arms.
In 1950, Mr. Hargis started his own Christian Crusade as an independent, interdenominational ministry. That year, he became one of the first evangelists to address his flock over television.
He first earned global fame in 1953 with what was tagged the Bible balloon barrage, which he launched from West Germany. Over the next four years, Mr. Hargis floated 1 million hydrogen balloons carrying Scriptures toward the Soviet Union, Poland, and East Germany, ''to succor the spiritually starved captives of communism."
The Disciples of Christ, who became as concerned as the IRS that Mr. Hargis was concentrating more on communism than Christ, ousted him in 1966. He promptly organized the Church of the Christian Crusade and the David Livingston Missionary Foundation, which carried out missionary work overseas.
Mr. Hargis, based in Tulsa, also started his own religious college -- despite the considerable presence of Oral Roberts University across town. A few years after the college opened in 1971, allegations surfaced that Mr. Hargis had engaged in sexual acts with at least one male and three female students. The preacher vehemently denied the charges. Nevertheless, college leaders forced him to resign as president. Without the financial support Mr. Hargis generated, the college closed in 1977.
