I. The Historiography of Fundamentalism

The historiography of fundamentalism began in 1931 with Stewart Cole's The History of Fundamentalism. To Cole, the movement grew out of the social tensions of the 1920s, the teaching of evolution and the marginalization of Christian and rural ideals. Fundamentalism remained a discredited and anti-intellectual theology until World War II. During the conflict, the more militant adherents began to organize. In April 1942, McIntire considered joining the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). He attended the opening convention to demand that his more separatist views be accepted, but balked when the NAE accepted individual churches whose denominations were members of the Federal, National or World Council of Churches. A split occurred because of the NAE's inclusivism and apolitical stance, and due to McIntire's political activism. In the 1950s, McIntire and a small group of political preachers received more attention due to their anti-communism. Historians and sociologists began to look at McIntire's ascent into activism and placed his ministry within the Far Right, which included secular groups.Footnote ¹¹ Academics and fundamentalists, however, were both reluctant to define radical Christians as militant. In 1958, McIntire and Bob Jones University of Greenville, South Carolina proclaimed themselves to be “ultra-fundamentalists.” The Jones family was typical and wanted to differentiate themselves from the more moderate theology and apolitics of the NAE, a group from which they had recently resigned. Bob Jones, Jr. spoke for ultras and argued that there was no such thing as a militant fundamentalist; to Jones, a true fundamentalist was militant by definition and a fighter and who emulated Moses, Joshua or Saint Paul. Many historians of the Far Right, such as Erling Jorstad, adopted ultra as a description for all separatists. Five years later, Louis Gasper's The Fundamentalist Movement disputed the assertion. During the 1950s and 1960s, he saw fundamentalism as an increasingly fractured theology due to the Cold War and the civil rights movement. Gasper argued that McIntire's political statements, which condemned such targets as John Foster Dulles, the United Nations, and federal actions to support integration and voting rights, made him militant. Gasper also asserted that most members of the NAE were still fundamentalists, albeit moderate.Footnote ¹²

Ernest Sandeen's The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800–1930 (published in 1970) took a new look at fundamentalism and asserted that its roots were much deeper than the social upheaval of the 1920s; it also came from a dispensationalist, Princetonian and millenarian background. In 1980, George Marsden published Fundamentalism and American Culture, agreeing with Sandeen's core thesis. He argued anew that to be a fundamentalist meant to be protestant and militant, but attributed their radicalism to an opposition to theological and cultural modernism. Moreover, their involvement in politics set them apart from other evangelicals. Billy Graham, for example, focused on saving souls and building cross-cultural, apolitical relationships and disavowed the term fundamentalist. To Marsden, it was the opposition to these ‘new evangelicals’ that turned militants towards separatism. While Marsden's argument remains essentially correct, Graham and many evangelicals remained fundamentalists in theology and political belief. A vital characteristic that Marsden only briefly addressed was new evangelicalism's Arminianism and rejection of Calvinism. The NAE's “Statement of Faith” was, theologically, a fundamentalist document without a Calvinist basis. Despite their division with McIntire, evangelicals and fundamentalists were on opposite poles of a wider fundamentalist movement. Hence, Marsden's militants were a separatist and politically active subgroup that professed the reformed tradition. Four years after Marsden's book, Martha Abele MacIver made the case for a smaller, more exclusive militant community that was transatlantic and defined by its Calvinist political identity. Her dissertation, “Militant Protestant Political Ideology: Ian Paisley and the Reformation Tradition,” demonstrated the connection between the political ideology of fundamentalist protestants in Northern Ireland and the ultra-fundamentalist of North America. The thesis expanded on the conception that militants were a sub-section of a larger fundamentalist community.Footnote ¹³

In the 1990s, the roots of the new militant fundamentalism were traced to the old Christian right. Leo P. Ribuffo's The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right From the Great Depression to the Cold War and Angela Lahr's Millennial Dreams and Apocalyptic Nightmares: The Cold War Origins of Political Evangelicalism outlined the progression. In the 1930s, radical American fundamentalists attacked the New Deal, Jewish radicalism and communism, as well as social issues and the spread of apostate protestantism. They did not turn overtly political and international until World War II ended. The specter of atomic power, left-wing subversion and the assertion of a liberal and modernist Christianity compelled McIntire and the more militant fundamentalist to form partnerships with secular groups to oppose civil rights and integration. Between 1954 and the early 1960s, attacks on segregation cemented the relationship: federal action in Little Rock, Arkansas and Oxford, Mississippi and the Civil and Voting Rights Acts angered McIntire and split protestant churches. The onset of the “Great Society” and black voting rights united militant clerics and secular political organizations.Footnote ¹⁴

McIntire and his militant allies did not win political election or convince the electorate to vote for a godly magistrate. This “failure” has been noted by historians such as Heather Hendershot. However, what these works fail to understand is that unlike the Moral Majority and the New Right of the 1980s, militants did not strive for political victory. Their activism did not aim for electoral success but to spread the Calvinist doctrine to the elect. So enlightened, the predestined could live a moral life, be active in the church and make “Christian” decisions when they voted. To McIntire, a government that disobeyed God could itself be defied. Militants followed this course as the Cold War made the issues an international concern. Because of their desire to evangelize the world with the gospel and to save souls in expectation of Jesus' return, maintaining European colonialism in Africa and segregation in the American South became their focus, not the election of Christian governments. McIntire and the International Council of Christian Churches pursued this direction as the militant crusade sought to expand across the globe. From 1945 through the 1960s, the developing nations of Asia, Latin America and Africa became the liberal and modernist Aceldama.Footnote ¹⁵

In Africa, militant fundamentalists advocated the European concept of civil society and democracy. Colonial empires faced growing nationalist opposition and communist encroachment, and a partnership between western activists, the Vatican and mainstream protestant denominations that demanded a black-ruled Africa. North American militants revived their theory that the international left, the Catholic Church, and ecumenically-minded Christians threatened the theological virtue that conservative missionaries had brought to Africa. Therefore, militant fundamentalists reemphasized missionary work as the means to defend segregation and propagate the correct theology, economics and politics. If God's elect professed the correct, fundamentalist gospel within Africa and demanded a western-style government, a great tribulation would occur and the “Chosen” would gather in Christ's presence. But should such efforts fail, Christendom would suffer repression.Footnote ¹⁶

In Africa, the militant mission complemented racial attitudes. Militant fundamentalists employed Bible passages to defend racial separation and argued that European colonies needed to remain pro-capitalist and protestant, and where applicable, white ruled. Black Africans required militant guidance to understand their election and to fulfill the godly magistrate. Joseph Brown (J.B.) Matthews, a research director for Senator Joseph McCarthy and a prominent and independent investigator for militant fundamentalist groups, best described these fears: “The Dark Continent loom[ed] large in the Kremlin's plans. Being the last stronghold of colonialism, Soviet imperialists targeted Africa with a ‘backdoor’ coalition of socialism, nationalist revolution, racial and labor agitation and abetting Islamic and liberal Christian opposition to colonialism.”Footnote ¹⁷ Militant fundamentalists insisted they were not racist, but professed God's ordained conception of cultural and theological segregation, and pressed their point within their correspondence with black and white Africans. Nevertheless, a missionary to West Africa articulated “The Christian Attitude towards Race.” The author argued that a devout Christian faith was based on the brotherhood of the elect, and that race was not a factor; all humans were the offspring of Adam and Eve, but divided between the “saved” and the “unsaved.” To militants, many in Africa who had not committed themselves to Christ as their ethnic traditions—such as polygamy, female circumcision and animism—were atheistic and demonic.Footnote ¹⁸

McIntire's efforts in Africa did not consider race until the mid-1960s when the Rhodesians of European descent sought to preserve their colonial privileges and proclaimed its independence from Great Britain. The International Council of Christian Churches had to contend with Billy James Hargis, who appealed to American racial attitudes to defend segregation and white privileges in southern Africa. Hargis directed the Christian Crusade Against Communism from his cathedral in Tulsa, Oklahoma and formed a Rhodesian subsidiary of his Crusade. Such an effort affected McIntire as Hargis was also an influential voice within the American Far Right; as a consequence they competed for support. Both spread their message through an extensive network of radio stations and periodicals that acquired large audiences and subscriptions. The use of media was innovative, and to militants a divinely-ordained way to announce the imminent second coming of Christ and to present the struggle in Africa as an omen for armageddon.Footnote ¹⁹

II. The World Council of Churches

In August 1948, representatives from one hundred and forty-seven churches met in Amsterdam to organize the World Council of Churches (WCC). The WCC consisted of the core membership of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, along with an international cross-section of protestant and Orthodox denominations. The WCC aimed to promote an ecumenical dialogue between protestant and Orthodox churches and to open discussions with the Vatican. The council also pursued a social policy that criticized the inequity of capitalism, called for the transfer of western wealth to developing nations, and opposed North American and southern African racism. The World Council supported nationalist independence movements, and made Africa an important mission field. The WCC, however, asserted a condescending position: western imperialism and the introduction of Christianity had established the basis for a moral and democratic Africa and that the continent also needed a western-style social gospel. In 1954, the WCC issued the “Evanston Report” as a declaration against colonialism and imperialism. The report argued that the most decisive contemporary and political event, from a Christian perspective, was the struggle between Third World independence and western racism. Seven years later, the WCC released its New Delhi Declaration, calling for an ecumenical and colorblind system of missionary work in order to save Christendom; racial and ethnic segregation and colonial domination were all proclaimed blasphemy.Footnote ²⁰

Support for nationalist and ecumenical partnerships, and the elimination of racism became the cornerstone of the WCC's efforts in Africa. Between 1948 and 1961, twenty-five African denominations joined the WCC, including the Dutch Reformed Churches of South Africa and the Methodist Church of Northern and Southern Rhodesia.Footnote ²¹ The WCC set up Christian councils in Nigeria and East Africa, worked in unison with the Counseil Protestant du Congo, and made the International Missionary Council (IMC) an associated body. The IMC linked thirteen major ecumenical organizations with the new National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.Footnote ²² Missionary work and church consolidation were designed to be ecumenical and not “foreign,” to compete with Roman Catholicism and Islam, and to fight the new African leadership that wanted a secular and anti-western society. Moreover, the WCC and the IMC supported liberal and modernist African churches and aided independence efforts, even those suspected of socialist or communist influence. Younger members wanted a more extreme nationalism, which would cleanse black Africa of western influences and promote social revolution. Radicals believed that such efforts would be God's instrument against imperialist outrages.Footnote ²³

In 1960, anti-colonial activism in Africa and the American civil rights movement sparked a chain of events that changed the dynamics of the battle for African converts. During that year, France decolonized thirteen new nations, the British colony of Nigeria became independent, the Congo crisis erupted, and the Algerian war accelerated. The WCC welcomed African independence, denounced French military action in North Africa and supported the UN peace-keeping force in Zaire. On the afternoon of February 1, 1960, four African-American students from the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina travelled to downtown Greensboro. There they entered the Woolworths, sat down at the whites-only lunch counter and asked to be served. The protest not only inspired hundreds of similar actions across the American South, but began the direct-action chapter of the American civil rights movement. Over the next five years, a violent reaction from southern segregationists forced the federal government to respond with court action, the deployment of military assets, and with civil rights and voting legislation. Federal power enabled the successful, albeit violent, enrollment of James Meredith to the University of Mississippi in October 1962; backed the March on Washington in 1963; passed the Civil and Voting Rights Acts; and intervened to insure that the Selma-to-Montgomery march took place with minimal violence.Footnote ²⁴

The WCC's political activism increased between 1960 and 1962 as the Cold War intensified. The Bay of Pigs fiasco, the erection of the Berlin Wall, and the U-2 crisis heightened tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, while civil rights in America became an issue in Africa. The WCC pursued an ecumenical and pan-nationalist agenda in black Africa, and embarked on new initiatives to persuade southern African whites of the immorality of segregation and apartheid. In late December 1962, the WCC began a ten-day meeting in Nairobi to organize ecumenical and revolutionary activity against white racism. The WCC presented a theme that connected African revolution with the spreading of the gospel. In January 1963, the WCC held the All Africa Christian Youth Assembly in Nairobi, where 500 young Africans met to discuss theological unity and racial relations. The Youth Assembly published The Message, a short-lived magazine to denounce conventional missionary work, as an assault on traditional African culture, and to assail white churches that denied admittance to other races. Over the subsequent three months, the WCC held the All-African Seminar on the Christian Home and Family Life in Kitwe, Northern Rhodesia,Footnote ²⁵ and in Kampala gathered 350 delegates from forty-two African nations, where they discussed church union and ecumenical activity. The WCC sent observers from western churches and the Russian Orthodox Church to Uganda, and allowed a delegation from the Vatican. In 1964, the WCC added two black West Africans to its Executive Committee and held additional seminars in Northern Rhodesia. During the first two months of 1965, the Central Committee of the WCC organized meetings in Nairobi and Enugu Nigeria to bolster support for liberal theology and African independence.Footnote ²⁶

III. The International Council of Churches

The Reverend Carl McIntire's interest in the great commission began in the 1930s while studying for the ministry. During his residency at the Princeton Theological Seminary, McIntire became concerned that Presbyterian missionaries working in China were spreading modernist Christianity. McIntire and seminary professor John Gresham Machen formed the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions to support conservative missions. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. saw the Independent Board as a threat to its authority and ordered McIntire and Machen to cease their divisive actions. When they refused to disband, the Presbytery of West Jersey suspended both McIntire and Machen and stripped them of their ordination vows. Thus, global evangelicalism played an important part in McIntire's early career. Over the next year, McIntire formed his own congregation, joined Machen and other Presbyterian dissidents to organize the Presbyterian Church of America, and then split from the conservative and evangelical faction to found the Bible Presbyterian Church. McIntire also began to publish the Christian Beacon, an eight-page weekly journal.Footnote ²⁷

In 1941, McIntire formed the American Council of Christian Churches (ACCC) to fight the ecumenical policies of the Federal Council of Churches and to denounce the social gospel. For four years, McIntire and the ACCC concentrated on the perceived apostasy of liberal and modernist Christian clerics, and on missionary work. In the fall of 1945, fears arose over the ascendancy of the Soviet Union as a superpower and the reputed communist subversion of American churches, education and government. To address these threats, McIntire transformed his ministry into a global organization. In August 1948, McIntire founded the International Council of Christian Churches (ICCC) to evangelize Calvinist doctrine and their concept of Bible protestantism to all corners of the earth. McIntire established an office in Amsterdam, where the ICCC published the Reformation Review to espouse militant fundamentalism to a worldwide academic and clerical audience, and in 1955 began to broadcast the 20th Century Reformation Hour across the globe from New Jersey. Accordingly, McIntire was not only a militant activist in North America and the harbinger of the new communist threat; he was the first militant fundamentalist to expand his ministry into an international crusade.Footnote ²⁸

Over the next two decades, McIntire and the ICCC viewed civil rights legislation and pro-civil rights resolutions from Christian denominations as threatening and apostate. McIntire's denunciation of the civil rights movement did not argue for racial prejudice or support separation with racist terminology, but equated federal policy to an assault on Calvinism and individual freedom. McIntire's pamphlets asserted that integration was unbiblical, assailed Martin Luther King's liberal religiosity and morality, and attacked the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 as a contradiction to American individuality and personal choice. To McIntire, Christians should be allowed to associate with whom they choose. Moreover, the American legal system should permit the elect to shun social discourse with all human beings who had turned from the true gospel and were backing civil rights. Militants asserted that God promised the Israelites a segregated path and insisted that the efforts of integrationists defied God's Will and command to allow black separatism:

Although the ICCC worked closely with segregationists in North America, such as South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond and Georgia Governor Lester Maddox, in Africa its rhetoric avoided civil rights issues and the racial policies in southern Africa. McIntire did not want opposition to civil rights and integration in the United States to affect the great commission to black Africa.Footnote ³⁰

During the 1950s, McIntire and militant fundamentalists saw the WCC's efforts in Africa as apostasy and a hindrance to their missionary efforts and to the great commission. The ICCC created its own evangelical arm, the Associated Missions, to work closely with militant associations, councils and churches. The ICCC applied for official recognition from the British Colonial Office, but was initially denied due to opposition from the WCC. Even after the British approved it, the Associated Missions and the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions attracted considerable hostility.Footnote ³¹ The ICCC made overtures to Pretoria, and had limited contact with Southern Rhodesia. J.C. Maris, the General Secretary of the Amsterdam office, started a written correspondence with white South Africans and visited the country several times. Maris' interests were cultural, as his correspondence supported apartheid, and theological as he hoped to entice South African churches into the Council. At the ICCC conference in Edinburgh in 1952, Maris spoke on the racial and theological situation in South Africa. Maris asserted that South Africans should seek God and then decide on their own whether to continue with apartheid. Maris' argument copied that of American segregationists and used Old Testament tenets to defend the racial policies of the American South. Whether Maris held racist opinions is unclear, but the Dutch militant focused his attention solely towards Afrikaners.Footnote ³² McIntire, for his part, wrote to both black and white fundamentalists in South Africa and Southern Rhodesia to propagate his version of a Bible-based protestantism and to maintain the great commission to the elect, not to promote racial supremacy. McIntire and the ICCC did support white minority rule as compatible with Bible protestantism, but limited the conversation to private letters so not to offend black African militants. These African fundamentalists responded favorably, expressing concern over the expansion of the WCC in Africa and the organization's support for secular nationalists. They did not discuss apartheid or Rhodesian racial laws.Footnote ³³

In the late 1950s, McIntire took notice of the theological and cultural flirtations between the Dutch Reformed Churches, the Baptist Union of South Africa and the WCC. Moreover, he saw federal collusion. McIntire perceived the efforts of the U. S. State Department as an attempt to promote ecumenical activity. In September 1957, McIntire wrote to the South African prime minister. He complained that the WCC and the State Department conspired to dispatch Elmer Homrighausen, the Dean of the Princeton Theological Seminary, to South Africa to discuss church unity, the WCC and to attack apartheid. As a seminary with a Presbyterian heritage, Princeton had a long relationship with the Dutch Reformed synods. Their friendship, however, had undergone considerable strain. McIntire produced new political and theological support for militant fundamentalism; the office of the South African prime minister replied and thanked McIntire for his support and for copies of the Christian Beacon, which were found to be useful. One year later the Dutch Reformed Churches of South Africa sent observers to the Fourth Plenary Congress of the ICCC, held in Brazil.Footnote ³⁴

But as the American civil rights movement gained momentum and more African colonies were granted independence, missionary efforts in Africa became more urgent to militant fundamentalists. McIntire and the ICCC contended that the WCC was encouraging the newly independent nations of Africa to turn socialist and anti-western. This suspicion drove the Christian Beacon to publicize its perception of the WCC's schema and to announce that “the Conquest of African Begins.” The report warned that the policies of the WCC were designed to hurt white Christians, and to aid the communist bloc in fomenting violent revolution. McIntire's periodical demanded that the British and French governments defend the lives and property of white and black fundamentalists. More importantly, a WCC victory could start the end times in Africa.Footnote ³⁵

In spite of the WCC's activism, McIntire evangelized only a small number of black Africans during the 1950s. Those black Africans that the ICCC contacted were the few they considered militant, saved, and God's elect. For instance, the ICCC invited only two black African clerics to their Second Congress. Held in July 1954 in Philadelphia, the attendance of the Africans was reported in the conference program. This scenario allowed McIntire to exploit the prayer meetings that black Africans held with Americans who supported segregation.Footnote ³⁶ During the 1960s, McIntire and the ICCC increased their use of media as a means to rally black militancy. By 1962, the use of short-wave radio allowed the 20th Century Reformation Hour to be heard in most areas of Africa. McIntire received a steady correspondence from black and white Africans who noted how his ministry programs had inspired them towards Bible protestantism. Articles on the ecumenical threat in Africa appeared more frequently within the Christian Beacon, and beginning in 1962 the Reformation Review included a section to report on Africa. In 1964, both periodicals called on black militants in Africa to employ Bible protestantism to overcome the “immoral” African culture, and to defeat the revolutions promoted by the unregenerate. The ICCC sent agents to West Africa to meet with black militant clerics and to found the International Associated Christian Youths, a new missionary organization. In January 1965, the ICCC held a conference in Abak, Nigeria; that month the General Assembly of the West Africa Christian Alliance was formed to preempt the planned WCC meeting. McIntire attended, which indicates the importance that the ICCC gave to the meeting.Footnote ³⁷

McIntire and the ICCC evangelized the same regions of Africa as the WCC. Thus, McIntire sent financial and human resources into eastern and western Africa, and held conferences at the same time as the WCC. It is important to note that the ICCC put substantial efforts into the English-speaking nations of East and West Africa and worked where white minority rule was implausible. Because McIntire did not support segregation with racist rhetoric, black fundamentalists in Africa could join the ICCC without backing white minority rule or denouncing civil rights. McIntire and the ICCC received considerable correspondence from black African clerics who were against modernist and liberal Christianity and who opposed the secular policies that newly independent African nations promoted. While on route to New Jersey in February 1965, McIntire reflected on the East African Christian Conference and the militant mission to black Africa. He explained why maintaining a colorblind ministry would advance God's word and the great commission to Africa, Asia and South America. In an open letter to militant fundamentalists, McIntire asserted:

The ICCC found eastern and western Africa to be fertile missionary fields. The Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions used American-raised money to finance the Roland K. Armes Memorial Hospital in Kenya, and in March 1965 to fund the Bible College of East Africa. The new school sought to train African missionaries with the proper Calvinist and pro-western political viewpoints. Support from North America enabled the African Evangelical Conference to be held there in February 1966, and militants made Nairobi the centers for Bible training and missionary work in eastern Africa. The Bible college was built seven miles outside of Nairobi and directly across the street from the proposed site of the Lumumba Institute. The left-wing center, then under construction and funded through the Soviet Union, eventually provided two Russian instructors to teach Leninist political action. McIntire began making frequent trips to East Africa, to confer with militant, black clerics and to help with evangelical campaigns that focused on the recruiting of black theological separatists. One such conference was the ten-day effort in Tanzania that the East Africa Christian Alliance (EACA), a subsidiary of the ICCC, organized. It is notable that most attendees to the First General Assembly of the EACA were black Africans, but a few white missionaries from the ICCC observed the proceedings.Footnote ³⁹

The ICCC earned dividends from its crusade. Abraham Warnaar, Jr., a staff member in the Amsterdam office, received reports from Bible protestants in Ghana who stated that the Nkrumah administration harassed them. Other letters argued that black African leaders openly supported the theological aims of the WCC. Dr. Etian P. Nta of the Bible Reformed Evangelical Churches in Abak, Nigeria wrote to McIntire saying that his church was in a “hard fight to spread the word that the WCC is apostate.” The Reverend M. Osei-Amponsah of Ghana let McIntire know that they were making the black elect aware of the ICCC's testimony.Footnote ⁴⁰ Although there is no precise record, at least thirteen West African denominations affiliated themselves with the International Council, as did forty churches and nine small denominations from Kenya, Tanzania and Madagascar. Moreover, the Church of Christ in Africa—with 60,000 members—withdrew from the Christian Council of Kenya and applied for membership, enabling over four hundred African Churches to begin fellowship with the ICCC. The Independent Baptist Churches of East Africa, based in Nairobi, also made an official request to join the ICCC. In 1968, over one thousand black Africans attended the annual convention of the East Africa Christian Alliance, and a year later, the ICCC had enough support to hold conferences in Ghana, Kenya and Madagascar.Footnote ⁴¹

Black African militants held the same eschatological fears as North American militants. Letters to McIntire clearly indicate this. Accordingly, the ICCC invited a larger number of African clerics to their Fifth World Congress in Amsterdam in 1962 and three years later to Geneva, Switzerland for the Sixth Congress. Overall, black Africans from eight nations attended, but with the exception of one Nigerian minister who was appointed to the Executive Committee, they were only awarded observer status. McIntire reached out to black African militants and introduced them to his North American fellowship; but at the same time McIntire allowed only a token representation, so as not to offend segregationist sensibilities. In 1968, black Africans from ten countries attended the Seventh Congress in Cape May, New Jersey and six were allowed to make short testimonies. However, the pan-African delegates were only briefly mentioned in the program, in spite of the militant interest in black Africa's theological, moral and political situation. The Christian Beacon published a biography of the six black clerics, but the text concentrated on their opposition to the WCC. Young, black African males were also invited to the Third World Assembly of International Christian Youth, held simultaneously with the ICCC conference; several were allowed to enroll in Shelton College, a McIntire-operated school based in Cape May, New Jersey. The prospect of the second coming and the possibility of premillennial conflict in Africa made the integration of militant Bible colleges necessary. Because Shelton contained only male students, segregationists did not denounce McIntire or the ICCC for their policy. Overall, the small number of black African militants were evangelized and their opinions on black nationalism promoted, but their message to North Americans was restricted to ecumenism. McIntire did not want to alienate conference attendees who were against integration.Footnote ⁴²

IV. Southern Africa

North of the Angola-Rhodesia-Mozambique axis, the battle between the ICCC and the WCC was based on theological differences, and until the 1960s the issue of race was minimal. By the mid-1960s, however, the racial and political battles developing in southern Africa altered the dynamics of the struggle. After World War II, Britain's African policy aimed to retain its colonies as long as feasible, and to grant independence on terms economically beneficial to London. By mid-1964, all British colonies north of the Zambezi River were new nations and members of the British Commonwealth. The colonial administration in Salisbury was not considered for nationhood, due to the legal and social code that maintained white minority rule.Footnote ⁴³

As the civil rights movement in North America moved into direct action, efforts to end colonialism in southern Africa also progressed. As the 1950s came to an end, Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church, travelled to South Africa to talk to the fundamentalist Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa and to participate in a biracial ecumenical conference at the University of Johannesburg. In December 1960, the WCC organized a ‘consultation’ on racial and cultural relations with Dutch Reformed ministers. Held in Cottesloe, a suburb of Johannesburg, it was the last biracial church meeting until 1990. Coming in the aftermath of the Sharpeville Massacre when the police killed sixty-nine black Africans, the WCC warned South African Christians to reject race as a basis of church membership. Several synods withdrew from the WCC after the Cottesloe Consultation. The WCC urged moderate ministers to reject their church's policies, but the efforts failed and hardened resistance to outside influences. A proponent of apartheid as a Christian benevolence, the Dutch Reformed Church used scripture to support segregation and to oppose miscegenation. The church also denounced the close affinity between the WCC and the United Nations, a secular organization considered un-Christian.Footnote ⁴⁴

Until the mid-1950s, white Rhodesia contained a significant number of communists, left-wing sympathizers and liberal clerics. However, the Cold War and an influx of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent turned most Rhodesians against the Left.Footnote ⁴⁵ In Southern Rhodesia, white Christian leaders tacitly backed minority rule and initially the WCC made few inroads. Many missionaries were school teachers and the government paid most superintendents. A notable change occurred in 1959 when a state of emergency was declared and Donal Raymond Lamont, the Catholic Bishop of Umtali, wrote Purchased People as a civil rights pastoral instruction. The twenty-three-page document urged Christian clerics to preach racial tolerance. Although most of the colony's bishops, Protestant and Catholic, were reluctant to sign it, Christian support for white supremacy was quickly tested. In July 1961, the overwhelmingly white electorate in Southern Rhodesia passed a new constitution. The following February, the U. N. General Assembly passed Resolution 1745, calling for an investigation into Salisbury's racial policies. Four months later, the General Assembly passed a second mandate, demanding that Southern Rhodesia enact a new constitution to allow black African participation. The WCC supported both initiatives.Footnote ⁴⁶ When the Rhodesian Front won enough seats to take power in December 1962, the party moved to enforce racial separation within the apportionment of land, and in employment and social life. The policies also threatened multi-racial, church-run schools and institutions. International opinion encouraged the mainstream churches of the west to oppose the new racial policies; all Christian denominations increasingly opposed the colonial administration. In 1964, the Anglican and Methodist bishops of the re-named colony of Rhodesia denounced the constitution, a move that the WCC supported. Although still a British possession, Salisbury deported the American-born Methodist Bishop Ralph Dodge, for advocating an inclusive church that welcomed non-whites. Abel Muzorewa, a black African and future prime minister of the unrecognized and biracial Republic of Zimbabwe Rhodesia, replaced him. That year, the Zimbabwe African National Union and the Zimbabwe African People's Union began attacking infrastructure, as well as white urban residents and farmers. Many Christian leaders accepted the necessity for violence, and the World Council of Churches openly backed armed insurrection.Footnote ⁴⁷

In May 1965, the Rhodesian Front won all fifty seats to the Rhodesian parliament, running on a platform similar to that of the American Far Right: the maintenance of white minority rule and the preservation of Christian civilization. On November 11th, Prime Minister Ian Douglas Smith declared a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) from the British Empire and proclaimed a new nation. Although many Britons opposed racial discrimination and saw Rhodesian independence as an illegal act, Westminster could not militarily intervene against the Smith regime. Public opinion opposed such a move and there is evidence that the British Army would have refused to attack fellow subjects. Prime Minister Harold Wilson travelled to Salisbury, but after negotiations failed his government could only pursue political and economic sanctions, and cutting off of arms shipments. But UDI brought international denunciation, additional trade boycotts, and an end to cultural and political exchanges. For instance, the Johnson administration embargoed Rhodesian products and airlifted oil to Zambia when Salisbury prevented shipments.Footnote ⁴⁸ Most Christian denominations within the United Kingdom, the British Council of Churches, and the Conference of British Missionary Services passed resolutions condemning the Smith government. Dr. A. Michael Ramsey, the Archbishop of Canterbury and a WCC supporter, took the strongest stance. He censured the Smith regime on national radio and wrote to Wilson asserting that a majority of British Christians would support armed force against Rhodesia. The international outcry inspired the Christian Council of Rhodesia to approve of the sanctions and to urge all Christians to oppose the Unilateral Declaration of Independence. The move came several months after Rhodesia's protestant churches held a consultation on “The Church and Human Relations,” calling for social, education and political reforms.Footnote ⁴⁹

V. The Christian Crusade Against Communism

As white southern Africa became increasingly isolated, minority rule was a more attractive cause to militant fundamentalists and to the American Far Right. The initial reluctance of the ICCC to support segregation in Africa changed as militant rhetoric in Africa began to reflect their anti-integration agenda. Militant fundamentalists tempered their defense of Bible protestantism and outreach to black Africans, with an advocacy for segregation and apartheid. This was more notable after Billy James Hargis became interested in white southern Africans. Hargis, who worked with McIntire and the ICCC in North America, stringently opposed communism and made opposition to civil rights and integration a central aspect of his ministry. His involvement influenced the militant crusade in Africa to change focus and to become overtly racist.Footnote ⁵⁰

Starting his evangelical career in Sallisaw, Oklahoma as a Disciples of Christ minister, Hargis moved to Tulsa in 1948 where he founded the Christian Echoes Ministry, Incorporated. Commonly known as the Christian Crusade Against Communism, the organization concentrated on the feared communist threat to American society, government and institutions, and to protestant churches.Footnote ⁵¹ Hargis remained a regional success until 1952 when he travelled to Edinburgh, Scotland to attend the British Isles Conference of the ICCC. At the assembly, McIntire appointed Hargis as director of the Bibles by Balloon Project. The Project sent hundreds of thousands of Bibles, printed in local languages, into Eastern Europe via helium balloon. In spite of the initial refusal of the West German government to sanction the project, and with little help from the U. S. State Department, the balloon crusade accomplished its goal and the international press extensively covered the mission. Sending Bibles across the iron curtain made Hargis famous, and although it was an ICCC project, the media and the public credited Hargis for the effort. The plan not only became a considerable bonanza for the militant fundamentalist community, but turned the Tulsa-based preacher into a North American phenomenon. Such notoriety helped Hargis to form a clear relationship with right-wing politicians, such as Senator McCarthy. Moreover, his media ministry expanded, his nationwide radio and television programs were heard on hundreds of stations, and the circulation of Crusade periodicals, such as The Weekly Crusader, increased dramatically. Within six years, the number of stations carrying Hargis' message and the financial support for the Christian Crusade Against Communism rivaled that of the International and American Council of Christian Churches and the 20 th Century Reformation Hour. As the 1950s ended, Hargis equaled McIntire in stature and was considered the co-leader of the North American militant fellowship.Footnote ⁵²

In the early 1960s, Billy James Hargis aimed his anti-communist crusade toward the civil rights movement. In North America, Hargis routinely denounced civil rights leaders and activism, and reiterated the charge that a conspiracy between communists and liberal, modernist Protestant clergy fueled civil rights activism. Hargis organized conferences to attack the National Churches of Christ and its alliance with the civil rights movement, as well as the organization's perceived pro-communist bias, support for the social gospel and denunciation of capitalism as un-Christian. In the early 1960s, Hargis toured the United States with prominent segregationists, such as retired General Edwin A. Walker, organizing Anti-Communist Leadership Schools. Hargis made a strong connection between defending segregation and opposing communism, arguing that “integration by force (was) not a Christian Crusade.”Footnote ⁵³

The Christian Crusade pursued an international agenda to fulfill the militant and Calvinist requirement to further the great commission. Therefore, the Crusade supported the Taiwanese, South Koreans and South Vietnamese against communism. Unlike McIntire, however, Hargis made little effort to appeal to black Calvinists in either North America or Africa. He believed that such attention would weaken his fellowship with segregationists. Interest in Africa grew, however, when the continent became a battleground of the Cold War. Within his broadcasts and weekly press, Hargis began to note the attacks on southern African racism that Christian denominations made, and to argue that the theological opponents of African segregation were hypocritical as they were willing to support violent revolution. The Christian Crusade astutely noted that the WCC would only do so in areas where white minority regimes held power and that the ecumenical organization did not support regime change in the newly independent countries under black nationalist and dictatorial rule.Footnote ⁵⁴

Through Hargis, the struggle for Bible protestantism in Africa turned from evangelizing black allies towards a stronger working relationship with white African segregationists. Coming at a time that the civil rights movement in the United States was realizing considerable success and acceptance from white Christians, Hargis argued that communist propaganda, aid to independence movements, and the denunciation of the Smith regime from Christian clerics could achieve the same result. It would also threaten Bible protestantism and white Christian civilization. Because segregationists—militant and secular—were beginning to feel impotent towards civil rights activism and unable to thwart the changes being forced on white society in the American South, Hargis and the Christian Crusade saw urgency to defending Rhodesia; moreover, such an effort would bring new membership and revenue to the organization and possibly hasten the end times. The Christian Crusade became the most vocal supporters of white Rhodesia, asking, “Would the communist demand for black rule in South Africa win?” General Walker wondered whether Rhodesia would become Britain's Mississippi, compared white Rhodesians to the “rebels” of the American South, and equated British Prime Minister Harold Wilson's action is South Africa to the Kennedy administration's policies during the enrollment of James Meredith to the University of Mississippi. Walker sarcastically commented, “Martin Luther King is needed in Rhodesia. The same U. S. Army that followed him to Selma can now be sent to Africa to fight for U. N. control.”Footnote ⁵⁵ Hargis agreed and asserted that Wilson's policies and the sanctions that the American and British governments supported were demeaning to white Rhodesian Christians, whose rule helped to better black Africa. Just as communists and apostate protestant clerics were manipulating African-Americans into demanding integration and civil rights, black Africans were being driven to support independence and the end of white rule. Hargis' solution for southern Africa was a white-dominated, Christian society that adhered to conservative social tenets, and conformed to fundamentalist and Calvinist theology. The Christian Crusade did not violate the militant prohibition against the electoral process. To promote his ideals, Hargis made trips to Rhodesia to establish the All-Africa Christian Crusade. His efforts aided an existing government and his support for the Smith regime was not conditional on Salisbury pursuing a godly magistrate.Footnote ⁵⁶

A condescending view of the uncivilized and un-Christian black African augmented Hargis' outlook on civil rights and segregation. Hargis' viewpoint mirrored that of North America's white supremacists. In a “Plain Talk to Negroes,” he argued that “every black government in Africa is torn asunder by tribal conflict and civil war” and that slavery may have been a blessing in disguise for black Americans—they were more advanced in education, personal hygiene and Christian culture than their African cousins.Footnote ⁵⁷ Moreover, black Africans were considered culturally inferior to the eighteenth-century Native Americans and segregationists routinely asserted the child-like and helpless nature of African Americans. To Hargis, only through the endeavors of European and Afrikaner Christians were black Africans achieving any level of civilization in southern Africa. White Christians had worked to eliminate cannibalism and ritual murder, and to build modern cities, with roads and other amenities of the modern world. Hargis made the same arguments that American segregationists advanced: he asserted that black Rhodesians were content with separation, eighty percent wanted white rule, and that blacks in southern Africa lived better than those in the newly independent, black-ruled states. Accordingly, the idea of one man, one vote was unthinkable. Hargis never personally used racist terms, but allowed notorious anti-Semites and white supremacists, such as Gerald L.K. Smith, and the Reverends Gerald B. Winrod and Harvey H. Springer, to speak at his schools and conferences and to do so for him. At one Crusade event, Ralph Carter Pittman, the president of the States' Rights Council of Georgia, argued that African negroes were only different from those in America because “they eat more people.”Footnote ⁵⁸

Hargis diverged from McIntire and other militant fundamentalists and allowed members of the National Association of Evangelicals, secular conservatives and Roman Catholics to join the Christian Crusade. Hargis did not condone Catholic theology, but asserted, “To stop communism we must work with conservative Catholic groups.” Because of Hargis' stature, militant fundamentalists ignored these “sacrilegious” relationships. In southern Africa, Hargis and the Christian Crusade Against Communism worked with any person or organization that was pro-apartheid and pro-segregation, while McIntire and the ICCC limited their fellowship to militants, black or white. Non-militants could attend ICCC political rallies, but not participate in Bible conferences or any theological fellowship. Hargis maintained correspondence with Americans who supported minority rule in Rhodesia, such as Mississippi Senator James Eastland, and the White Citizens' Councils. So it is in this context that the Christian Crusade made a stronger political defense for white rule in Rhodesia and South Africa, in contrast to the theological ministry of the ICCC.Footnote ⁵⁹

VI. A Militant Rhodesia

As Rhodesia became increasingly isolated, the Smith regime accepted the fellowship and rhetoric of the Christian Crusade. Previously, white Rhodesians did not envision a militantly Christian Africa or welcome fundamentalist theology. Moreover, white Africans considered evangelical services to be a form of mass hysteria. For example, when Billy Graham visited Southern Rhodesia in 1960, most of the attendees at his rallies were of African or Indian heritage; in Bulawayo and Salisbury, whites protested outside the multi-racial meetings. Graham commented on the immorality and excessive drinking habits of white Rhodesians and noted that they rarely attended church services.Footnote ⁶⁰

The Rhodesian government supported the Hargis Crusade and made the evangelist available to the public. During government-backed speeches, including talks to the defense forces, Hargis' position resonated with that of the Smith regime. In January 1969, Ian Smith addressed the All-Africa Christian Crusade rally in Salisbury and commended Hargis for his efforts towards defeating atheistic communism. Invited to speak in Oklahoma, the U. S. State Department denied the Rhodesian prime minister a visa. To bolster support from militant fundamentalists, white Rhodesians increased their Christian and anti-communist rhetoric. For instance, Smith asserted that the white minority was proud to be Christians and that their struggle was one for western civilization and the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Rhodesian Front, the Rhodesian government and secular groups such as the League of Empire Loyalists professed Christian devotion, and the Rhodesian parliament opened every session with prayers. The League, a pressure group that campaigned against the dissolution of the British Empire, had fascist influences and many members took to British Israelism.Footnote ⁶¹ Rhodesia's Declaration of Independence centered its argument on a “humble submission to Almighty God who controls the destinies of nations,” and said that UDI “struck a blow for the preservation of justice, civilization and Christianity.” Furthermore, the new Rhodesian constitution of 1969 began, “The peoples of Rhodesia humbly acclaim the supremacy and omnipotence of Almighty God and acknowledge the ultimate direction by Him of the affairs of Man.” In spite of the new religiosity, the Smith regime did not introduce Calvinism into its politics.Footnote ⁶²

The worldwide pressure on Rhodesia and South Africa and the role of the WCC increased the missionary and pro-segregationist rhetoric of the ICCC. As the 1960s progressed, McIntire opened new correspondence with white South Africans. McIntire's Collingswood church received substantial mail from fundamentalists either concerned over international opinion and the ecumenical activities of the WCC, or looking to discuss the biblical defense of apartheid. Other letters addressed Soviet and Red Chinese subversion; one Dutch Reformed pastor asked for two hundred additional copies of McIntire's pamphlet, Why We Should Fight Communism. The theological and racial stance of fundamentalist Afrikaners made them natural allies to militants and North American segregationists.Footnote ⁶³

In comparison to Hargis, McIntire showed limited interest in Rhodesia. There were few fundamentalists with the correct theology to recruit into the ICCC and McIntire did not want support for the whites of southern Africa to end the ICCC's ministry to the black inhabitants of the continent. Furthermore, McIntire did not believe Salisbury to be a godly magistrate. To maintain the correct posture with white North Americans and Europeans, McIntire and the ICCC, however, could not ignore the purported communist threat to Rhodesia. In December 1965, McIntire followed the lead of the Christian Crusade and made a stronger defense of white rule. McIntire cabled Smith to reinforce militant Christian support; he also sent copies of the Christian Beacon to Salisbury's governmental information services. Three years later, McIntire warned Smith of the anti-Rhodesian activities of two Anglican leaders, Bishop James Pike of California and Archbishop Michael Ramsey of England. In June 1969, McIntire wrote to Ian Smith to congratulate Rhodesian whites for passing a referendum that allowed for a new constitution. McIntire believed minority rule would be entrenched through God's grace, and as a republic, ties with the apostate British crown would be severed and Bible protestantism protected. The Smith regime recognized McIntire's gestures as useful tools that helped their cause.Footnote ⁶⁴

Overall, the effort that McIntire and the ICCC made towards white southern Africans lacked the intensity of their crusade throughout the rest of the continent. To McIntire, Rhodesian independence seemed secure and the Union of South Africa's system of apartheid faced few threats that would overturn the policy. McIntire and the ICCC believed that before independence, black Africans needed to adopt a higher level of spirituality and westernize their morality. Only Bible protestantism, sent out from North America and Europe, could elevate Africa. McIntire did not argue that black Africans were racially inferior, but insisted that they were immoral due to an apostate religiosity. McIntire began to publicly offer his opinions on black African culture and spirituality that, if not racist, were patronizing. He asserted that independence and ecumenism had further weakened African mores, and that to save black Africa an alliance with white militant fundamentalists and separation from apostates had to be achieved.Footnote ⁶⁵ These comments were made only to North American segregationists. In his discourse with black Africans, McIntire addressed only theological and political issues not racial inequality. Moreover, he refused to visit South Africa or Rhodesia, which would draw attention to such support in the rest of Africa. Nevertheless, the Rhodesian crisis challenged McIntire's Calvinistic sympathy with black African militants, who could not ignore white racism if they were to retain credibility with black Africans. The strategy successfully retained black African members as they acquiesced to the ICCC's position; furthermore, many black militants questioned why the WCC concentrated only on apartheid when liberal apostasy was also important to Bible Christians.Footnote ⁶⁶