Editor's note: This article was originally published in This Land Vol. 3, Issue 21. Nov. 1, 2012.
Shortly after World War II, Billy James Hargis came barreling down from the Arkansas hills—all 6 foot 6 inches and 280 pounds of him—to a small church in Sapulpa, where he set up shop as a conventional “bawl and jump” preacher ordained by the Disciples of Christ. There have always been fundamentalists, for sure, but before Hargis, they mostly squawked about the end of the world and the need to repent. But if James Brown was the godfather of soul, Hargis was the godfather of fundamentalism as a political movement.
In 1948, spurred on by a traveling preacher who gave him a pamphlet that showed a connection between communism and the NAACP, young Billy James had an epiphany: Protestant churches were being infiltrated by communists! The National Council of Churches (of which the Disciples of Christ was a member) was a Marxist organization! Liberals had kicked God out of the USA!
It was then that this 23-year-old preacher “stepped out in faith for the harder service as a crusader.” The “harder service” was his political crusade to rid America of communism and return the nation to its Christian foundations. He came to national attention in 1953 with his “Bible Balloon Project,” a stunt that involved tying Bible quotations to helium balloons and floating them from West Germany to the Eastern Bloc.