Religion: The Sins of Billy James

Dear Friend:

After years of shock and sorrow over the decline of morals and decency in our country, I thought I had become shockproof . . . Can you believe it: complete color films of sexual acts between women and men, including homosexual acts, using your children. Unless you and I act today . . . our children and our children’s children will be exposed to perversion so sinister that good will become evil and evil will become good.

That fund-raising appeal, mailed out last month from Tulsa’s Crusade for Christian Morality, bears the unmistakable stamp of its author, the Rev. Billy

James Hargis. An ultra-right Fundamentalist, Hargis, 50, has long denounced sexual sin and spoken out as a defender of traditional virtues in an increasingly lax society. In 1968, his organization published the bestseller (250,000 copies) Is the School House the Proper Place to Teach Raw Sex?

Today, however, Hargis stands accused by former colleagues of committing some of the very sins he has railed against. TIME Correspondent Anne Constable and Reporters Richard Walker and Tom Carter have learned that five students—four of them men—at his American Christian College in Tulsa have come forward and said that President Hargis has had sexual relations with them. Asked about the charges, Hargis declined to give any specific reply. Through a lawyer, he stated: “I have made more than my share of mistakes. I’m not proud of them. Even the Apostle Paul said, ‘Christ died to save sinners, of whom I am chief.’ Long ago, I made my peace with God, and my ministry continues.”

That ministry centers on the Christian Crusade, which was founded by Hargis in 1950 to promote far-right political and religious causes, and includes radio and TV programs and the Christian Crusade Weekly. Hargis rallies have featured such notables as former Major General Edwin Walker and Governor George Wallace. Though originally ordained in the Disciples of Christ, Hargis in 1966 organized his own independent Tulsa congregation, The Church of the Christian Crusade. It provided tax deductibility for Hargis contributors after the vocal Christian Crusade lost its tax exemption. Four years later, Hargis founded American Christian College to teach “antiCommunist patriotic Americanism.”

Broken Man. It was at the college that Hargis’ sexual troubles surfaced in October 1974, when the first of the five students confessed to then Vice President David Noebel. Noebel’s account: Not long before, Hargis had conducted a wedding for the student; on the honeymoon, the groom and his bride discovered that both of them had slept with Hargis. Later, Noebel says, three more male students told him of having had sexual relations with Hargis over a period of three years. They said the trysts had taken place in Hargis’ office, at his farm in the Ozarks, even during his tours with the college choir, the “All-American Kids.” Noebel was told that Hargis justified his homosexual acts by citing the Old Testament friendship between David and Jonathan and threatened to blacklist the youths for life if they talked.

Noebel, a Hargis aide for twelve years, described how he felt when he first heard the students’ accounts: “For two weeks, I couldn’t sleep. I knew we had to get Hargis off campus or we were going to lose the whole school.” Finally, on Oct. 25, 1974, Noebel and two other college officials confronted Hargis and two of his lawyers. According to two of those present, Hargis, who has a wife, three daughters and a son, admitted his guilt and blamed his behavior on “genes and chromosomes.”

Two days later, Hargis preached a farewell sermon to his Tulsa congregation, then turned the presidency of the college over to Noebel. But Hargis stayed around the campus for weeks before he officially severed ties with the Christian Crusade and allied groups. His resignation came only after the Hargis organizations had agreed to cash in their $72,000 life insurance policy on Hargis and give him the money, and had guaranteed him a $24,000 annual stipend. Meanwhile, Hargis announced that he was retiring to his Ozarks farm because of ill health.

By February 1975 Hargis felt energetic enough to try to regain control of the college, but the board backed Noebel. Deprived of Hargis’ name and his astounding money-raising talents, however, his former operations soon found themselves strapped for cash, and in September all but the college accepted Hargis’ offer to return. The decision was risky, says Loyalist Jess Pedigo, president of Hargis’ David Livingstone Missionary Foundation. “We thought his coming back might have been premature, but he was a broken man. He was truly repentant, and we urged him to forget the past. ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ ” Perhaps more to the point, adds Pedigo, “There was a danger of bankruptcy.”

So Hargis announced that he was “led of the Lord to come back to Tulsa.” Since then he has been flamboyantly establishing a new base. He has bought a six-story building for his downtown headquarters, though the city has refused him permission to put his name atop it in lights 85 ft. long. And he signed up Anti-Communist Dan Lyons, who left the Jesuit priesthood to get married (TIME, Sept. 29), to edit the weekly newspaper, which again is lavishing coverage on such events as Hargis’ “hero’s welcome” in South Korea.

The American Christian College, however, has not forgiven Hargis. It took months for Hargis to transfer to the college the deed to the modernistic church building and the 8½-acre campus. Without it, the school had no hope of getting regional accreditation. Worse, Hargis has given the college only limited access to the names on the fund-raising list that all the Hargis organizations formerly shared. Says Noebel: “He’s been telling everyone we are going to sink. Well, obviously we will sink as long as he holds the mailing list.” Some 70% of the school’s income comes from contributions. Enrollment has dropped from 228 to 160, and since word of the scandal spread to parents one teacher has talked 25 of them into letting their children stay enrolled.

The remaining collegians are perplexed, but most back Noebel, even though they once idolized Hargis. The five students who originally accused Hargis have left town to make new lives for themselves. As for their parents, one father, who reports that his son’s three-year involvement with Hargis began at age 15 or 16, wept as he said, “I will forgive him his sins because God’s Word tells me what I must do, but I will never forget his acts against my son.”