William R. Bright (October 19, 1921 – July 19, 2003) was an American evangelist. In 1951 at the University of California, Los Angeles, he founded Campus Crusade for Christ as a ministry for university students. In 1952 he wrote The Four Spiritual Laws. In 1979 he produced the film Jesus.
In 1996 Bill Bright was awarded the $1.1 million Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, and donated the money to promote the spiritual benefits of fasting and prayer. In 2001 he stepped down as leader of the organization and Steve Douglass became president.
Family
thumb|240px|Bill Bright and his wife [[Vonette Bright|Vonette in Turku, Finland, in 1980]]
Bill Bright married Vonette Zachary on December 30, 1948. The two had been engaged to marry since the spring of 1946. However, Bill, at the prompting of Vonette's parents, agreed to delay the wedding until her impending 1948 graduation from Texas State College for Women. During the 1950s, the couple adopted two boys named Brad and Zachary Bright.
Ministry career
Writings
In 1965, Bright wrote The Four Spiritual Laws, an evangelistic Christian tract. In the booklet he outlines his view of the essentials of the Christian faith concerning salvation. It is summarized as four spiritual laws or principles that govern what he sees as human beings' relationship with God. The booklet ends with a prayer of repentance.
Creation of Campus Crusade for Christ, early 1950s
Bright had initially planned to produce an evangelical film called The Great Adventure but abandoned the project due to a lack of funding.
Though Bright had initially considered partnering with other churches, his disenchantment with their ability to mentor new Christian converts led him to start Campus Crusade for Christ as a parachurch organization. In 1951, after recruiting several volunteers from Fuller Seminary and Hollywood Presbyterian, Bright started Campus Crusade's first chapter at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). According to Turner, Campus Crusade was also inspired by Bright's desire to combat Communist influence in US universities including UCLA, which was then regarded as a hotbed of student radicalism.
By 1952, Bright's Campus Crusade had reportedly converted 250 students at UCLA including the student body president, campus newspaper editor, and several athletes including African American decathlete and future Olympian Rafer Johnson. While Bill and his colleagues focused on the male students, Vonette focused on reaching out to the female students.
In 1953, Campus Crusade established its headquarters in Los Angeles' Westwood Boulevard. Bright's campus outreach was also aided by his Hollywood Presbyterian mentor Henrietta Mears, who allowed the Brights to share her Bel Air home and spoke at several Crusade functions.
Expansion of Campus Crusade
Bright's success at UCLA led him to establish Campus Crusade branches at several other US universities.
Campus Crusade's expansion across several US campuses created friction with other Christian campus groups, including InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and liberal campus chaplains, who disagreed with the evangelistic tone of Bright's ministry. In 1956, Bright wrote a 20-minute evangelistic presentation called "God's Plan for Your Life", which set the tone for Campus Crusade's evangelism and discipleship program.
Later life
In 1974, Bright founded Third Century Publishers along with politician John Conlan; the company's goal was to link conservative economic and political views with evangelical Christianity. The founding of Third Century has been described as "the first major effort to build a national movement of conservative evangelicals". The early new Christian right movement has thus been referred to as the "Third Century movement" by author Sara Diamond. Major funders included Amway founder Richard DeVos and National Liberty Corporation's Arthur DeMoss. Bright and Conlan soon took over the struggling Christian Freedom Foundation (founded by J. Howard Pew and Howard Kershner), a non-profit which they used to receive donations for Third Century. The foundation was headed by Christian right pioneer Ed McAteer.
In the mid-1970s, Bright started Christian Embassy with the aim of "[evangelizing] members of Congress, the military, the judiciary, and the diplomatic service."
In 1983, he chaired the National Committee for the National Year of the Bible. He was named the 1996 recipient of the $1.1 million Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.
He wrote more than 100 books and booklets, and thousands of articles and pamphlets. He endorsed the document "Evangelicals and Catholics Together".
Bright was a co-founder of the Alliance Defense Fund, which funds high-profile litigation cases on behalf of Christians' First Amendment rights. He was a co-signatory of the Land letter of 2002, which outlined a just war rationale for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, providing a theological underpinning for the invasion being planned by President George W. Bush.
He produced the film Jesus in 1979, which was released by Warner Bros. in the United States. It was not a financial success, losing approximately $2 million.
In 1988, Bright led the protest against the Martin Scorsese film The Last Temptation of Christ and he called the film "blasphemous". He offered to buy the film's negative from Universal in order to destroy it.
Bright held five honorary doctorate degrees: a Doctor of Laws from the Jeonbuk National University of Korea, a Doctor of Divinity from John Brown University, a Doctor of Letters from Houghton Seminary, a Doctor of Divinity from the Los Angeles Bible College and Seminary, and a Doctor of Laws from Pepperdine University.
Death
Bright died on July 19, 2003, in Orlando, Florida. His wife died in 2015.
Politics
Bright's father, Dale Bright, was a staunch Republican who served as the chairman of the Wagoner County Republican Party. Like his father, Bill remained a staunch Republican supporter and voter throughout his life. One author describes Bright, saying, "Always careful to couch his activities as purely evangelistic, he nevertheless has been present at crucial junctures in Christian Right political history."