Charles Bradley Templeton Templeton's father left Toronto and his family in 1929, onstensibly in search of work, when Charles was 14, and he rarely saw him afterwards. His mother made ends meet during the Depression by taking in boarders to support Charles, his three sisters and younger brother.
Cartoonist
In 1932, leaving high school to pursue the job. His work became syndicated and earned him a comfortable living. He converted to Christianity while working as a cartoonist, and in 1936, left his job to become a preacher. In 1955, he became the Presbyterian Church in the United States's secretary of evangelism.
Religious views
Templeton was raised outside formal church life, but converted to Christianity as a young adult and became a prominent evangelist in Canada and the United States. During the 1940s he was associated with Youth for Christ International and was a close friend and preaching colleague of Billy Graham.
Templeton's attitude toward Jesus became a subject of later discussion among Christian writers. In The Case for Faith, Christian apologist Lee Strobel described interviewing Templeton near the end of Templeton's life. Strobel wrote that Templeton rejected Christian doctrine but spoke emotionally and admiringly about Jesus, saying that he "missed" him. Christian commentators have sometimes cited this passage as suggesting that Templeton retained affection for Jesus or may have had late-life second thoughts about his atheism.
Other accounts caution against treating the anecdote as evidence of a formal return to Christian belief. Templeton's published work remained explicitly skeptical of Christianity, and his son Brad Templeton later wrote that Farewell to God was completed while the first symptoms of Alzheimer's disease were already affecting him. Contemporary obituaries also reported that Templeton died from Alzheimer's disease.
In 1958, Templeton also worked for syndication service All-Canada Radio, producing ten one-minute news commentaries a week.
From 1959 to 1962 he hosted the historical quiz show Live a Borrowed Life. In 1963, he was an interviewer on the Question Mark, a CBC public affairs show exploring spirituality.
He collaborated with Berton again on the radio show Dialogue from 1966 to 1970 on CFRB, and from 1970 to 1983 on CKEY, where Templeton also served as the morning news reader.
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Riverdale by-election September 10, 1964
!
! scope="col" width="175" |Party
! scope="col" width="150" |Candidate
! Votes
! Vote %
|-
| |
| New Democrat
| Jim Renwick
|align=right| 7,326
|align=right| 38.7
|-|
| |
|Progressive Conservative
| Kenneth Waters
|align=right| 5,782
|align=right| 30.5
|-|
| |
|Liberal
| Charles Templeton
|align=right| 5,738
|align=right| 30.3
|-|
| |
| Independent
| Fred Graham
|align=right| 92
|align=right| 0.5
|-|
|
|
|Total
|align=right|18,938
|
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+ September 19, 1964 Ontario Liberal Leadership Convention<br>delegate support by ballot
|-
! colspan = "1" | Candidate
! colspan = "2" | 1st ballot
! colspan = "2" | 2nd ballot
! colspan = "2" | 3rd ballot
! colspan = "2" | 4th ballot
! colspan = "2" | 5th ballot
! colspan = "2" | 6th ballot
|-
|Name
|Votes cast
| %
|Votes cast
| %
|Votes cast
| %
|Votes cast
| %
|Votes cast
| %
|Votes cast
| %
|-
| Andy Thompson
| 379
| 27.7
| 408
| 29.7
| 462
| 33.6
| 520
| 38.1
| 539
| 39.9
| 772
| 58.8
|-
| Charles Templeton
| 317
| 23.1
| 356
| 25.9
| 396
| 28.8
| 422
| 30.9
| 419
| 31.0
| 540
| 41.2
|-
| Robert Nixon
| 313
| 22.8
| 351
| 25.6
| 356
| 25.9
| 387
| 28.3
| 392
| 29.0
| style="text-align:left;background:lightblue" colspan = "2" |
|-
| Joe Greene
| 236
| 17.2
| 211
| 15.4
| 149
| 10.9
| 37
| 2.7
| style="text-align:left;background:lightgreen" colspan = "4" |
|-
| Victor Copps
| 61
| 4.5
| 27
| 2.0
| 10
| 0.7
| style="text-align:left;background:lightblue" colspan = "6" |
|-
| Eddie Sargent
| 51
| 3.7
| 20
| 1.5
| style="text-align:left;background:lightgreen" colspan = "8" |
|-
| Joseph Gould
| 13
| 0.9
| style="text-align:left;background:lightblue" colspan = "10" |
|-
|Total
| 1,370
| 100.0
| 1,373
| 100.0
| 1,373
| 100.0
| 1,366
| 100.0
| 1,350
| 100.0
| 1,312
| 100.0
|-
|}
Inventor
Templeton made his own unsuccessful designs of a child-resistant medicine cap, a cigarette filter and a pipeline.
In 1980, he married author Madeleine Helen Stevens Leger, and they remained married until his death. In later Christian writing, Templeton's final years have sometimes been discussed because of Lee Strobel's account that Templeton became emotional when speaking about Jesus and said that he missed him. The anecdote has been cited by some Christian commentators as evidence of unresolved attachment to Christianity, but no public statement by Templeton recanting his atheism is known, and family accounts emphasize that he was experiencing the effects of Alzheimer's disease during his final years.
Books
Novels
- The Kidnapping of the President, McClelland & Stewart (Canada) / Simon & Schuster (US) (1974) - adapted into a movie in 1980
- Act of God, McClelland & Stewart (Canada) / Little, Brown (US) (1977)
- The Third Temptation, McClelland & Stewart (1980)
- The Queen's Secret, McClelland & Stewart (1986)
- World of One, McClelland & Stewart (1988)
Non-fiction
- Evangelism for Tomorrow, Harper & Brothers (1955)
- Life Looks Up, Harper & Brothers (1957)
- Jesus (also titled Jesus: A Bible in Modern English), Simon & Schuster (1973)
- Charles Templeton: An Anecdotal Memoir, McClelland & Stewart (1983)
- Succeeding: Mastering the Art of Getting Ahead, Stoddart (1989)
- The Winning Edge (later edition of Succeeding), Stoddart (1990)
- End Back Attacks, written with Charles Godfrey, M.D., Key Porter Books (1992)
- Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith, McClelland & Stewart (1996)
References
External links
- Photo archive curated by Brad Templeton
- Anecdotal Memoir (1982) by Charles Templeton, online version