SOUR WINE, NEWISH BOTTLE

Glenn Beck seems to be copying the strategy and tactics of another religious huckster, Billy James Hargis:

Evangelist Billy James Hargis Dies; Spread Anti-Communist Message

By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 30, 2004; Page B06

The Rev. Billy James Hargis, 79, who died Nov. 27 at a nursing home in Tulsa, was a "bawl and jump" broadcast evangelist whose anti-communist message helped him flourish during the Cold War.

Mr. Hargis -- an enormous man with a recent history of heart attacks -- was a wailing, wheezing, impassioned presence on more than 500 radio stations and 250 television stations at his apex. With his Church of the Christian Crusade, he was perhaps second only to Carl McIntire in spreading an ultraconservative fundamentalist message to millions.

Increasingly, he politicized his pulpit and in 1962 urged attendees of the Anti-Communist Leadership School in Tulsa -- which charged $100 admission -- to work for conservative candidates and against those he deemed "soft" on communism. He said he once wrote a speech for red-baiting Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wis.).

He spoke to a largely rural audience -- "lonely patriots," he called them -- who saw communist conspiracies in government, the media and popular culture. He argued for the return of prayer and Bible reading to public school. He wrote several books, among them "Communist America -- Must It Be?" (1960), and recorded "Songs and Sayings of Billy James Hargis." He sold them at his conferences.

His most prominent followers made all manner of allegations. Retired Army Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker claimed that President Richard M. Nixon "appointed revolutionists to Cabinet posts." The Rev. David Noebel championed the idea that rock music was a communist plot to brainwash America's youth.

Inspired by Oral Roberts University, he founded the American Christian College in Tulsa in 1971 to teach "God, government and Christian action." The college attracted enough interest for Mr. Hargis to form a touring musical, "An Evening With Billy James Hargis and His Kids."

He was pushed from the college presidency after Time magazine reported that students of both sexes said Mr. Hargis had had sexual relations with them. Faltering financially after that, the college shut down in the late 1970s.