I had one sister who was great at making up jingles as she was went along picking each row of cotton. Something like, “I saw an old toad, running down the road. Couldn’t get him to tote my load.”
But my focus this week is Kanye West, the rapper who is creating such attention. West has announced that he has become a Christian and has turned his life over to Christ. There are many who do not accept this and believe he is using Christianity as a publicity stunt.
His appearance in a mega-church in Houston has made many condemn both Kanye and the church minister. Many, I am sure, who condemn them don’t like Kanye or the minister in the first place.
I have no idea about Mr. West and his public profession. I would not like it if he condemned my willingness to express my public profession of faith. I guess it will take time to answer the question.
One thing that I do believe I heard from another minister, Billy James Hargis, an early evangelist and I believe the first minister to preach on nationwide television. He held crusades around the world and converted many lost souls. He was what I call a “Bible man,” who distributed many Bibles each year.
The Hargis family lived near Neosho for several years and I did volunteer work for him. One day I asked Rev. Hargis how I should deal with a friend who was not a Christian—a man who was I thought was very sinful. Strangely, I liked the man very much and saw plenty of good in him.
When I asked his advice, Rev. Hargis looked at me and said, “Don’t quit believing in your friend. Try to get him to at least one church service or get a Bible in his hands. It’s amazing what miracles can happen in a church service or with a Bible.”
So I see this in Kanye West. Thousands of people came to the his church service in Houston. I do not know how many at the service were Christian. But I am glad they all were there—maybe a life was changed by the visit.
I also heard that the American Bible Society has given away 11,000 Bibles as a result of Mr. West’s action. At least 11,000 miracles were possible.
A few years ago, I read that Elvis Presley’s ex-wife was asked what she imagined Elvis would be doing in his old age.
She imagined that he would have become a minister.
Elvis Presley preaching?
Kanye West preaching? Who can say?
But just between you and me, I hope Mr. West is being truthful and will have a productive ministry.
(Kay Hively is a historian, author and former editor, reporter and columnist for the Neosho Daily News and Neosho Post.)
9 comments:
Your article was great until the last sentence. You had to insert doubt.
Remind me again what Billy Bob James Jethro Hargis thought about integration and race mixing, and whether not that might enter into his opinion of Kanye West and his marriage to Kim Kardashian? Wasn't it something like slavery follows god's law?
Also I can't remember what exactly all those accusations were against Billy Bob James Jethro Hargis which happened right before he lost control of his religious "college" back in the seventies. I do seem to remember reading something that he wasn't indicted by the Oklahoma DA or County prosecutor in charge...not that they typically would indict powerful older religious men back in the seventies for allegedly having sex with younger women...or younger men for that matter...weren't the either un-investigated or unproven allegations actually allegedly some of both?
Here's some additional detail on those 'sexing the students outside of holy matrimony' allegations against Billy Bob James Jethro Hargis!
"First, the Internal Revenue Service decided Hargis's work was political and removed his tax exemption. Then, in a 1964 radio broadcast, Hargis accused journalist Fred Cook of smearing the Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, saying Cook had been fired from jobs for journalistic misconduct. When Red Lion, a Pennsylvania radio station refused Cook a right of reply, he sued, and, in its "Red Lion" decision, the US Supreme Court established the "fairness doctrine". Under the first President Bush, the requirement of balance was removed; the current administration has reduced the protections even further.
As his media power waned, Hargis founded the American Christian College in 1971. Having denounced the Beatles as "godless", he sold his school with cleancut images of its choir, the "All-American Kids", which became a touring show. In 1976, however, Time magazine reported that a student couple, married by Hargis in the college chapel, discovered on their wedding night that both had lost their virginity to Hargis. A number of male choir members accused him of coercing them into sex, justifying his seductions by quoting the example of David lying with Jonathan. Hargis denied the charges, saying communists and Satan were conspiring against him. But Hargis was forced to resign from his college. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/dec/10/guardianobituaries.religion
Allegedly sexing both the wimmen AND the men?
JEEBUS!
@12:15
I'm really confused, what does Hargis have to do with the article. Help me connect the dots.
@ 2:13
Look at the article posted above?
"I have no idea about Mr. West and his public profession. I would not like it if he condemned my willingness to express my public profession of faith. I guess it will take time to answer the question.
One thing that I do believe I heard from another minister, Billy James Hargis, an early evangelist and I believe the first minister to preach on nationwide television. He held crusades around the world and converted many lost souls. He was what I call a “Bible man,” who distributed many Bibles each year.
The Hargis family lived near Neosho for several years and I did volunteer work for him. One day I asked Rev. Hargis how I should deal with a friend who was not a Christian—a man who was I thought was very sinful. Strangely, I liked the man very much and saw plenty of good in him.
When I asked his advice, Rev. Hargis looked at me and said, “Don’t quit believing in your friend. Try to get him to at least one church service or get a Bible in his hands. It’s amazing what miracles can happen in a church service or with a Bible.”
Hargis is presented as a nice christian preacher. These observations are mingled with commentary about Kanye West and his preaching.
Is there any real question about what Billy James Hargis would have thought about a black man who is well known in the entertainment industry and who happens to be married to (and have children with) a white woman preaching to any audience? Hargis had a well known racially reactionary history. Hargis had direct involvement with the KKK and other violent extremists in the 1950s and the 1960s. That history went well beyond openly associating with the KKK at a time when the KKK was bombing churches and murdering and lynching civil rights supporters and children.
Ahhhhh. Perfectly clear now. I didn't catch that part of the article.
I was already preparing myself for some sort of racist remark in her article so I probably glanced through it.
Now I will go research this nice white preacher molesting kids.
I didn't see any historical reports of sexual misconduct allegations of this sort: " nice white preacher molesting kids" unless "kids" refers to the college students enrolled in the American Christian Crusade College at Tulsa which Billy James Hargis was the president of at the time.
Sensational allegations concerning Billy James Hargis and his own sexual immorality and sexual misconduct (preacher, college president, married with children yet allegedly fornicating with multiple male college students and also allegedly fornicating with at least one female college student) were published by Time Magazine in 1976. Some background information on Billy James Hargis and a version of the Time Magazine sexual misconduct allegations made against Hargis and the response can be found in an obituary for Hargis published by the Telegraph Newspaper in the UK.
In 1968 his organisation published the bestselling Is the School House the Proper Place to Teach Raw Sex? But in 1976 Hargis found himself the subject of an article in Time magazine in which it was alleged that he was in the habit of giving impromptu sex lessons to students at his American Christian College in Tulsa.
In 1974 Hargis had conducted a wedding for two of his students. On their wedding night, in an episode reminiscent of the scene in Cabaret when Sally Bowles and Brian Roberts admit to having had affairs with the bisexual Max, the bride and groom confessed to each other that neither was a virgin and discovered that Hargis had deflowered them both.
Not long afterwards, three male members of the college choir, the All- American Kids, approached the college authorities alleging that they too had been sexually abused by Hargis over a period of three years.
Hargis had allegedly justified his acts by citing the Old Testament friendship between David and Jonathan and, just in case his victims were minded to consult biblical texts that were sympathetic, threatened to "blacklist" them for life if they talked. When he was confronted by his colleagues, he allegedly admitted his guilt, blaming his behaviour on "genes and chromosomes".
But he later denied the charges, complaining of "liberal subversion" and "the forces of Satan out to silence anti-Communism". Nevertheless, he was forced to resign as college president. Without the income Hargis generated, the college closed in 1977. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/3348044/Billy-James-Hargis.html
The allegations (and admissions reported) which can be found in the historical record of the sort mentioned above were probably illegal at the time. Many allegations of the man on man sex sort were probably vigorously investigated and prosecuted in 1970s Oklahoma. Unless, possibly, you were a well known preacher and local college president and were well connected in right wing circles.
It is certainly probable that the local newspapers covered these events differently if they reported on them at all. I certainly do not intend to imply that the author of this post which mentions both Billy James Hargis and Kanye West knew any of this or should have known any of this. Certain types of things such as these historical allegations made against Billy James Hargis usually got a whitewashing.
Well I certainly learned a wealth of information. I still need to look up the Time piece on him.
Thanks for connecting the dots.
The link below goes to a post which is the source of the following excerpt and which is notable for the embedded clips of newspaper stories reporting the Time story in 1976 and reaction from Hargis and his associate at the college one David A. Noebel.
Billy James Hargis and the “Bible Made Me Gay” Defense
"At this point, the conservative closet is large enough to contain entire genres of alibis for reactionary antigay figures exposed as harboring desires or practices at odds with the missionary-position-to-make-babies sexual politics of the modern (well…) Right. There’s the “three weeks of counseling cured me of that pesky meth-and-rent-boys habit” that left the Reverend Ted Haggard “completely heterosexual.”
There’s the ex post facto trajectory of rightwing activists who do terrible things for the antigay movement, come out, and try to make up/and or disregard the past (see: David Brock, Ken Mehlman). There’s sheer denial, from Larry Craig’s foot-taps to Ray Cohn as written by Tony Kushner. Then there’s always the sporadic freakshow, like the Florida story of Republican state legislator Bob Allen, left somewhat in the shadows of the bigger state scandals such as Mark Foley and the Charlie Crist “rumors.” Allen, as far as I know, pioneered the race-panic defense for his restroom cruising in 2007, claiming he offered to pay $20 to perform oral sex on a Black man because . . . he was afraid of him. Perfectly logical.
I’m only scratching the surface here, but here’s one alibi I don’t think I’ve ever seen elsewhere: The Bible Made Me Gay.
Genes get the headline, but Hargis “justified his homosexual acts by citing the Old Testament friendship between David and Jonathan.” The bride and groom realized what was going on because they’d both slept with him–something that otherwise happened only at David Bowie concerts, I believe.
This is perhaps the single most radically relativist reading of the Good Book I have ever seen a fundamentalist offer. History would not suggest it as a winning strategy; the Bible seems uniquely immune to against-the-grain readings. A Kansas freethinker in 1894 thought he could beat obscenity charges because the graphic sexual quotes he had included on postcards came directly from the Bible; nope, he was convicted anyway, apparently holding the Bible legally obscene. Then there’s the sad fate of Christian socialism, which isn’t even against the damn grain. So blaming the Bible here was something of a long shot." https://strublog.wordpress.com/2013/07/02/billy-james-hargis-and-the-bible-made-me-gay-defense/
Also worth noting that General Edwin Walker (who was both a prominent Hargis associate and who was injured due to being on the receiving end of an attempted assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald on April 10, 1963) was arrested for solicitation of gay sex and related crimes on a number of occasions. Be warned that researching General Walker will lead to a vast amount of dreck due to the Lee Harvey Oswald John F. Kennedy assassination connections.
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