"Sometimes in the wrong, but never in doubt"

by L. Edward Hicks

Although the New Religious Right has attracted considerable media attention in recent years, little has been written about its historical roots. In this groundbreaking book, L. Edward Hicks examines the career of George S. Benson, whose work as a fundamentalist Christian educator foreshadowed the political activism now associated with such figures as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Born in rural Oklahoma, Benson became an evangelist and missionary to China during the 1920s. In 1936, he was appointed president of Harding College in Searcy, Arkansas, a small school operated by the Churches of Christ. From his base there, Benson soon embarked on a far-reaching crusade that joined conservative Christian values with free-enterprise economics and its political underpinnings. In 1941, he founded the National Education Program (NEP), which would proclaim as its goal "the preservation and advancement of the spiritual, moral, economic, and political values on which this nation was founded." Aft