Before Billy Graham inflamed Los Angeles with his anti-Communist revivalism in 1949, before Pat Robertson mobilized religious media to engage in cultural combat in 1961, before Jerry Falwell launched the Moral Majority to help elect Ronald Reagan in 1979, Reverend Carl McIntire marshaled religious conservatives for spiritual and political battle as Christianity's Cold War commander. Not only did McIntire write the playbook for U.S. religious political activism, he also built much of its infrastructure and exerted a wide-ranging influence for well over half a century. Throughout his career as a fundamentalist preacher, broadcaster, and political activist, “McIntire's chief priority remained the anticommunist cause” (p. 269). Eventually, McIntire's acerbic, pugilistic, autocratic leadership eroded his support base and relegated his legacy to the dustbin of history.

For decades, church and political historians have largely caricatured McIntire as undeserving of serious examination. Markku Ruotsila, a professor of church history at the University of...

You do not currently have access to this content.