Who Said That...

Born in Coweta, Oklahoma, Bright described himself as being a "happy pagan" in his youth. He graduated from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma with an Economics degree. As a student at Northeastern State University, he was initiated into the Zeta Chapter of Sigma Tau Gamma Fraternity. While in his early 20s he moved to Los Angeles, California and founded a company called Bright's California Confections.

In 1944, while attending the First Presbyterian Church, Hollywood, Bright became an Evangelical Christian. He immediately began intensive Biblical studies which led him to graduate studies at Princeton and Fuller Theological Seminaries (although he never completed a degree at either). It was while he was a student at Fuller that he felt what he regarded as the call of God to help fulfill Christ's Great Commission (Matthew 28:19) by sharing his faith, beginning with students at UCLA. This gave birth to the Campus Crusade for Christ movement.

During the decades to follow, Bill Bright and his wife, Vonette, remained faithful to this work, and the ministry expanded greatly. Campus Crusade now has more than 27,000 full-time staff and over 225,000 trained volunteer staff in 190 countries.

In 1983, he chaired the National Committee for the National Year of the Bible. He was named the 1996 recipient of the $1.1 million Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. He donated the prize money to causes promoting the spiritual benefits of fasting and prayer.

He wrote more than 100 books and booklets, and thousands of articles and pamphlets that have been distributed in most major languages by the millions. He was a signer of the document Evangelicals and Catholics Together.

Bright was a co-founder of the Alliance Defense Fund which funds high profile litigation cases on behalf of Christians' First Amendment rights. He was also a co-signatory of the Land letter of 2002 which outlined a just war rationale for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, providing a theological underpinning for the invasion being planned by President George W. Bush.

Rev. Billy Graham released a statement on Bright's death in 2003: "He has carried a burden on his heart as few men that I've ever known - a burden for the evangelization of the world. He is a man whose sincerity and integrity and devotion to our Lord have been an inspiration and a blessing to me ever since the early days of my ministry."