Bill Bright

During the decades to follow, Bill Bright and his wife, Vonette Bright, remained faithful to this work, and the ministry expanded greatly. In 2011 Campus Crusade for Christ had 25,000 missionaries in 191 countries.

Bright died in 2003. He was survived by his wife Vonette, sons Zachary and Brad, and four grandchildren. His wife died in 2015.

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 endorsed 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.

In 1996 Bill Bright was awarded the $1.1 million Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, and donated the money to promote the spiritual benefits of fasting and prayer. In 2001 he stepped down as leader of the organization and Steve Douglass became president. He died in 2003.

In 1988 he led the protest against the Martin Scorsese film The Last Temptation of Christ and he called the film "blasphemous". He offered to buy the film's negative from Universal in order to destroy it.

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 produced the film Jesus in 1979, which was released by Warner Bros. in the United States. It was not a financial success, losing approximately $2 million. While praising its "meticulous attention to authenticity", critics panned the film for being "painfully monotonous". The Los Angeles Times called it a "...dull Sunday-School treatment of the life of Christ."

Bill Bright's father Dale Bright was a staunch Republican who served as the chairman of the Wagoner Country Republican Party. Like his father, Bill remained a staunch Republican supporter and voter throughout his life. As an evangelical Christian, Bright was also a staunch anti-Communist and one of his reasons for starting Campus Crusade was to combat Communist influence in US universities. During the 1970s, Bright defended the South Korean President Park Chung-hee, who imposed martial law and assumed dictatorial powers. He claimed that Park was fighting against Communism and supported religious freedom.

Campus Crusade's expansion across several US campuses created friction with other Christian campus groups including InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and liberal campus chaplains, who disagreed with the evangelistic tone of Bright's ministry. In 1956, Bill wrote a 20–minute evangelistic presentation called "God's Plan for Your Life", which set the tone for Campus Crusade's evangelism and discipleship program. Bright also initially partnered with the fundamentalist Bob Jones University. However, the relationship deteriorated after Bright sided with Billy Graham, who had accepted the sponsorship of liberal Protestants for his 1957 New York crusade. In response, Bob Jones Sr. and his son Bob Jones Jr. severed relations with Bright's ministry. According to Turner, this split with Bob Jones University led Bright to gravitate towards the "new evangelical" wing of the Protestant movement, which was associated with Billy Graham's cooperative evangelism.

While Bill and his colleagues focused on the male students, Vonette focused on reaching out to the female students. By 1952, Bright's Campus Crusade had reportedly converted 250 students at UCLA including the student body president, campus newspaper editor, and several athletes including African American decathlete and future Olympian Rafer Johnson. In 1953, Campus Crusade established its headquarters in Los Angeles' Westwood Boulevard. Bill's campus outreach was also aided by his Hollywood Presbyterian mentor Henrietta Mears, who allowed the Brights to share her Bel Air home and spoke at several Crusade functions. Bright's success at UCLA led him to establish Campus Crusade branches at several other US universities.

Bill Bright had initially planned to produce an evangelical film called "The Great Adventure" but abandoned the project due to a lack of funding. Though Bright had initially considered partnering with other churches, his disenchantment with their ability to mentor new Christian converts led him to start Campus Crusade for Christ as a parachurch organization. In 1951, after recruiting several volunteers from Fuller Seminary and Hollywood Presbyterian, Bright started Campus Crusade's first chapter at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). According to Turner, Campus Crusade was also inspired by Bright's desire to combat Communist influence in US universities including UCLA, which was then regarded as a hotbed of student radicalism.

Bill Bright married Vonette Bright on 30 December 1948. The two had been engaged to marry since the spring of 1946. However, Bill at the prompting of Zachary's parents agreed to delay her wedding until her impending 1948 graduation from Texas State College for Women. During the 1950s, Bill and Vonette adopted two boys named Brad and Zachary Bright.

In 1946, Bill Bright quit his candy business to pursue Biblical studies and theology at Princeton and Fuller Theological Seminaries. According to the historian John G. Turner, Bright struggled with his academic studies and did not complete his degree at either institution. While studying at Fuller seminary, Bright felt what he regarded as the call of God to reach out to university students and abandoned his academic studies. Before starting his campus ministry, Bright sold off his confections company and settled a financial dispute with his former business partners, the Taylor family.

While in his early 20s he moved to Los Angeles, California and founded a company called "Bright's California Confections." During the 1940s, Bill attended the First Presbyterian Church, Hollywood where he became an evangelical Christian. Bright was influenced by Henrietta Mears, who served as the Director of Christian Education at First Presbyterian Church, and Billy Graham, who later became a prominent American evangelical leader.

Bill Bright was born on October 19, 1921 in Coweta, Oklahoma, USA as William Rohl Bright. He was married to Vonette Bright.