Bill Bell (Cardiff University)

May 23, 2017, 4-6 p.m., SB II, 01-531

As a teenager Bill Bell had a strange tendency to be in the wrong place at the right time, for a decade finding himself in some of the key American religious conservative communities. In late 70s California, he was one of the Jesus People, attended camps of the ultra-right wing John Birch Society, and in the 80s became a founder member of the Moral Majority, graduating from the college run by the Reverend Jerry Falwell, the leading TV preacher of the day. Part-memoir, part-cultural history, this lecture will discuss the rise of the New Religious Right in the United States between 1975 and 1985, and address its significance to the ongoing dispute about the separation of Church and State. Part-memoir, part-cultural history, this lecture will discuss the rise of the New Religious Right in the United States between 1975 and 1985, and address its significance to the ongoing dispute about the separation of Church and State.

 

Bill Bell is Professor of Bibliography at Cardiff and a Visiting Fellow
of the University of Göttingen