Christianity Today was co-founded by L. Nelson Bell -- Billy Graham's father-in-law and also the founder of The Southern Presbyterian Journal, a pro-segregationist magazine explicitly dedicated to what Bell (a Wheaton graduate) called "racial integrity." Bell's argument in opposition to the Civil Rights movement was irreducibly and emphatically "moral and religious." He categorically denied that "bare-knuckled racial discrimination" or animus had anything to do with his position. It was, he insisted, a matter of faithfulness to God and of defending the authority of the Bible.
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