Word: humbard
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Dates: during 1971-1971
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...swaddled behind the piano while his parents led revival services in the tabernacles and tents of the Bible Belt. Once, after he had learned to walk, his father collared him as he ran across the stage and spanked him soundly to demonstrate proper child training. Young Rex Humbard reformed, but real conversion had to wait until he was a shy 13, listening to a visiting evangelist call for converts. He went forward, he recalls, "to open my heart to Jesus," and it happened. "Light flooded my soul and I became a new person. In that moment God took...
...Lord, Humbard would probably admit, did a thorough job of it. Now 51, he heads a religious-business empire that deals in millions of dollars as well as souls; he reaches his outposts by private airliner. But the seat of empire is a weekly television show. Each Sunday he is seen conducting a nondenominational service on 335 television stations across the U.S. and Canada, and the number is still growing. Even in New York City, not normally fruitful territory for evangelists, Humbard this month was able to switch his show from 7 a.m. to a choice 11 a.m. slot right...
Technicolor Cross. Humbard's sumptuous Cathedral of Tomorrow in Akron was in fact built for television, though it also serves a local congregation of 2,800 families. Opened in 1958 at a cost of $3,500,000, the vast circular structure is lavishly appointed: glass and marble walls, a huge wooden dome, tiers of theater-type seats around a stage that can be raised or lowered hydraulically. The auditorium atmosphere is hardly dispelled by the cathedral's single mark of religious character: a 100-ft.-long cross, hung horizontally, embellished with 4,700 light bulbs that...