Who Are Those Guys?

(2 of 3)

Arthur S. DeMoss, who died in 1979, began his working life as a bookie. He ran two profitable Albany, N.Y., "horse rooms" and owned three Cadillacs by age 24. A year later, however, a revival-tent conversion redirected his energies. He embarked on what Tony Campolo, a Philadelphia-area pastor whose congregation DeMoss and his wife Nancy once belonged to, calls "the most consistent Christian life of any person I've ever known." Campolo recalls an early talk with DeMoss. "He said to me, 'I'm gonna give my life to full-time Christian service.' I asked him if he was going to be a missionary. He said, 'Oh, no. We have enough missionaries. We need people who will make a huge amount of money to support missionaries.'" DeMoss sold insurance to conservative Christians, whose clean living made them good health risks. Once his National Liberty Corp. went mainstream, its TV ads, featuring Art Linkletter and a prominently displayed toll-free number, pioneered direct marketing. DeMoss gave nearly half his salary to his missionary foundation. When he died on a tennis court at age 53, he added $200 million more. Says Campolo: "He kept his commitment from beyond the grave."

And his family carried it on. Nancy is the foundation's CEO, brother Robert is president, and three DeMoss children are directors. Nancy plays host at evangelizing dinners for the rich and powerful at her houses in Florida and Manhattan (one invitee estimated the events' cost at $80,000 each). Privately, she contributed $70,000 to Newt Gingrich's political-action committee, GOPAC. A daughter, Deborah, worked for Senator Jesse Helms as a Foreign Relations Committee aide, specializing in the right-wing Latin American parties Helms favored in the 1980s. (She has since left the foundation board.) Mark, a board member, worked for Jerry Falwell before founding the DeMoss Group, a p.r. firm for evangelists like Billy Graham's son Franklin. Mark's father-in-law is Art Williams, the insurance magnate who bailed out Falwell's debt-ridden Liberty University with a $70 million gift.

The foundation's first campaign to draw wide attention was a series of soft-focus TV spots with the tag line "Life. What a beautiful choice." Featuring tableaux of beautiful children who the ads noted had not been aborted, they aired in states facing abortion-related referendums and went national by 1993 at a cost estimated at $20 million a year. The commercials thrilled the antiabortion camp. Says National Right to Life Committee president Wanda Franz: "They ran daily for years. It was the kind of campaign an organization like ours could never have begun to touch."

If the antiabortion ads were a major (if tasteful) foray into hot-button advocacy, the Power for Living campaign is closer to pure tract evangelism. Viewers who dial the 800 number receive the 134-page booklet, which employs simple metaphors like a country road or a broken golf club in support of the classic invitation. "All you do is, by an act of your will, say, 'I want You, Jesus, to take over my life.'" Participants in an earlier Power drive in 1983 have claimed that several million people ordered the book.