[4] Carl McIntire completed high school in Durant and attended Southeastern State, where he became an award-winning intercollegiate debater and president of the student body during his final year.

[6] During the late 1920s, Princeton Seminary was embroiled in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy that had disquieted the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America as well as other Protestant denominations.

[7] In May 1931, he married Fairy Eunice Davis of Paris, Texas, whom he had met when they were both students at Southeastern,[8] and who became a high school English teacher while he completed seminary.

A debate soon emerged in the young denomination over eschatology, Presbyterian traditions, the use of alcohol and tobacco, and the place of political activity in the church.

[15] In April 1938, after the Collingswood church lost a civil suit over control of its church property, the congregation walked out en masse from their impressive Gothic building and followed McIntire to a huge tent erected several blocks east on the main street at Haddon Avenue and Cuthbert Boulevard.

[17] In February 1936, during the series of ecclesiastical trials, McIntire launched a weekly newspaper, The Christian Beacon to give greater voice to his message.

Over the next four decades, McIntire published twelve books, and hundreds of pamphlets, booklets, sermons, speeches, and documentary portfolios.

[20] The radio program generally began with a homily from the Bible, followed by a monologue by McIntire on a wide range of subjects, including apostasy in mainline churches, liberalism in government, opposition to coexistence with communism, and cultural issues of the moment, including gambling, sex education, socialized medicine, and fluoridation of drinking water.

[22] In 1965, McIntire effectively purchased radio station, WXUR, Media, Pennsylvania, although it was formally owned by Faith Theological Seminary.

McIntire added a number of distressed properties to his holdings, becoming an unwitting preservationist as he prevented outmoded structures—the most notable being the nineteenth-century Windsor and Congress Hall hotels—from being destroyed to make room for motels.

After being outmaneuvered, McIntire attempted a parliamentary takeover in October 1970, which eventually led to a court order against him in 1971, and a final severing of his relationship with the ACCC.

[30] Faith Theological Seminary, organized in 1937 as an independent school associated with the Bible Presbyterian denomination, later occupied Lynnewood Hall, the Gilded Age estate of P.A.B.

To McIntire, separation emphasized the purity of the church in opposition to apostasy, the falling away from the historic Christian faith in which he believed theological liberals to be engaged.

[39] Beginning in 1967, McIntire engaged in a running battle with the Federal Communications Commission over the then-applicable "Fairness Doctrine," by which radio stations had to provide varied political views to retain their licenses.

"[41] When the FCC refused to renew the WXUR license (rejecting the recommendation of its own examiner)[42] and the station was forced off the air in 1973, McIntire demonstrated his theatrical flair by holding a "funeral" for the station (complete with coffin) while dressed as John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian pastor and signer of the Declaration of Independence.

"[47] McIntire also gained the public eye in the early 1970s when he organized a half dozen pro-Vietnam War "Victory Marches" in Washington, D.C.

[48] McIntire attributed the prosecution and conviction of Lt. William Calley on 22 charges related to war crimes at My Lai to "a no-win policy" of the U.S. government in Vietnam.

[49] More than once McIntire's sense of the dramatic passed over into the risible, as for instance, when he urged in 1971 that a full-scale version of the Temple of Jerusalem be constructed in Florida[50] or two decades later when he suggested that Noah's ark be rebuilt and perhaps refloated off his conference center in Cape May.

[52][53] In 1970, when gay activists proposed "Stonewall Nation", the takeover of sparsely populated Alpine County, California, McIntire announced that he would counteract the plan by having his followers move to the area in trailers.

[56] A man who inspired listeners and easily raised money for his various ministries, McIntire had few trustworthy associates to manage the day-to-day activities of his ramshackle empire.

[58] In 1971, all but two of the professors of Faith Seminary, including President Allan A. MacRae, left over McIntire's alleged suppression of academic freedom and "oppressive leadership style.

[60] Nevertheless, McIntire often inspired good-natured respect from some of the religious liberals whom he regularly picketed through the years; and his rhetoric, although sometimes bombastic, was rarely personal.

[65] Even the shadow that remained of the Bible Presbyterian Church of Collingswood finally forced his resignation in 1999, after he had served the congregation for sixty years.